Map by Sam Christy, from the My Cambridgeport: Personal Maps of the Neighborhood project.
The Boston Elevated Railway, the horse-drawn trolley precursor to the MBTA, had a route that went from Massachusetts Avenue straight down Brookline Street to Granite Street, where the horses would enter a turnaround loop and head right back up Brookline Street, transporting residents into the hub of Central Square.
Pearl Street resident Bill Davis remembers his father, Richard Harding Davis, telling him when the horse-drawn trolleys stopped using the turnaround loop sometime in the early part of the twentieth century in favor of a route that went down Pearl Street, cut over to Putnam Avenue, and back to Central Square via Brookline Street. Bill Davis also remembers, a few years ago, when construction workers discovered the beautiful and intricate brick trolley track bed several feet below Brookline Street.
-Compiled by Bill Davis and Alyssa Pacy for “If This House Could Talk…” 2011
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