Intro

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome To Hub history where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.
This is Episode 202 Boston TRANSPORTATION Firsts Hi, I’m Jake.
This week, I’m going to revisit three classic episodes about advances in transportation made in Boston.
First up will take a look at a forerunner of today’s MBTA.
In the late 19th century, a bold entrepreneur built a full sized working monorail in East Cambridge but failed to convince the city of Boston to adopt it for public transportation.

[0:41] Then taking inspiration from the World Fliers in last week’s show, Our second story will be about the first people to take to the skies in Boston.
In the 19th century, daring aeronauts made a series of increasingly ambitious balloon ascents in Boston.

[0:58] Finally, we’ll turn the clock back to the 1780s. Just as the Revolutionary War was concluding at the time. The town of Boston was on a tiny peninsula that was almost completely surrounded by water.
The ferry connecting Boston to the mainland struggled to keep up with demand.
Bostonians were looking for a better way, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

[1:23] Now, before I talk about these Boston transportation breakthroughs, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

Boston Book Club

[1:32] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is for the second week in a row, not a book, but another podcast.
This time I’m featuring Episode 80 of the Dispatches podcast from the Journal of the American Revolution.
In this episode, host Brady Kreutzer sits down with former White House Web master and author Jane Hampton Cook to discuss one of my favorite Americans as the wife of one US president and mother of another, Abigail Adams.
Private influence could often be seen in public discourse.
For example, John Quincy Adams, lifelong crusade against slavery was no doubt inspired by the mother, who wrote in 17 74 that she wished, most sincerely that there was not a slave in the province.

[2:18] The correspondence between Abigail Adams and John is one of the most powerful glimpses into our founding era, and from three decades of letters.
The most famous words Abigail wrote were remember the ladies.

[2:31] In a series of letters written while John was attending the second Continental Congress in the spring of 17 76.
Abigail constantly urged him to get Congress to declare an American independency, and one of them, she considered what would come after independence and suggested a new role for women in the new society.
On March 31st, 17 76 she wrote,
By the way, in the new code of laws, which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors,
do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands.
Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could if particular care and attention is not paid to.
The ladies were determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice. A representation that your sex air, naturally tyrannical, is a truth. So thoroughly established is to admit of no dispute.
But such a view is wished to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.
Why, then not put it out of the power of the vicious in the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity.
Men of sense in all ages, a poor these customs which treat us only is the vassals of your sex.

[3:57] In his response, John called Abigail saucy, and he essentially ignored her suggestion to incorporate rights for women in the new code of laws.
The 19th Amendment granting American women the right to vote would take nearly 150 more years to pass.

[4:15] In the podcast, Cook will explore what John’s dismissal of Abigail Adams most famous letter tells us about her role in promoting women’s rights in the earlier republic.

Upcoming Event(S)

[4:25] And for the upcoming event. This week, we again have an embarrassment of riches, with three great talks coming up back to back.
First Up is a bit of modern history from the Mass Historical Society.
On September 21st, Luke Nectar from Texas A and M will be leading an online author talk about his book, The Last Brahman.
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. In the Making of the Cold War.
Here’s how the inmate just described his talk a key figure in American foreign policy.
For three decades, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr of Massachusetts, a well heeled Eastern establishment Republican, put duty over partisanship to service adviser to five presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford,
and as United States ambassador to the United Nations, Vietnam West Germany and the Vatican.
Historian Luke A knitter gives us a compelling narrative of large, is extraordinary and consequential life and has immense political influence.

[5:26] Henry Cabot Lodge Sr has made a few appearances on the podcast, usually as a staunch opponent of women’s suffrage.
However, I don’t think the younger Henry Cabot Lodge just made any appearances yet.
Tune in at 5:30 p.m. On Monday, September 20. 1st toe. Learn the history we’ve been hiding from you.

[5:46] Up next is another installment of the reflecting addict Siri’s from Revolutionary Spaces, As I mentioned last week, Revolutionary Spaces operates both Old South Meeting House and the Old Statehouse, including the site of the Boston Massacre.
As part of the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the massacre this year, Reflecting Addicts explores different aspects to the life and times of Christmas addicts who’s become the most famous victim of the Boston massacre.
Here’s how Revolutionary Spaces describes this installment. Addicts and the Politics of Liberty and sovereignty in 18th century New England reflects on the political conversations that were taking place around the time of the Boston massacre among white colonists,
and the African and native descendent communities.
The revolutionary period is most often associated with colonists arguing for their rights as British subjects to tax themselves under a locally elected government.
But that’s only part of the story.
Blacks were also seeking to make the case for liberty to end the practice of slavery, while native peoples continued to reclaim their sovereignty after more than a century of colonial expansion.

[6:58] The taco began at 4 p.m. On Tuesday, September 22nd.

[7:04] And finally we have. Our first event is part of this year’s Chartered, a lecture series from the partnership of Historic Boston’s.
As the name suggests, this partnership celebrates the historic links between Boston, Massachusetts and Boston, Lincolnshire.
Their mission is to educate people about the 17th century history of both Boston’s and their peak season kicks off with Charter Day.
Boston, Dorchester and Watertown were all officially named on September 7th, 16 30 the anniversary always kicks off a month or more of terrific programming from the partnership.

[7:39] They’re event on Wednesday, September 23rd will be called into the wilderness leadership in early New England, and it will begin at 7 p.m.
Here’s how the partnership describes the event.
Two governors to colonies for moments that defined a decade.
Join expert staff from Plymouth, Patuxent, formerly Plimoth Plantation,
and the Center for 17th Century Studies at Plymouth for an immersive exploration of the complicated relationship between Plymouth colonies William Bradford and Massachusetts Bay Colony is John Winthrop.

[8:15] Delving into their personal correspondence and published writings from the 16 thirties, Plymouth brings its unique approach to living history to bear in an exploration of each man’s unique approach to leadership in community.
In New England’s earliest decades, all the events we featured this week are free and, as usual, advanced registration is required.
We’ll have the links you need for all three events, as well as to listen to the Remember the Ladies episode of Dispatches in this week’s show.
Notes at hub history dot com slash 202 Before I move on with the show, I just want to take a moment to offer my thanks to our sponsors, including Salvatore A.
And Vicky G, who recently made one time contributions on PayPal.
It’s thanks to folks like Vicky and Salvator, and especially our patri on sponsors that were able to continue making hub history.

[9:10] Publishing a podcast doesn’t cost nearly as much as a lot of other forms of media.
We don’t have to worry about our printing costs or a special effects budget, but we do have monthly expenses like media hosting, website hosting and security transcription research, database subscriptions and audio processing.

[9:31] By signing up to contribute $2.5 dollars or even $10 a month, are patri on sponsors, offset those costs and let us get on with making the show.

[9:42] If you’d like to become a sponsor, just go to patri on dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the Support US link.
Thank you to our new and returning sponsors, and now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Meigs Monorail

[10:00] I know that I start off every show by saying that Hub history is the show where we share our favorite stories from Boston history.
But this really is one of my favorites.
In 18 73 lifelong inventor and Civil War veteran Joe Meg’s filed for a patent on certain improvements in cars, locomotives and trucks. Adapted for use on elevated railways.

[10:24] Over the next 23 years, he would revise and refine is monorail design into a beautiful, elegant alternative to the Green Line subway and the elevated Orange Line.
He’d also spend that time attempting to convince city and state officials to adopt a system as Boston’s mass transit solution.

[10:43] This story originally aired as episode 1 33 in May of 2019.

Classic Episodes:
[10:50] Boston in the late 19th century was absolutely booming. The population have been swelled by immigration and the bounds of the city were being expanded by both landfill and annexation railroads and open up commerce with outlying areas.
And our water and sewage infrastructure had finally been upgraded to support this growing population.
However, the city’s rapid growth and economic success moved faster than the city’s street grid could be modernized.
While many residents of Boston still lived within walking distance of their jobs, the new railways offered commuted rates for day passengers about baggage, allowing workers to begin commuting from the suburbs.
Private carriages, hackney cabs and heavy wagons were pulled by horses.
By 18 88 the West End street railway was operating thousands of streetcars, some drawn by horses and others propelled by electric motors powered by overhead wires.
While streetcars enabled people to get around, they did little to alleviate congestion as they ran on the already crowded streets.

[11:52] The section of trim on street between Scali Square and Boylston Street was pure havoc.
It carried shoppers to and from the main shopping district’s, as well as office workers and government officials headed to Beacon Hill,
by the 18 eighties, streetcars would pack trim on street into end at rush hour, and people said that one could walk from Tremont Temple to the Masonic Temple on their roofs without ever setting foot on the ground.
The city was desperate to find ways to get some of this traffic off the streets and was considering two competing proposals.

[12:23] One of these proposals was a subway. The idea of running an underground railroad wasn’t entirely new.
London had some steam trains running underground since 18 63 and it was in the process of constructing an electrified subway that would open in 18 90.
Subways had the benefit of moving traffic off the city streets, while not adding a visible blemish to the cityscape out of sight, out of mind, not everyone was thrilled about moving transit Underground.
Opponents even formed an anti subway league. The gathered signatures on petitions against the subway and planet editorials in The Boston Post, with titles like Hideous Germs, lurk in the underground air.
They claim that there was a new strain of subway microbes that was poised to strike subway commuters At the time, the underground world was viewed with a great deal of suspicion.
That’s where rats and snakes came from, where sewage and dead bodies went to.
It was the realm of the devil of unknown germs and evil spirits.
As Charles Bond put it. The underground was Sina’s, the realm of Lucifer himself inhabited by lost souls. Moldering corpse is strange forms of animal life and noxious vapors.

[13:36] The other contending proposal was to build elevated railroad tracks over city streets.
This system would not have to contend with Lucifer or lost souls, and it had some more concrete benefits as well.
Like a subway, an elevated railway would take rapid transit off the street, freeing space for other modes of transportation.
And unlike a subway, elevated tracks relied on tried and true construction techniques rather than large scale excavations using newly developed technologies.
Another huge benefit to an elevated railway was the ability to use existing railroad passenger cars and steam engines.
Steam power was incredibly difficult to adapt for use in the subway because of the noxious coal smoke, and many proposed tunnels were too small or turned too tightly to accommodate existing passenger cars.
Even the Boston subway, when it was first built a few years later, would be built for small electric streetcars, not steam locomotives.

[14:34] For many observers, the downside to an elevated railway was its intrusion into city life.
The model that was being entertained for Boston was known as the New York system because the earliest elevated railways it started operating in N. Y. C. In the early 18 seventies in this system.
At least two railroad tracks ran parallel to one another on each line, and they ran on a solid decking built over the street.
Some of our listeners will remember the elevated Orange Line, which ran down Washington Street until 1987 which was an example of a modernized New York system Elevated railway.
It was supported by iron towers on either side of the street that held up huge girders running across the street, which in turn supported the decking That the tracks ran on.
The New York system was practical, but it was ugly, and it blocked out the sun, making the streets below dark and unwelcoming.

[15:25] One man believed he had a solution that would allow him to build an elevated railroad that avoided the downside to the New York system.
Joe Meg’s, now in his forties, had been an inventor since his teens.
He was originally from Nashville as his 1907 obituary describes Joseph Vincent. Meg’s was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 18 40.
The son of return, Jonathan Meg’s, a distinguished lawyer of whom President Lincoln was especially Fonda and who was nominated by him for the bench of the U. S Supreme Court.
The mother of Joe Meg’s was Sally Keys. Love, a Tennessee Belle, a cultured woman who lived to perform noble deeds.
She was There s to several slaves which, in the course of events, fell to her legal share but which she refused to take, saying that she did not own them or anyone else.
And so she set them free of their own accord. This was long before the war.

[16:20] Joe Tankard is a child finding ways to improve the families. Cook stove In creating his own printing press at the age of 14 he was issued his first patent for an improvement to railroad couplings.
But it was the Civil war that indirectly led him to pursue inventing full time.
An 18 82 Boston Globe profile summarizes his wartime experience.
The entire family, casting their fortunes with the union side, went to Washington, and Young Meg’s was for one year a corresponding clerk in the War department.
But this did not suit his active, listless temperament. He was accordingly commissioned as an officer in the Army with which he remained through the war, accomplishing, among other things, the organization of a colored battery, which was the wonder of all who witnessed its workings.

[17:07] You might think that in artillery Captain, in the middle of occupying a hostile state would be too busy for academic pursuits, but not our Captain Megs.
In the closing months of the war, he worked out a design for a new repeating rifle.
Somehow it’s sketches reached Union General Benjamin Butler, who is from Lowell.
Butler, invited the young captain to join him in Lowell after the war, where Meg’s became one of the first employees of Butler’s United States cartridge company, which was one of the largest manufacturers of arms and ammunition through World War.

[17:39] Makes, was trained as a patent lawyer.
But he was more interested in the practical side of innovation, eventually being awarded 22 patents, including designs for a school desk, a reclining chair and an automatic fishing pole.

[17:53] In 18 73 Joseph E. Meg’s filed for a patent on certain improvements and cars, locomotives and trucks adapted for use on elevated railways.
This was the first generation of the Meg’s system, which would be further refined and perfected during development the 18 eighties.
At a legislative committee hearing, Captain Meg’s claimed that his system was superior to any yet known to the world.
That it is best adapted to the streets of Boston.
That it could be built at 50% the cost of any other system.
That it will not impede the free passage of light in there, that it is absolutely safe Dear element being impossible, and that it is capable of a higher rate of speed and can start and stop more quickly than is possible under any other system.

[18:41] This new system looked nothing like a streetcar or a railroad passenger car.
It was designed as a monorail, so it was elevated off the street where there was no need for decking over the streets that would block out the sun.
Instead, a single line of vertical posts would run down the sidewalk on each side of the street, leaving the air above the street itself clear.
Here’s how the July 18 86 issue of Scientific American describes the tracks used by the Meeks monorail, the way upon which the train runs consists of a single iron girder 4 ft in depth for each span placed over the center line of the posts.
The gardener carries an upper tract beam in a lower track beam upon the sides of each of which the rails for a number are placed.
The two bearing rails, which carried the load of the train, consist of angle irons placed upon the outer upper edge of wooden stringers.
Upon the lower track team, two vertically placed rails for balancing or friction wheels are carried by the upper track, being,
the usual length of post 24 ft would give a clear head way of 14 ft 4 ft being taken up by the trust’s and 6 ft forming the foundation.

[19:49] So the track consisted of a row of posts with a single girder 14 ft overhead that carried two pairs of rails.
A report written by an independent civil engineer in 18 86 helps describe how the system worked, but we will include plenty of pictures in the show notes this week.
The wheels that bear the weight instead of being placed in the ordinary upright position are fixed at an angle of about 45 degrees from the vertical plane.
The bearing face of the wheels being grooved to fit down upon the angle, iron supporting rail in the upper corners of the lower boom of the track order so as to bear both downward and inward on the rail.
The locomotive has some minor novelties of construction. Besides the truck arrangement above, alluded to not necessary here to describe,
but its main features are the horizontal driving wheels, which pull the train by side pressure on the rails of the upper boom of the girder and the hydraulic attachment by which the pressure or adhesion of these driving wheels upon the rails has created, maintained and regulated.
It will buy the engine driver if you can picture the single Gardere, running down the top of a single line of posts, now picture a train that straddles the girder with wheels on either side.
A set of wheels that is angled inward toward the girder carries the trains, wait well above those horizontal wheel, script the top of the rails and provide power again.
We’ll have pictures in the show notes, because this train is like nothing else you’ve ever seen.

[21:10] Besides the functional differences from a normal locomotive set, it was also cosmetically different.
That Scientific American article describes how a cylindrical steam locomotive pulled a train of cylindrical passenger cars.
The framing of the body is of light iron ribs been in a circle filled in by panels covered with Richard bolstering, which covers all the interior, the exterior sheath with paper and copper.
The cylindrical portion is 10 ft 8.5 inches in diameter.
While adding to the strength, this form is expected to diminish the wind resistance fully one third.
The interior of the car is light, roomy and pleasing to the eye.
The seats are upholstered like the rest of the car, and comfort and luxury have been carefully studied in every detail at each window is especially designed device for securing ventilation without the annoyance caused by dust.

[22:01] Meg’s believed he had a solution to Boston’s rapid transit woes, but he had to convince not only the city but the state Legislature.
He went on a protracted publicity campaign, publishing a book on a system, writing letters to editors and taking miniature models of his monorail toe presentations in front of any group that would have him.
A blurb in a February 18 82 issue of the Harvard Crimson reads like one of our upcoming historical events.
The elevated railway system, as invented by Captain Jovi. Meg’s will be explained to the public by working models. Stereo optic on views, etcetera.
At Lyceum Hall Monday evening, February 20th at 7 30 0 clock.
The public are earnestly invited to its end, as it will be one of the most interesting addresses ever given in Cambridge.
Ladies and gentlemen are both invited to attend admission free.

[22:54] After years of arguing, the Legislature approved a state charter for makes to form an elevated railway company in 18 84.
But there was one condition he would have to build at least a mile of test track and run a successful test of this system.
The July 18 86 issue of Scientific American explains.
The Cambridge test track was made necessary by a section in the act of the Massachusetts Legislature authorizing the incorporation of the Meg’s elevated railway company,
which states that no location for tracks shall be petitioned for in the city of Boston until at least one mile of the road has been built and operated,
nor until the safety and strength of the structure and the Rolling Stock and Motive power shall have been examined and approved by the board of railroad commissioners or by a competent engineer to be appointed by them.

[23:42] Over the coming year, Meg’s filed for a new patent. This one covered his entire system from the method of erecting posts to the rail switches and wheels to the cylindrical cars themselves.
By early 18 86 the East Cambridge test track was operational, and Meg’s brought in a competent engineer George Stark to prepare a report for the board of railroad commissioners.

[24:05] The structure has been erected holy unmade land upon what was once the bed of Miller’s River and the mud underneath. This made Landis soft and deep.
A rod of round iron, 5/8 of an inch in diameter was easily forced down near the structure by one man.
In my presence, it’s entire length, 12 ft without striking hard bottom.
The difficulty of building a secure, single post structure on this foundation has, of course, been much greater than it would have been on ordinary, solid land.
Now is a sidebar. I know Meg’s was building an engineering prototype, but I wonder if he was also trying to create just a bit of a thrill ride in this next paragraph in the Engineer’s report.
Tell me the test track doesn’t sound like a roller coaster.

[24:47] In addition to this natural difficulty, Captain Meg’s has purposely introduced artificial obstacles in his track for the purpose of showing that he could run his trains around curves of less radius,
and on grades of greater elevation that are now practicable on ordinary steam motor railways and can safely pass horizontal or vertical angles in the track of very considerable deflection.
One of his curves makes an entire semi circle with a 50 ft radius on a grade of 120 ft to the mile, and another turns nearly a quarter circle with a radius of 50 ft on a grade of 345 ft to the mile.
The motive, power and rolling stock submitted to my examination consists of a locomotive weighing about 30 tons, a tender bang, about 14 tons and a passenger car weighing about 17 times, making up a train of about 61 tons aggregate weight when empty.
Accepting the distinctive running gear or trucks of this railway system, the general features of the motive, power and rolling stock correspond to our supposed improvements upon the locomotives and cars of ordinary steam railways.
A cylindrical shape has been adopted for all the equipment for which shaped peculiar advantages. Air claimed as to the safety, convenience and economy, and particularly as the offering less resistant surface to the wind.

[26:05] On April 29th 18 93 the Cambridge Chronicle carried a brief piece detailing what’s believed to be the last test run of the Meg’s Monorail,
the engine and cars of the Meg’s elevated railway, which have been in a dilapidated condition since the close of the establishment some two years ago. We had a trial trip last week.
How had such a promising system fallen so far so fast?
Things started to fall apart after a fire, which many believe to be an act of arson, destroyed a building and badly damaged the prototype passenger cars on the Cambridge test track on February 4th, 18 87 Joe Meg’s wrote at 4 a.m.
The night watchman reported that he saw flames issuing from the end of the car and that the whole into the building was in flames.
A casual inspection of the building, which I have had photographed, proves that his statement is correct and it is corroborated by the neighbors, and I am thus pain to be obliged to state that I believe the fire to be oven incendiary character. As to others who have seen it.

[27:05] The fire put Meg’s in a difficult position of deciding whether to repair the damaged equipment.
Without a working prototype, it was hard to advocate for more funding, but with limited capital, it might not make sense to repair costly prototype.
Both of these problems point out the disadvantages of the Meg system.
No, it’s Champion believed he had worked out a superior system. The sheer unfamiliarity of the unique tracks and cars meant that skeptics had to see it to believe it.
And unlike its two primary competitors, the MEG system would require expensive proprietary equipment.
The proposed Boston subway system would use existing electrified streetcars, while elevated railways following the New York system could use existing locomotives and passenger cars.
The Meg system would have to be purpose built from the posts holding up the girders to the tracks, to the wheels, to the seats in the passenger cars.
Every piece would have to be custom manufactured, and that promised to be extraordinarily expensive.

[28:04] A request Beg submitted to the Legislature in 18 88 asking for an amendment to his company. Charter highlights just how much trouble he was having raising operating capital.
We have received the highest approval of your examining engineer after many months of patient and exhaustive tests such as no other Railway on Earth could have stood.
And after all of this, we find that we cannot go ahead and raise money like other railways.
The burdensome charter we have received precludes it. We have made faithful trial to do so in face of all this.
Capitalist declared that they cannot proceed to build the road under the charter and the person’s forming the Meg’s elevated railway company being unable to proceed.
Otherwise, we’re obliged to form a construction company under the general laws so as to raise money enough to carry out the requirements of your honorable body to build a test track, rolling stock and motive power to be submitted to your engineer.
We have done all this and can proceed no further.

[29:00] The Meg’s company was eventually able to get their charter amended, but they were never able to convince investors that their system was superior to the competition.
What they’re amended, charter and head makes erected a much more modest demonstration track in Boston in 18 94.
On July 18th, the Globe reported people entering the city this morning from the north and going through Adam Square thought that the long looked for rapid transit was an actual thing of the present.
A substantial post of iron with a section of horizontal girder stood in front of Sam Adams, and he regarded it with a pained expression, as if he could not understand the progression of the present age.
Last night’s late home goers remembered as they went by this mushroom growth, that it was not there when they passed through the square last night.
There it stood like a sentinel, and it was finished, too, had a neat little brick base with a granite curbing.

[29:53] Instead of a mile long track. With the working monorail, all the company could afford. This time around was a single section of track erected just about where Boston City Hall is now, perhaps It was good publicity’s, but I don’t think it kept the owners of the Western Street railway up a night.

[30:09] In the end, however, Mother Nature was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In March of 18 88 a terrible storm swept through Boston.
Known as the snow Hurricane. It dumped up to 60 inches of snow on the region, killing over 400 people.
Cities were paralyzed for weeks as carts, streetcars and even railroads were immobilized. Where the snow was being cleared in 18 82 Makes had expressed his utter contempt for the idea of a subway.
All tunnels are ill, adapted for the purpose of rapid transit.
They’re inaccessible, are colder and summer and warmer and winter than the surface atmosphere.
Hence our condensers of moisture, therefore damp, dark, dingy, dirty, musty and dangerous to health.
All subways air very noisy, and it is impossible to ventilate them, accepted very great cost.
These are the facts, no matter who is testified to the contrary.

[31:01] However, after the snow hurricane, the prospect of a subway that was not only always warmer in winter but also completely protected from snow began to seem like a pretty good idea.
The subway became Boston’s first rapid transit project, while Meg’s was left to fight for scraps with the newly formed West End Street Railway Company, which had consolidated ownership of the streetcar tracks throughout the city.
It was not a fight that the makes company would win. They eventually ran out of money, and they were forced to sell their charter to an investment group led by John Pierpont Morgan in April of 18 96.
In the meantime, construction began on the trim on street subway and the West End company signed at least to operate the new subway for a period of 20 years.
Then, in November of 18 96 JP Morgan and his partners completed a merger between the West and Street Railway and the Boston Elevated Railway Company, which held the makes charter.
Ah, front page headline in the Globe trumpeted West End War Over the Streetcars subway and the potential elevated lines were now unified under a single management.
The old Meg’s Charter was used for projects that probably horrified Joe Megs.
At one point, it had been proposed to use the make started to build a second subway tunnel under trim on street to handle trolleys coming from Roxbury.
So much for the claim that tunnels are ill adapted for the purpose of rapid transit.

[32:25] After the JP Morgan take over, an article in 18 97 describes a new proposal to build an elevated rail line along the original MiGs right of way.
The trunk line, beginning at Doubly Street opposite Guild Block, will run via Washington and, as before, stated up Castle the village street across the tracks of the Albany Road, over private property and into the southerly inclined of the subway,
through the subway toward Charlestown, over the new Charlestown Bridge, now under construction by the Transit Commission up Main Street, Charlestown, to Sullivan Square.

[32:59] You may recognize Dudley to Sullivan Square as the original route of the Orange Line.
Before 1987 that route would be built using the New York system, decking over entire streets and blocking out the sun.
Whoever the 18 97 proposal was even more ambitious.

[33:17] Besides the old locations granted in what’s familiarly known as the Meg’s Charter, there will be new locations asked for another line.
Beginning at Brattle Square, Cambridge is to be run over West Boston Bridge up Cambridge Street through Rodent Square, Court Street and Scali Square.
The company offers to build a subway beginning at Joyce Street on Cambridge Street, where the hell commences and running under Boden Square, under the streets named and connecting with the subway and Scali Square, now under construction,
that route might be familiar as the core of the red line before it was eventually extended on both the North and South ends.
So before Joe Meg’s passed away in 1907 he saw his state charter get used to build a subway, which he always hated, and a New York system elevated train, which he thought his own design superior to.
In the meantime, you saw the elegant tracks and groundbreaking cylindrical trains of his Cambridge demonstration track dismantled and sold as scrap today, the sites occupied by a commuter rail maintenance yard and a Fairfield Inn on O’Brien Highway.
For years, the only commemoration of the site of the MiGs monorail was a small plaque on a house front on a nearby side streets.
And now I think even the plaque is going.

Early Aeronauts

Jake:
[34:31] On last week’s show, I shared the story of the world fliers who completed the first journey around the world by air by landing in Boston in 1924.
That’s not the only aviation first we’ve covered on the podcast.
Back in September 2017 Episode 46 was all about the pioneer era nauts who used Belounis since to dazzle the crowds of thousands who came out to watch them,
including an ascent by Charles Durant on September 13th, 18 34 in which Durant was nearly lost.
It see you’ll also hear how balloons facilitated the first aerial photo of Boston and the first aviation related lawsuit in Massachusetts.

Classic Episodes:
[35:16] Man flight has its origins in France In 17 83 a couple of weeks ago, in the podcast, we quoted a letter that John Adams wrote toe Abigail from Paris.
In September of that year, he was eager to see Abigail and said, if the balloon should be carried to such perfection is to give mankind the safe navigation of the air.
I will fly in one of them at the rate of 30 knots an hour.
His confidence was a little bit premature, but it goes to show how much hype there was around balloons at the time.
That summer, the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated a hot air balloon for the first time.
Joseph Michelle on Jacques Ettien were papermakers who had been experimenting with the idea of flight since they watch scraps of paper rising out of a fire, believing that there was a special gas and smoke that was lighter than air.
They built small balloons out of paper and taffeta over wood frames with small fires under them, and we’re pleased to see the contraptions rise off the ground.
By June of 17 83 they conducted their first public demonstration of a balloon, which got them noticed in Paris,
that September, a sheep, a duck and a rooster became the first creatures to ascend in a balloon flying from the Royal Palace of Versailles, with Louie, the 16th Emery Antoinette looking on,
when both foul and the more terrestrial sheep survived a flight of some 1500 ft of altitude, the king decided to allow human testing.

[36:40] In October at 10 became the first human to ascending the balloon.
In a secret test performed at the Brothers workshop later that day, a physicist friend also ascended in a tethered balloon of their shop.
In November, the physicist would make a public assent in Paris, accompanied by a French army officer.
They stored at 3000 ft and traveled almost six miles before touching down outside the city walls.
This public flight touched off a round of balloon fever in France, with everything from shirt sleeves to seat backs being designed balloon like flares and colorful balloons were printed on all kinds of consumer products.
Just two years later, as balloon fever raged on, the first Bostonian took to the skies.
Dr. John Jeffries was a position from Boston. He’s an interesting character, and he’ll probably pop up in future podcasts.
He worked closely with John Adams as a witness for the defense in the Boston massacre trial.
But as the American Revolution heated up, he became a staunch loyalist.
He served as a physician in the Royal Army during the war before moving to London.
There, he ended up becoming personal physician to the Adams family, while John was serving as America’s first ambassador to Great Britain.

[37:53] As she was waiting for Jeffries to deliver her first grandchild, Abigail Adams would say, Dr Jeffries is our family position and is really an amicable, benevolent man, though formerly, he took a different side in politics.
Later, Jeffries would move back to Boston, but it was during his exile in London that he made aviation history.
About a year after the Montgolfier, his first demonstrated balloon flight, a French balloonist and daredevil named Jon Pierre Blanchard arrived in London and began giving demonstrations.
As a man of science, Jeffries was fascinated. After being carried aloft in a brief ascent from London, he offered to fund Blanchard’s next major undertaking on the condition that he be allowed to come along as a scientific observer.

[38:41] Together, the two staged a balloon and supplies and over and waited for the weather to turn in their favor.
On January 7th, 17 85 the day dawned clear with a light breeze from the west,
they began to inflate Blanchard’s balloon with hydrogen, which at that time meant mixing iron filings with sulfuric acid and barrels and piping it into the balloon.
Finally, they ascended, with Jeffries carrying a barometer to measure their altitude as they progressed.
As the breeze carried them slowly across the English Channel, the flight passed into history.
They were the first across the channel by air and the first ever international flight over Calais.
Jeffries dropped a letter from Ben Franklin’s son, William, to the American delegation in Paris, which is now considered the world’s first piece of air mail.
Despite making history, the flight was not without difficulties.
About a month after their ascent, Jeffries met John Quincy Adams at a dinner with Ben Franklin in Paris.
John Quincy’s diary records the tense atmosphere aboard the balloon.

[39:51] Dynamic Dr Franklin’s with a great deal of company. Among the rest, Dr Jeffries, who lately crossed with Mr Blanchard from Dover to Calais.
He related his voyage, in which his intrepid he had well nigh been fatal to him.
The balloon descended, he says, three quarters of a mile in two minutes.
He and Mr Blanchard were both of them, obliged to throw almost all of their clothes into the water.
At one time, they were not more than 20 yards above the surface.
So Jefferies and Blanchard had arrived in France half naked, having thrown all their equipment and most of their clothing overboard, taking an altitude as they drifted across the English Channel.

[40:31] After that history making voyage, Jean Pierre Blanchard would bring this balloon to the United States.
He ascended from Walnut Street, President Philadelphia. On January 9th, 17 93,
President Washington and a group of dignitaries were on hand to witness the feet, along with hundreds who paid to watch him take off from inside the walls of the president and even more who skipped the admission fee and watch from the surrounding streets.
About an hour later, he touched down in New Jersey even after ballooning took off in the U. S.
It would be decades before the first documented dissent from Boston.
Back in the early 20th century, there was a club in Boston that called itself the Association of International Aeronautical Pilots of America.
They had formed in 1908 as a way for licensed balloonists to trade tips and tricks, and they continued meeting until at least 1920 well into the era of airplane play.

[41:24] Their annual meeting was held in November 1st, and they claimed the date was chosen to mark. The anniversary of the first balloon isn’t in Boston, which they imply was given by Dr Jeffries and say was held on November 1st, 17 90 in front of the Green Dragon Tavern.

[41:40] The only reference we confined to this state is the first ascent in Boston is in a newsletter called Arrow, where the club is advertising their annual banquet.
It’s possible that the date refers to the demonstration of a small unmanned balloon.
It’s equally possible that the event in 17 90 was completely made up.
There may not be any evidence to back up that claim for a 17 90 balloon ascent, but There is plenty of evidence for the first official ascent in Boston, and that evidence is the first aviation related lawsuit in Massachusetts.
On September 3rd, 18 21 the Ahronot Louise Charl he’ll took off from Washington Gardens on Tree Month Street, across from the common.
The flight seemed to be successful, and the balloon descended at 10 Hills Farm in Somerville.
A man named Swan had a large commercial vegetable garden there at the time.
An article about the trial describes the descent.

[42:39] The facts are there, stated as follows. Jill ascended in a balloon in the vicinity of Swan’s Garden and descended into his garden when he descended.
His body was hanging out of the car of the balloon in a very perilous situation, and he called to a person at work and swansfield to help him in a voice audible to the pursuing crowd.
After the balloon descended, it dragged along over potatoes and radishes about 30 ft.
When Gillis taken out, the balloon was carried to a barn. At the farther end of the premises, Geo and his balloon caused an estimated $15 of damage to Mr Swan’s farm.
The real problem came when 200 or more people broke down Mr Swan’s fences, trampling his fields in an attempt to see the balloon.
They caused at least $75 in damage.
The jury found that deals shouts for help made him liable for the crowds, damage and assisted judgment against him for $90.
Almost a century later, newspapers would cite the case as a note of warning for barnstorming aviators who might land in farm fields.

[43:49] A decade after that first ascent By Louis Charlotte DEAL Belounis Sense were a popular entertainment for the people of Boston in the last week of August.
In the first two weeks of September 18 34 Charles Durant built a temporary amphitheater on Boston Common and gave a series of balloon demonstrations,
at an Irish actor touring the states recorded his impressions of the crowd, waiting expectantly for one of Durant’s A Sense.
On arriving at Boston, I found the whole city in movement to assist, as the French say in the ascent of a balloon constructed by a Mr Durant already well known as an experienced an intrepid Ahronot.

[44:28] Purchasing a ticket for the amphitheater, a lofty temporary enclosure with rows of seats running around it, I fell into the crowd and made my way across the common at the extremity of which the building in question was situated.
On this day the whole area was alive with expectant geysers, whilst the several lines of streets leading into it were thronged with hurrying reinforcements.
Selecting a good point advantage, I stood for some time examining the materials out of which this vast congregation was made up, and I have never seen a population whose general appearance would endure so closer scrutiny as well.
I computed that the women outnumbered their less attractive companions by at least a third.
These were all in holiday trim, of course, invariably well dressed but commonly having a pretension to taste in style. I have never elsewhere observed so universally prevalent amongst the same class.
The men, both an Aaron dress, were inferior to their female friends, so much so that it was difficult to imagine them belonging to the same order.
And this remark, I think, will be found generally to apply throughout the union.

[45:31] After a time, I slowly made my way to the amphitheater, presented my ticket and was admitted within the enclosure where the arrangements for the flight were in busy progress.

[45:42] The Boston Post noted Durant’s first ascent on August 25th, when he drifted around the city on gently shifting winds before eventually landing near Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.
The Post quoted Durant’s account of a publicity study stage During that first flight,
After about an hour, he attained a sufficient easterly position to allow the rabbit in parachute to reach Boston,
as I was then, over the Back Bay, I judged the best plan to give the Spectators of view of the descent of the rabbit will be to keeping the lower current and thus reached the land on the western side of the Back Bay.
Four hours and 49 minutes, I judged myself sufficiently over the land to let go of the rabbit.
The barometer then stood at 26 02 the thermometer at 68 degrees and four minutes after I saw him land a number of persons on foot and in carriages, hastened to the spot and caught the parachute before it touched the earth.

[46:34] That first ascent got the town talking, but it was his last dissent from Boston on September 13th that was the most memorable to the Ahronot himself.
His account appears in the American magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

[46:51] My 12 aerial voyage is so full of pleasing incidents to myself that I, the more cheerfully comply with a request to furnish the minutes of the tour.
He ascended from his amphitheater as usual and hovered over the Charles between the Common and Cambridge port.
As he gradually rose to an altitude of 8000 ft, a strong high altitude air current began carrying him out over the harbour.

[47:18] When, when I descended to the lower current, I was over Fort warn and at five hours six minutes was so near us to hear the remarks of persons on the island.
My course was now changed and again directed towards Boston.
I went down to speak to a barge which was heading to intercept my line of progression.
I heard distinctly the remark of those on board. Mr. Durant, do you intend to a light here?
I answered no and asked his name wishing to report him in the city. But I could not understand his reply.
The same was becoming more and more interesting, and I think I never beheld so thrilling and animating a site, as was presented on approaching the city, the bay appeared alive with vessels and boats of all classes.
From one of them came delightful music and approaching the wars. So nearest to hear the bells and voices of thousands of fellow beings waving handkerchiefs and hats Toe welcome. My return produced a pleasing sensation, which you may better imagine than I can describe.
I rose as I entered the city to prevent danger from contact with steeples, though I passed sufficiently near to observe distinctly the movements of the inhabitants.

[48:31] He first attempted to land back at Boston Common, where his voyage began, but he overshot his goal as the breeze carried him into Cambridge Port.
He considered a lighting in Harvard Yard but was still moving too fast.

[48:45] At 34 minutes past five, I was opposite the college at Cambridge and addressed an evening paper, too Honorable Josiah Quincy, which I sent down with another that I found in the car, directed to a gentleman in Cambridge Port.
At one minute past six, I converse with a gentleman who told me I was in Waltham, 10 miles from Boston, and desired I would come down.
I gave him some evening papers, which I found in the car, directed to gentleman and newspaper offices in different parts of the United States.
I requested he would put them in the post office, which he promised to dio.

[49:22] After showing off for the folks on the ground, he realized that his anchor cables were dragging and in danger of tangling in the treetops.
He cut them away, cast off some ballast, and soon rose to a half a mile above the ground level. Again.
He finally landed on a farm in Lincoln, where onlookers quickly gathered to help Durant fold up the balloon.
They carried him off to the nearest tavern, where many toasts were toasted.
40 was taken back to Boston at the head of a veritable parade of cheeses and carriages.
Despite all the excitement, he was back at his own lodging before 11 p.m.

[49:59] The voyage throughout was, to me the most interesting one that I ever performed.
It is my last from Boston this season, and if it has met the ah probation of your citizens, I shall enjoy the pleasure of having contributed to at least the gratification of an intelligent community whose many acts of kind and polite attention towards me,
will forever leave a pleasing momento.
Yours cf Durant TRIM Outhouse Boston 14th September 18 34 As early as the Napoleonic Wars, military leaders saw the potential of balloons to allow their scouts to peer deep behind enemy lines.
However, it wasn’t until after the invention of photography that this dream became practical.
The world’s first aerial photograph was taken of Paris in 18 58 though it’s long since been lost.
The very next year, the French army began using balloons to photograph enemy lines during the Franco Austrian war.

[50:56] In 18 60 a photo was taken that is now the world’s oldest surviving aerial photograph.
On October 8th, The Boston Herald carried an account by a Samuel King of King and Alan era nauts, who had ascended in this balloon Queen of the Air with photographer James Wallace, Black.

[51:15] Mr Black, the imminent photographic artist of the firm Black and bachelor, and I ascended together.
First of all, we arose to 1200 ft, but we wish to get more extended views that could be obtained at such a height.
And so, after being drawn down and attaching the rope, we ascended in the usual manner.
Soon an expansive field was open to us, and we hope to be able to secure some of the magnificent scenes which we now scanned.
Everything was in readiness, and an attempt was made to take the city that was now sitting so beautifully for her picture.
But just it’s time we encountered a difficulty which had never before suggested itself.
The gas expanding is the balloon rose filled the surrounding atmosphere, penetrating even into the camera, neutralising the effect of the light and turning the coating on the glass plate to a uniform, dark brown color.
Several plates were spoiled in this manner before we discovered the cause by which we lost very much precious time as we were rapidly drifting away in a southerly direction.

[52:14] Five days later, they repeated the attempt, and on October 13th, 18 60 the first aerial photo was captured of Boston, describing it in the Atlantic.
In 18 63 Oliver Wendell Holmes waxed poetic Boston as the eagle on Wild Goose.
See, it is a very different object from the same place as the solid Citizen looks up in its eaves and chimneys, the Old South in Trinity Church or two landmarks.
Not to be mistaken, Washington Street slants across The picture is a narrow, cleft milk street wines, as if the old Cal path, which gave it its name, had been followed by the builders of its commercial palaces.
Windows, chimneys and skylights attract the eye in the central parts of the view, explicitly defined, bewildering in numbers as a first attempt.
It is, on the whole, a remarkable success.
But its greatest interest isn’t showing what we may hope to see accomplished in the same direction, much as those first ascents in gas and hot air balloons. In the 17 eighties, Onley barely hinted at the world of aviation to follow.
This early photograph, taken from a balloon Onley, scratches the surface of what aerial photography would one day offer.

[53:23] Google, makers of the most widely used modern aerial photographs, wrote a block post in October of 2010 150 years ago today.
On October 13th, 18 60 James Wallace Black shot the earliest still existing aerial photograph in the U. S.
He took the picture from a hot air balloon suspended above Boston Common, and the result, titled Boston As the Eagle and the Wild Goose. See it is truly beautiful.
We’re Google. Oh James Marlys Black. A debt of gratitude Without his early experimentation with aerial imagery, Google Earth may never have come to be.

[54:05] Technology has come a long way since James Wallace Black took his photo of Boston and glass plate negative box cameras of hot air balloons have given way to airplanes with mounted camera race.
But what hasn’t changed is how technology gives us new ways to look at our world.
Soon after that 18 60 ascent, a civil war broke out in America, in which balloon based photography would be widely used for surveillance,
after the war, interest would soon turn to powered airships that could be navigated by some means other than the vagaries of shifting winds.
And by the 19 twenties, a small airfield had opened in East Boston to serve the growing number of heavier than air fliers who called Boston home.
But that’s another topic for another podcast.

Charles River Bridges

Jake:
[54:53] The last of our classic stories today is taken from Episode 1 15 which aired last January.
Building the Charles River Bridge required innovation and engineering, business and law.
First, the designers had to figure out how to build a 1500 ft span that could also function is a drawbridge in the business world.
The proprietors of the Charles River Bridge were established as one of Massachusetts first corporations, and on the legal side, the bridge and its proprietors were later the subject of a U.
S Supreme Court case setting limits to private property rights.

Classic Episodes:
[55:32] In the earliest days of the town of Boston. It was a small town on a tiny peninsula only connected to the mainland by a narrow neck of land.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, it’s possible that you may have heard us mention this.
Before militia units from around New England streamed into Cambridge and Roxbury to keep the British regulars trapped in the peninsula town of Boston, Boston transformed itself from a tiny town on a peninsula toe.
A sprawling city, it was a small, densely populated city on a tiny men shaped peninsula, the tiny Chamakh peninsula that comprised Boston before Boston was expanded by filling the salt marshes that surrounded the Shawmut Peninsula.
John Winthrop and his Puritan followers settled on the tiny peninsula they called Boston. Back when Boston was a tiny village on the Shawmut Peninsula on Lee Road, leading off the peninsula of Boston, New England militias rushed to surround Boston and trapped the British regulars within the peninsula town.
When I used to give tours of the Back Bay, I’d often use the night of Paul Revere’s ride to illustrate how isolated Boston was at that time,
Revere himself wrote across the mouth of the Charles River from the north into Charlestown, while the British troops took longboats from the foot of Boston common to the Cambridge shoreline.

[56:41] At the same time, Courier William Dawes road out Boston neck, passing himself off to the British centuries as a drunken farmer who had dallied a little too long at the market.
After he made it out through the gates, he had to ride through the farmlands and marshes of Roxbury in Brookline before he could finally cross at the Great Bridge in Cambridge.
At today’s Harvard Square reveres route out of town mirrored the earliest means for Bostonians to cross.
The Charles established very soon after the town itself was founded at a court of assistance holding it. Boston November 9th 16 30.
It was ordered that who so ever shall first give his name up to Mr Governor that he will undertake to set up a fairy betwixt Boston and Charlestown and shall begin the same at such time is, Mr Governor, shall appoint,
shall have one penny for every person and one penny for every 100 weight of goods he shall so transport.

[57:35] Less than a year later, someone took the governor up on his offer.
June 14th, 16 31. The following entry was made in town Records Edward Converse have undertaken to set up a fairy betwixt trials town in Boston for which he is to have tuppence for every single person and one penny apiece if there be two or more.

[57:55] According to an 18 99 pamphlet about the history of Boston’s bridges and ferries prepared for the Boston Transit Commission.
The proceeds generated by the ferry were in 16 40 earmarked to support the relatively new college in Cambridge.
On the second of November 16 37 The ferry between Boston and Charlestown was referred to the governor and treasurer to be let at £40 per annum, beginning with the first of December and from thence for three years,
on the 28th of November 16 37.
The ferry was so least toe Edward Converse at a meeting of the General Court held on the seventh of October 16 40 the ferry between Boston and Charlestown was granted toe Harvard College.

[58:39] As Boston grew rapidly during the Puritan great migration period, there was quickly more traffic than the very could handle, and it was headed in different directions than straight across the mouth of the river to Charles Town.
As more and more people had business in Watertown or Cambridge, a route had to be laid out, similar to the one that William Dawes would follow over a century later, as William Marchionne wrote in his book, Boston Miscellany.
By 16 62 traffic on the Roxbury Highway had grown to such an extent that a bridge was needed to be known as the Great Bridge, the largest public works project yet undertaken in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Great Bridge proved difficult to build and even more difficult to maintain.
The original span, supported by hollow logs filled with stones, was swept away by a flood in 16 85 in 16 90. It was rebuilt on piles, a difficult technique since only hand power was available to raise the way to the driver.
Tradition tells us that as many as 5000 blows were required to propel some of the piles to affirm bearing because of the heavy costs associated with building and maintaining the Great Bridge.
All of the surrounding towns were required to contribute to its support.
The Great Bridge was the only bridge across the Charles River basin before 17 86 with the exception of a narrow cart bridge of the basins westernmost extremity in Watertown Square.

[1:00:03] This bridge had been built in 16 41 and it followed the path of today’s Galen Street Bridge. Nearly exactly.
The bridge is at Watertown in Cambridge would eventually feature in a revolutionary era story in the lead up to the battles of Lexington and Concord.
To test how the provincials would react if his regulars marched into the countryside, British General Gage ordered Lord Percy to lead a march out of Boston Neck on March 30th, 17 75.
Having first marched up the river to Cambridge, the first Brigade was surprised to see that the locals had pulled up all the planks being frugal Yankees. They didn’t burn the planks or throw them into the river.
They carefully stack them on the Cambridge side so they could be nailed back in place. Once the threat was passed.
It may have been possible to send a few soldiers across on the support beams to put the planks back in place, but doing so would likely have met a fight with the local militia.
So Lord Percy, in the first Brigade, kept marching on to Watertown.
There they were met with an intact bridge, but two cannons pointed at them.
However, the local militia, perhaps believing that discretion was the better part of valor, then didn’t stick around demand the cannon when the regulars arrived.
At that point, the first Brigade turned around in March, back to Boston.
When the regulars marched on. Conquered three weeks later, they would no longer believe marching through Watertown or Cambridge to be viable options.

[1:01:23] Of course, today’s Boston is connected to its neighbors by bridges over the Neponset River as well.
But in the 17th century, nobody considered annexing Dorchester to Boston. Yet, however, that doesn’t mean that the neighboring towns weren’t thinking about infrastructure.
At a meeting of the Massachusetts General Court on April 1st 16 34 a resolution passed stating Mr Israel Student Health Liberty granted him to build a mill aware and a bridge over Neponset River, and it’s to sell the ale wives.
He takes there at five shillings, you can hear more about the bridge Israel Stone built along with his mill, which is the first water powered Gristmill in New England in Episode 59.
Along with the successful bridges in those early days of the province, there were also bridge schemes that fell apart.
That 18 99 pamphlet about the history of the Charles River Bridge prepared for the Boston Transit Commission, relates one of these aborted plans.
From the college records of a meeting on the seventh of April 17 13.
It appears that emotion had been made in the General Court for building a bridge at the ferry between Boston and Charlestown,
and it was voted that the president and treasurer be desired to represent and to insist upon the right, which the college half in and to the profits of the said ferry.

[1:02:41] That vision was still fresh 26 years later, at a Boston town meeting on Friday, May 18th, 17 39.
Ah, petition of Mr John Stanford presented to the Great in general court praying that he might be favored with an order or license from the said court to take subscriptions for the building of a bridge over Charles River,
from the west early part of the town of Boston to the honorable Colonel Phipps farm.

[1:03:07] In that meeting, the resolution passed and a committee of seven was appointed to study the prospect of building a bridge.
Nevertheless, the project did not progress before a town meeting that fall.
Boston, October 11th 17 39 the committee to whom was referred the consideration of the petition of Mr John Stanford are of the opinion that a bridge from the western part of the town of Boston,
to Colonel Phipps Farm will be a public benefit,
and therefore that it will be proper for the town of Boston to make no objection to the prayer of said petition.

[1:03:41] Having endorsed the plan, it was continued twice at 17 40 town meetings.
Then residents voted to appropriate money for it. In May 17 41,
the petition of Mr John Stanford relating to the building of a bridge from Boston to Cambridge over Charles River being read and debated upon an answer there to voted,
that when the building of a bridge from Boston to Cambridge shall be undertaken, the town will carry on the affairs so far as to build that part of the bridge, which may be convenient to be built on the flats from Boston.
Shore toe low water mark provided that in order to enable them to affect such part of the works, the town can obtain from the great in general court,
the loan of a sufficient sum of money upon reasonable terms and also may be entitled to their proportional part of the incomes of set bridge,
Even with the plan approved of money appropriated, the bridge was not built,
perhaps for political reasons and perhaps for technological reasons, the bridge would not be completed for another 45 years.
By that time, Paul Revere’s ride had come and gone.
Boston had grown rapidly throughout the 18th century, and it had outgrown the capacity of the Charlestown ferry.
Finally, on March 9th, 17 85 and act with great in general court, our Legislature authorized another bridge project.
This time, it would be seen to completion.

[1:05:07] We’re going to read a few passages from this act because there are several key points.
First of all, it names. The proprietors of the bridge is one of the earliest corporations in the province,
an act for incorporating certain persons for the purpose of building a bridge over Charles River between Boston and Charlestown and supporting the same during the term of 40 years.

[1:05:29] Whereas erecting a bridge over Charles River in the place where the ferry between Boston and Charlestown is now kept will be of great public utility.
And Thomas Russell, Esquire and others having petition this court for an Active Inc to empower them to build the set bridge.
And many persons under the expectation of such an act, have subscribed to a fund for executing and completing the A four said purpose,
be it therefore enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in general court assembled and by the authority of the same,
that the honorable John Hancock, Thomas Russell, Nathaniel Gorham, James Swan and Evan Parsons Esquire’s so long as they shall continue to be proprietors with Said Fund,
together with all those who are and those who shall become proprietors to the said funder, stock shall be a corporation and body politik under the name of the proprietors of Charles River Bridge.

[1:06:23] Then the active finds in strict terms how the bridges to be constructed, which tells us a lot about what stated they are.
Bridge technology was like in 17 85 the said bridge shall be well built at least 40 ft wide of sound and suitable materials with a convenient draw.
Our passageway at least 30 ft wide and had a proper place with well constructed substantial piers on each side and well, planked on the top and sides with plank proper for such a bridge.
And the same shall be kept in good, safe and possible repair.

[1:06:56] That also tells us that the Charles River in the Back Bay were still an important part of Boston Seaport because of the 30 ft wide drawbridge over the main channel.
The act continues, and the said proprietors shall constantly keep the said bridge accommodated with at least 20 good lamps on each side, which shall be kept well supplied with oil and light it in due season and kept burning till 12 0 clock at night,
and also at the several places where the toll shall be received.
They shall erect and constantly exposed to open view, a sign or bored with the rates of toll of all Toler ble articles fairly and allegedly written their own in larger capital letters.
And the draw shall be lifted for all ships and vessels without Toller pay accept, such as usually pass under Cambridge Bridge and those passing for pleasure.

[1:07:45] So the act prescribes a drawbridge with street lights and tollbooths, and it lays out both the tolls for anyone crossing the bridge and the way the tolls would be used for the benefit of Harvard, replacing the ferry fares that the college would no longer be collecting.

[1:08:00] That after the said toll shall commence, the said proprietors, or corporation shall annually pay to Harvard College or University the sum of £200 during the said term of 40 years.
And at the end of the said term, the said, bread shall revert to and be the property of the Commonwealth, saving to the said college or university a reasonable and annual compensation for the income of the ferry, which they might have received had not the bridge been erected.

[1:08:27] For Harvard’s benefit.
The following tolls would be charged each foot passenger or one person passing two thirds of a penny.
One person in horse, two pins, two thirds of a penny, single horse cart or sled or slay four pence wheelbarrows, hand carts and other vehicles capable of carrying like wait one penny, one third of a penny,
single horse and chaise chair or sulky eight pence.
Coaches. Chariots, fate ons and carrick als one shilling each.
All other wheel carriages air sleds drawn by more than one beast. Sixpence sleighs drawn by more than one beast.
Also sixpence, neat cattle and horses passing the said bridge exclusive of those road or in carriages or teams one penny, one third of a penny,
swine and sheep, four pence for each dozen and at the same rate for a greater or lesser number.

[1:09:23] And in all cases, the same toll shall be paid for all carriages and vehicles passing the set bridge, whether the same be loaded or not loaded and to each team, one man and no more shall be allowed as a driver to pass free from payment of toll.
And in all cases, double tolls will be paid on the Lord’s Day and at all times in the toll gatherer shall not attend his duty.
The gate or gates shall be left open with the enabling legislation in place.
Work began on the bridge almost immediately.
The 18 13 historical sketch of Charlestown by Josiah Bartlet describes how the Charles River Bridge was built while the construction was still fairly fresh in recent memory.

[1:10:06] This bridge, which was 13 months in building and considered as the greatest enterprise which had been undertaken in the country, is 1503 ft long.
It has 75 piers, each composed of seven posts of oak timber driven into the bed of the river and united by cat pieces and Gertz the piers air connected with string pieces, which are covered with four inch plank.
The bridge is 43 ft wide, with a railed way on each side. For foot passengers.
It has a draw 30 ft wide and is accommodated with 40 lamps.
The depth of the water in the channel on high tides is about 40 ft.

[1:10:46] If that’s accurate, then the builders stayed very true to the specifications set down in the act authorizing its construction.
The grand opening of the bridge was timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The 18 99 Transit Commission pamphlet quotes a subsequent edition of the Massachusetts Sentinel to describe what that opening day was like.
Saturday last was observed as a day of rejoicing occasioned by the proprietors opening the new bridge over Charles River.
This comm odious and handsome structure is 1470 ft in length and 42 ft wide within the railing.
This bridge has been completed in 13 months, and Wilson exhibits the greatest effect of private enterprise within the United States is a most pleasing proof of house. Certainly, objects of magnitude may be attained by spirited exertions.
The design of opening the bridge on the 17th of June. It was natural to suppose, would combine the most agreeable sensations, and it’s certain that but few were disappointed.

[1:11:50] A huge parade was planned marching from the old Statehouse, which of course was then just known as the statehouse.
Down to the river across the bridge and up to Bunker Hill with great pomp and circumstance.
As the sentinel continued, the company invited moved in procession from the statehouse precisely at one oclock.
13 cannon were discharged from Cops Hill. While they’re passing the bridge, it’s computed that at least 6000 people, besides horses and carriages or upon it at the same moment.

[1:12:21] No one that remembered the confusion and horror with which the Battle of Bunker Hill was attended.
The town of Charlestown in flames and all assistance precluded by the astonishing fire of artillery, the movements of the hostile armies with their dreadful apparatus, the fatal crackling of the musket tree, the wounded and dying carried off by their friends.
And the apprehension Cedillo Every brow less the final period of American liberty had approached could be an uninterested spectator of the joyous scenes, which were now everywhere presented the streets.
The windows and eminences in the neighborhood of the bridge swarmed with Spectators to the amount of at least 20,000, and the ladies were particularly attractive.
An elegant dinner for 800 persons was provided at the expense of the proprietors,
Joy Crown, the day and in the evening, the lamps were laid it on the bridge and produced not only a happy effect on the I,
but we’re very useful in directing the steps of some of the vote Aries of the rosy deity who returned to town between 10 and 11 with a band of music before them, inspired by the collective pressure of the scene,
but above all by the generous drafts they had taken to commemorate this auspicious occasion.

[1:13:30] That very day, Lucy Krantz wrote a letter to her aunt. Abigail Adams, who was living in London during John’s tenure, is America’s first ambassador to Great Britain.
Having attended the grand opening of the Bridge, Lucy seems to have been quite smitten.
You, my aunts, have given me an account of a ball. I will endeavour to give you a description of the parade at the opening of Charlestown Bridge.
If I had your descriptive pin, I might give pleasure. I am sure you would have felt as much interested in it as you do it. A birth night ball.
It was on the 17th of June, the anniversary of the day, which beheld Charlestown in flames.
Sister and I went to town to see the proprietors of the bridge invited each branch of the Legislature, the governors of the college, the clergy, the lawyers and a large number of gentlemen besides toe in entertainment on Bunker Hill,
on the very spot where the memorable battle was fought and where the military glory of our country began,
we went to Charles Town in the morning that we might have a full view of the procession.
It went from the Statehouse in Boston.
The appearance most pleasing to me was that of the artifice er’s who have been employed in the bridge.
They walked directly after the artillery, each of them carrying one of the instruments they had used informing that stupendous work.
What a striking contrast to that day 11 years when every mechanic threw down the harmless instruments of industry and caught hold of the sword and rushed impetuous to the fight.

[1:14:58] After the artifice, Er’s followed the proprietors than the governor, Lieutenant governor, Council Senate representatives, etcetera, etcetera.
The near 1000 gentlemen’s who dined upon the hill when the procession came down to the draw, which was then first past the cannon, were fired in. The bells rang after dinner.
13 toasts were drunk as usual, and a number of patriotic songs were saying, accompanied by a band of music, the one composed upon the occasion, I will. In close to you.
I never saw such a vast crowd of people in my life. They poured in from every part of the country.
The bridge looks beautiful in the evening. There are 40 lamps on it.
Cousin Charles and my brother were with us, Mr. J. Q is too much of the philosopher and student to be. It’s such a frolic.
It could not draw a steadiness aside.
We sometimes fear he will injure his health by his very great attention to a studies.
He is determined to be great in every particular Her cousin Jake you a future president.
John Quincy Adams was exactly the same ages Lucy Cran Church,
however, when he was just a few days short of his eighth birthday, his mother had taken him to the top of Penh’s hill in Braintree on June 17th, 17 75 where he watched the British artillery bombard American positions on Bunker Hill.

[1:16:14] In a letter 71 years later, he said, I saw with my own eyes those fires and heard Britannia’s thunders in the Battle of Bunkers Hill and witnessed the tears of my mother and mangled them with my own.
At the fall of Joseph Warren, a dear friend of my father and a beloved physician to me.

[1:16:33] That experience would lead him to a lifelong sensitivity about Bunker Hill and later in life, you would make a point of skipping the annual commemorations of the battle when he wrote to his mother, Abigail, with his own account of The Bridge is opening.
He was not as enthusiastic as Lucy Cratchit Ben.
This day, the bridge between Boston and Charlestown was completed.
An entertainment was given upon the occasion by the proprietors to 600 people on Bunkers Hill.

[1:16:59] It is the anniversary of the famous battle foot. There it is better to be sure that oxen, sheep, calves and fouls be butchered than men, and it is better that wine should be spilled in blood. But I do not think this was a proper place for revelling and feasting.
The idea of being seated upon the bones of a friend, I should think, would have disgusted. Many such feelings may be called prejudices, but they are implanted by nature and cannot, I think, be blamed.
You will see in the papers how the poets have been exerting their talents. Upon the occasion, I have seen five different sets of versus not one of which has escaped the simile of the Phoenix rising from its own ashes, applied to Charlestown.

[1:17:39] He repeated most of those sentiments in his diary, and he added a note explaining what was really going on when his cousin believed him to be too much the philosopher to attend the party.
All the tutors were gone so that we had no prayers in the afternoon and there were not more than 30 persons in the Commons.
For my part, I did nothing all day and consequence of it.

[1:18:02] I went looking, but I couldn’t find one of the Phoenix Emily’s from June 17th that John Quincy referenced whoever this July 4th oration delivered in Charlestown just a few weeks later seems to follow the same form.
The sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war are no longer heard in our land.
We may now with the highest satisfaction, anticipate the future glories of these United States and with pleasure, behold are demolished towns like the Phoenix from our ashes rising to our view with improved beauties.
While the historian records the destruction of Charlestown and the ever memorable battle on Bunker Heights, he will not be unmindful to relate that from the ruins of the old.
A new town is now rising on a Maurin large and regular plan.
Nor will he forget to notice with equal admiration that enterprise and ingenuity of our inhabitants and the rapid construction of the extensive and noble bridge across Charles River, which joins her to this metropolis,
may the late sufferings of our friends and neighbors be more than compensated by their future advantages made the origin of their distress proved the instrument of their growth and prosperity.

[1:19:12] For about seven years, the Charles River Bridge enjoyed a near monopoly on traffic in and out of Boston.
You could ride up River to the Great Bridge in Harvard Square, or you could take a ferry to Chelsea, but you would probably rather pay a nominal fee and ride or walk right across the river to Charlestown.
All that began to change in 17 92 when another bridge was proposed for Boston.
Eventually known as the West Boston Bridge, this bridge would be much longer than the original Charles River Bridge.
The January 7th edition of the Colombian Sentinel carried an advertisement for the new venture,
as all citizens of the United States have an equal right to oppose a measure that may be beneficial to the public or advantageous to themselves and as no body of men have an exclusive right to take to themselves such a privilege.
A number of gentlemen have proposed to open a new subscription for the purpose of building a bridge from West Boston to Cambridge at such place as the General court may be pleased to direct a subscription for 200 shares in the proposed bridge.
Will this day be opened it Samuel Cooper’s office north side of the State House that proprietors of the West Boston Bridge were also incorporated by the state and granted a monopoly.
Because the business of the Charles River Bridge would obviously be impacted by a new bridge, the Legislature extended their original 40 year charter by an additional 30 years.
Harvard College would collect a sheriff tolls from both bridges.

[1:20:40] An article in the Cambridge Tribune from March 11th 18 93 reflected on the 100th anniversary of the act. Establishing the Bridge.
The proprietors of West Boston Bridge were incorporated by the Legislature of 17 92 and the act was approved by John Hancock than the governor on March 9th of that year.
By this act, the proprietors were empowered to build a bridge in Causeway from the westerly part of Boston, near the so called pest house to Pelham Is Island in Cambridge.
We’re also required to make and maintain a good road from Pellens Island of four said to the Cambridge Road.
The bridge, to be not less than 40 ft wide toe have a foot way on each side, railings on the outside of the bridge and also railings between the foot ways and the carriageway.
And to be elated with lamps. The same distance apart has provided for Charles River Bridge to be kept burning till midnight.

[1:21:32] Having just retired after serving in the second U. S. Congress Declaration of Independence Signer and future U.
S. Vice president in Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry was the first person across the bridge, an issue of the Columbia Sentinel, dated November 27th, 17 93 celebrated the grand opening.
The bridge at West Boston was open for passengers on Saturday last, the elegance of the workmanship and the magnitude of the undertaking, or perhaps unequalled in the history of enterprises.
We hope the proprietors will not suffer pecuniary loss from their public spirit.
They have a claim of the liberality and patronage of the government, and to these claims, government will not be inattentive.

[1:22:14] Another witness to the opening described it as a magnificent structure.
It was erected at the expense of a company incorporated for that purpose and cost $76,700.
The causeway on the Cambridge side was begun July 15th, 17 92 the woodwork. April 8th 17 93.
The bridge was opened for passengers November 23rd, 17 93 7 months and a half From the time of laying the first peer, it is very handsomely constructed and related by its two rows of lamps.
Extending a mile and a quarter presents a vista, which has a fine effect.
It stands on 100 80 piers and his 3483 ft long.
The Causeway is 3344 ft, and the distance from the end of the causeway to the first church in Cambridge is 7810 ft.
It’s 40 ft wide, and it’s railed on each side for foot passengers, the sides of the causeway or stoned Capstone and railed in on each side. There is a canal about 30 ft wide.

[1:23:18] In 18 28 construction began on Get another new bridge Across the Charles.
The war in bridge was almost right next to the original Charles River Bridge.
On, the owners announced that they would only collect tolls for six years in order to cover their costs and then open the bridge to the public for free.
As you might imagine, this proposal was more popular with the public than it was with the proprietors of the Charles River or West Boston Bridges.
When the new bridge opened, the revenue of the Charles River Bridge fell by over 60% and the proprietors of the Charles River Bridge sued the owners of the war in bridge in a case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
When the war in group won their case before the Mass SJC, the proprietors of the Charles River Bridge appealed the decision to the U.
S. Supreme Court in a case that Lawrence Wkennedy described as a landmark decision and constitutional law that established the principle that charter rights granted by the state we’re not absolute exclusive.
A new and more flexible outlook on property rights prevailed in the aftermath of this ruling in inventing the Charles River.
Carl Haglund gives an overview of the case, the first arguments before the Supreme Court represented in March 18 31.
But less than a week later, the court, failing to reach a decision, ordered the case continued.

[1:24:38] A motion for re argument was accepted in 18 33 but the arguments were not presented.
One Justice died and another resigned the following year.
Andrew Jackson, nominated to new justices in January 18 35 and the same month Webster recommended that the Charles River Bridge plaintiffs seek a settlement through the state Legislature.
In the spring of 18 35 Chief Justice Marshall died and a backlog of 60 cases piled up before Roger B. Taney was confirmed as the new chief justice.
The Supreme Court finally heard arguments in the bridge case. In January 18 37.
Simon Greenleaf was granted a leave of absence from Harvard Law School to argue the defendant’s case.
Ah, milestone in the history of academic freedom since Harvard’s financial interests were with the plaintiff’s side.
Daniel Webster argued for the proprietors that the new charter indirectly destroyed the old justice story, wrote Charles Sumner a few days later that the arguments on both sides were quote a glorious exhibition for Old Massachusetts.

[1:25:40] Less than three weeks later, the court decided in favor of the war in Bridge.
Story said in a letter to his wife that a case of grocer injustice or more oppressive legislation never existed.
I feel humiliated, as I think everyone here is. By the act, which has now been confirmed.
The Charles River Bridge proprietors were still obligated to maintain the bridge to tend the draw and to pay Harvard $666 each year.
They petitioned the Legislature for release from those obligations and for compensation for the loss of their property.
The Legislature not only refused to offer compensation, but declined to even study the value of their franchise.
The Bridge corporation responded by raising the draw and closing the bridge.
Four years later, in 18 41 the Legislature approved a bill offering $25,000 in settlement to the proprietor’s.
The act also reinstated the tolls for no more than two years to repair the bridge and to compensate the stockholders.
In 18 47 the Legislature granted Harvard $3333.30 in compensation for the loss of the colleges annuity during years when the state had ownership of the bridge.
The college is ancient, very privilege greater than 16 40 was over.

[1:26:59] In the late 18 thirties and early 18 forties, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was courting his great love, Fanny Appleton.
At the time, he lived in George Washington’s former Cambridge headquarters on Brattle Street in your Harvard Square.
While Fannie live with their parents in Beacon Hill to court her, Henry would walk across the West Boston Bridge.
After seven years of walking across that bridge, Vani sent Henry a letter on May 10th, 18 43 agreeing to marry him.

[1:27:27] Even on that joyful day, he skipped the carriage and walked from his house across the bridge to hers, reflecting on their courtship.
Later, he wrote a poem in 18 45 called the Bridge, which went in part and like those waters rushing among the wooden piers, a flood of thoughts came army that filled my eyes with tears.
How often? Oh, how often in the days that had gone by, I had stood on that bridge at midnight and gazed on that wave in sky.
How often? Oh, how often I had wished that ebbing tide would bear me away on its bosom or the ocean wild and wide, for my heart was hot and restless, and my life was full of care, and the burden laid upon me seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me. It’s buried in the sea and only the sorrow of others, those that shadow over me.
Yet whenever I cross the river on its bridge with wooden piers, like the odor of brine from the ocean comes the thought of other years.
And I think how many thousands of care encumbered men, each bearing his burden of sorrow, have crossed the bridge since then.

[1:28:38] In a spree of construction from 1900 to 1907 the Old West Bustin Bridge was replaced by a new span.
The new bridge was built out of granite, with pillars resembling salt and pepper shakers adorned with carvings of Vikings.
In 1927 that bridge was renamed in honor of the poet who had walked across its predecessor so many times today.
You know it is the Longfellow Bridge, carrying cars, cyclists, pedestrians and the red line across the Charles River.

Wrap-Up

Jake:
[1:29:10] To learn more about thes transportation firsts, check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 202.

[1:29:19] I’ll include the original notes from all three episodes with lots of historic pictures, as well as links to the primary sources we used in researching each story.
And, of course, I have links to information about our upcoming event. And Jane Hampton cooks podcast interview about Remember the Ladies, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast of hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you can go toe hub history dot com and click on the Contact US link while you’re on this site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing a summary for view.
If you do drop us a line and we’ll send you a Hub history sticker is a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[1:30:11] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.