Roxbury Crossing (MBTA station)

ROXBURY CROSSING

Roxbury Crossing main entrance in May 2012
Location 1400 Tremont Street
Roxbury, Massachusetts
Coordinates 42°19′53″N 71°05′44″W / 42.3313°N 71.0956°W / 42.3313; -71.0956Coordinates: 42°19′53″N 71°05′44″W / 42.3313°N 71.0956°W / 42.3313; -71.0956
Owned by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Line(s)
  Orange Line
Platforms 1 island platform
Tracks 2
Connections MBTA Bus: 15, 22, 23, 29, 44, 45, 66, MIS
Construction
Bicycle facilities 16 spaces
Disabled access Yes
History
Opened 1834 (B&P)[1]
4 May 1987 (Orange Line)[2]
Closed September 29, 1940 (NYNH&H)
Rebuilt June 1, 1897
Traffic
Passengers (2013) 4,727 (weekday average boardings)[3]
Services
Preceding station   MBTA   Following station
toward Forest Hills
Orange Line
toward Oak Grove

Roxbury Crossing is a rapid transit station on the MBTA Orange Line, located on Tremont Street in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. The current station opened in 1987 as part of the renovation and relocation of the southern Orange Line. Like all stations on the Orange Line, Roxbury Crossing is wheelchair accessible.

History

On June 21, 1831, the Boston and Providence Railroad was incorporated, and was chartered the next day to build a rail line between its two namesake cities; construction began in late 1832, and the B&P opened from Park Square to Canton in 1834, with intermediate stations at Readville and Roxbury Crossing (the remaining section of the B&P main line, from Canton to Providence, opened the following year with the completion of the Canton Viaduct).[1][4]

Roxbury Crossing station on a 1909 postcard

Originally, the station (along with the entire B&P main line north of Readville) was at ground level. Starting in 1891, the Old Colony Railroad (which had acquired the B&P in 1888, and was itself acquired in 1893 by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad) raised the section of its main line through Roxbury and Jamaica Plain (extending from Massachusetts Avenue to the current location of Forest Hills station) onto a 4-track stone embankment to eliminate dangerous grade crossings. The project involved the building of five new stations in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain; the existing stations at Roxbury Crossing, Jamaica Plain, and Forest Hills were replaced with new elevated stations, while two additional commuter stations were built at Heath Street and Boylston Street. The new Roxbury Crossing station opened on June 1, 1897, along with the other four new stations.[4][5]

On November 22, 1909, the Washington Street Elevated was extended south along Washington Street from its original southern terminus at Dudley, with new stations at Egleston and Forest Hills; an infill station at Green Street opened on 22 September 1912.[2] Although the five NYNH&H stations in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain continued to operate for over three decades following the southward extension of the Washington Street Elevated, they were ultimately unable to compete with the Elevated, and Roxbury Crossing, along with the other four stations, was closed on September 29, 1940 due to a lack of passengers.[4][5]

A northbound train at Roxbury Crossing in 2016

In the 1960s, plans took hold to extend I-95 into downtown Boston along the NYNH&H's right-of-way and to replace the Washington Street Elevated (from 1967 known as the Orange Line) with a rapid transit line running in the new highway's median; these plans led to the demolition of hundreds of homes (including the virtual obliteration of the Roxbury Crossing neighbourhood) and the clearing of a long strip of land (the Southwest Corridor) extending through Roxbury and Jamaica Plain all the way up to Green Street, before the project was halted by highway revolts in 1969 and the February 11, 1970 announcement by Governor Francis W. Sargent of a moratorium on new highway construction within the Route 128 corridor, and eventually cancelled by Governor Sargent in 1972.

The cleared strip of land was eventually developed into the Southwest Corridor Park, and the Orange Line was moved to a new alignment along the Corridor in 1987 despite the cancellation of the project originally calling for its relocation. This included a new rapid transit station at Roxbury Crossing, on the site of the former NYNH&H station; the Washington Street Elevated was permanently closed on April 30, 1987, and Roxbury Crossing station, along with the eight other new stations on the southern Orange Line, opened four days later.[4][2] Several bus routes which formerly ended at Dudley Street Terminal were extended to the new Ruggles station, with a connection to Roxbury Crossing station at the intersection of Tremont Street and Columbus Avenue.

Bus connections

Shelter for Harvard-bound route 66 buses on the north side of Tremont Street

Station layout

G Street Level Exit/Entrance
M Mezzanine To entrances/exits
L2
Platforms		 Southbound ← Orange Line toward Forest Hills (Jackson Square)
Island platform, doors will open on the left
Northbound → Orange Line toward Oak Grove (Ruggles) →

References

  1. 1 2 Local Attachments : The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920 (Creating the North American Landscape), by Alexander von Hoffman, The Johns Hopkins University Press (1996), ISBN 0-8018-5393-1
  2. 1 2 3 Belcher, Jonathan (26 December 2015). "Changes to Transit Service in the MBTA district" (PDF). NETransit. Retrieved 20 February 2016.
  3. ↑ "Ridership and Service Statistics" (PDF) (14 ed.). Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. 2014. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Heath, Richard (25 January 2013). "A HISTORY OF FOREST HILLS" (PDF). Jamaica Plain Historical Society. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  5. 1 2 Rocheleau, Matt (26 November 2012). "Raising the railroad in Forest Hills". Boston Globe. Retrieved 12 February 2016.
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