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Remember newsstands?
By adamg on Mon, 06/01/2015 - 11:25am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this photo. See it larger.
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Comments
Park Street Station?
Park Street Station?
I believe you're correct!
Along with that awful food stand that used to be there.
"Qwik Lunch"
"Along with that awful food stand that used to be there."
It was where that concession that sells cheap tourist junk is now on the side that goes to Lechmere. when I was a kid going to Boston Latin in the early 70s I loved the pizza at that place. It was 25 cents a slice. Thinking about it now, it was probably terrible. It sat there all day under those warming light bulbs.
One problem:
looks like there's lots of track behind the stand, so this would seem to be an inside platform, rather than outside.
At first I thought the fence might be between the two directions. But there's no place at Park Street that could be true, since the fence there does not have a platform. Perhaps the newsstand is just outside of fare control?
A clue is that the track just beyond the fence appears to be signed as track 2. This would imply it's a four-track station.
I have a plausible answer to my own question.
Now that we have an authoritative answer below, I took a more detailed look at the somewhat widely distributed Park Street station blueprint from the "Boston Transit Commission 4th Annual Report" of 1898. The plates from this report are available at Ward Maps:
http://www.wardmaps.com/viewasset.php?aid=17326
Zooming it a bit, one can see that the northbound platform was once divided into separate fare control areas by a fence down the middle of the platform.
One also observes that there is no provision for the inner northbound track to continue on to Scully Square, so the inner half of the platform must have been used exclusively for unboarding from cars short-turning at Park Street. There appears to be turnstiles in the fencing where patrons from the inner track could transfer to cars continuing north on the outer track.
Park Street was expanded considerably some time after this 1898 blueprint was published. Compare to this map from 1915, which much more closely resembles the Park Street we know today: http://www.wardmaps.com/viewasset.php?aid=17137
excellent
Excellent post. I knew at some point Park Street was changed from the original 1897 station due to some old pictures I've seen somewhere of what it looked like when it opened.
Park Street was remodeled directly after "Park Street Under" (aka the Red Line platform) was when the Red Line opened in 1912. If you notice in the 1898 plate, there's no stairs to Park Street under, but they appear in the 1915 plate they appear. I'm sure these plates were done to show post-construction layout.
Wikipedia actually has a nice entry on Park Street Station that talks all about this.
They even have a different view of the newstand from above from 1901!
MOST excellet reply!
Someone must have done a lot of additions to that Wikipedia page since the last time I looked at it.
The photo is particularly cool because it shows the brief period when the outer platforms were raised so they could run elevated cars through the subway.
However, I believe that newsstand is not the same one featured in today's photo. I'm guessing it's a similar stand on the southbound platform, without a fence separating the two areas, and the one from today's photo is probably on the north bound platform, facing west, with the fence separating the two fare control areas.
Yeah
Thanks.
Yes It is from the Southbound side. And the one from today is the Northbound side. It wouldn't surprise me that there were news stands on both sides back then.
And yes I was surprised at Wiki too.
double that
Based on the sign for Tremont Street - Alt 2 is Boylston.
Given all the art deco fonts on the "Century" promos - I'd say circa November 1935.
Same title, same subject
but a different photo of a different location: http://www.universalhub.com/2014/remember-newsstands
A unified answer
Park Street Station, November 1902.
Magazine covers
Suggest 1902 for sure.
I Did Not Recognize That Column Cross-Bracing ...
... but that's because it was changed when the station was modified:
The plan included removing sixteen columns that were too close to the edges of platforms.
Do you have an idea of where in the station
that modification is, and when it took place?
I Believe Track 4 (To Lechemere) Is In The Foreground ...
Note in the picture/video below, the girder detail in the top left, matches the top right in the picture under construction. Directly behind the plywood is where a new
toiletelevator was installed with this project, which was completed in 2004. Behind the plywood and towards the left would lead to the Winter Street passageway.Thanks. Saying that's correct...
and going by some info from the Wikipedia page, then the posts that were removed in 2004 were posts that were added when the new northbound side platform (east of the tracks) was added 1936. Perhaps they were not originally on the 1936 platform itself, but were part of the wall structure that once separated the track from rest rooms and other facilities as one went north? (See this diagram, the area next to Winter Street). When they opened up the walkway to Downtown Crossing in 1979 the wall would have been removed, potentially leaving a bunch of support posts hard against the tracks.
Courtesy of the rockin' folks
Courtesy of the rockin' folks at nycsubway.org, a photo from 1977 from almost the same angle as the video you posted, with the original subway wall still in place.
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?115125
And here I'm going to try an image embed for the first time:
Such A Fabulous Picture! - Here, I'll Help You Out
The trick is to right-click on an image and "Copy image address". Then, paste that between [img] and [/img] tags.
Here's the complete code for this picture:
[img]http://nycsubway.org.s3.amazonaws.com/images/i115000/img_115125.jpg[/img]
How do you folks find all of
How do you folks find all of that info??
The Answer!
Thanks for playing folks! This is indeed a newsstand at Park Street Station on November 5, 1902.
MBTA Geeks
I wish there was an MBTA museum, I love this stuff!