CultureNOW - Meigs Elevated Railway: Peter Vanderwarker

Meigs Elevated Railway

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
If it is ever built, Scheme Z - ,the great swirl of ramps and bridges that is to carry the new Central Artery across the Charles River - will be, according to federal highway officials, the world's largest traffic interchange.

Even if Scheme Z is cut back, as is now likely, it will still be a tangle of concrete spaghetti more than 100 feet high. At its western end the spaghetti will be ladled out
onto a triangle of land framed by Somerville, Cambridge, and Charlestown. And herein lies a story. Once upon a time, that same chunk of land was the site of a very different kind of experiment in transportation.

The year is 1886 in the old photo, and we're looking at the Meigs Elevated Railway. Josiah Vincent Meigs was a Tennessee inventor. He came to Lowell in 1866 to
work for a legendary pol named Gen. Ben Butler (in those days, to "Butlerize" was to make off with everything in sight). With Butler's patronage, Meigs spent virtually the rest of his life perfecting one of the world's first monorails. In 1886 he built this 227-foot
demonstration line in Cambridge, crossing Bridge Street (today's McGrath Highway) near Fourth (today's Sciarappa) at the Somerville line.

The Meigs Railway was amazingly sophisticated. The track consisted of two rails, one above the other, supported by a single line of posts. Wheels were angled at 45 egrees, gripping the lower track like a clenched fist. Instead of a rigid cowcatcher, the locomotive was protected by an air-spring buffer. Cars were rounded for streamlining, and their seats revolved and folded up. Speed was an impressive 20 miles per hour. The state Board of Railroad Commissioners examined the Meigs system and found it practical and safe.

But competition was vicious. Arson and vandalism hampered Meigs, as did his insistence on old-fashioned steam power instead of electricity. Nothing besides the
Cambridge test line was ever built. The Meigs monorail made its last run in 1894. Conventional elevated trains, modeled on those of Manhattan and far more massive
than Meigs', soon darkened Boston's streets. The new photo shows the site today, with a view toward Boston and Charlestown. The McGrath Highway is just out of sight on the right. Only a few semiderelict sidings occupy what is essentially a wasteland. By the
end of this decade, the view will have changed radically. A dramatic Babel of steel and concrete, perhaps resembling a great sports stadium, will rise like a gray mountain in the middle distance at the left of the photo. The introverted automobile will have won its long battle for supremacy over the sociable train.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Changing Tracks", Boston Globe, 23 February 1992

map not available at this time.

Location

Monsignor Obrien Hwy & Sciarappa St
Cambridge, MA 02141
United States

Nearby Items

Gore Field		0.4 miles
Centanni Way Garden Sculpture		0.6 miles
Bulfinch Square		0.6 miles
Crossing Non-Signalized Locations		0.6 miles
East Cambridge - 1852		0.7 miles
Never Green Tree		0.7 miles
Beach Fragments		0.7 miles