The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-02-26
CAMBRIDGE SUBWAY IS NOW COMPLETE Connects College With Hub
 of Boston SHORTENS THE RIDE First Horse Car Route-In Sixty Years Changed From
 Buss to Subway
 Train

Cambridge, Mass, February 25.-(Spe- cial )-The Cambridge subway is now complete, and the annexation of Harvard
 university to the city of Boston via
 white tiled way of wonders will be an accomplished fact as soon as the tracks
 have been laid, the subway stations have
 been properly furnished and the Boston end of the work has been finished. The
 big Cantabrigian bore Is practically all in,
 so to speak.
 The thousands of Harvard graduates,
 in all parts of the country, returning to
 Cambridge at Commencement or other
 times the past year or two have looked
 with wonderment at the wooden flooring
 across Harvard Square, the derricks,
 dump cars and dirt grimed workmen
 delving among the foundations of Ameri-
 cas oldest university. Some of them
 learned with surprise that the excava-
 tions at one point unearthed the founda-
 tion piles of the original Harvard college
 building, the exact location of which had
 been forgotten.
 Now the digging is over Just before
 the first of February Maj.-Gen. William
 A Bancroft, Harvard '7s, president of the
 Boston Elevated Railway company, pre-
 sented a silk hat to Harry P. Nawn, in
 charge of the construction company, in
 consequence of a bet as to the date of
 ending the job. What little the public
 sees looks good. An entrance, with
 handsome colonial brick work that cen
 forms closely to the style of the older and better buildings in the Harvard yard has been built for the connection of the subway trains with trolley services to the northward. There is talk of utilizing tho
 space over the other trolley entrance, to the western suburbs, by erecting stu dents apartments above it.
 Within few months. at all events the Harvard undergraduates, the visiting graduates, and one and all of the thou sands of other Americans who from time to time take in the historic sights of Old Cambridge, will find themselves at har- ward Square only eight minutes away from the heart or the Hub-whereas the
 present running time of 25 minutes by
 trolley is subject to many possibilities ol Interruption The evolution from lumber ing buss to swiftly moving subway train
 will have been accomplished in less than 60 years.
 Harvard Square, as every one at all familiar with the affairs of the country's
 most venerable educational institution
 knows has been remarkable street car transportation focus ever since street railroading began. From here on March | 26, 1856, the horse cars began to jog into | Boston over a line which was not, iu- l deed, the first to be started in the United | ,apin lot,
 but which is said to be the oldest that
 has been continuously and successfully operated There is an indication, further more, of the rapidity with which urban transportation has become one of the greatest of modern industries in the fact that the contractor who laid the little eight foot rails of this poineer street railway is still alive and an interested spectator of the progress of the work on the Cambridge Subway and other large projects which are making Boston Amer ica g. model rapid transit city. He recalls that the old road between the university and BoWdoin Square, Boston, was bal lasted with stones from walls of adjoin- ing farm territory in what is now the thickly settled district of Brighton, anl that these lay in the roadbed until 1885, when they were removed with more or less difficulty by the present president of the company.
 The course of street rairoading in and out of Harvard Square in the earlier years was far from being smooth, any way There were various natural ob- stacles. The first rails were laid too closely, with the result that they curlcd m during the summers heat The mo- l tive power furnished by the horses was uncertain; sometimes it was cut off alto
 gether as during the famous epizootic malady of the early seventies when practically all the horses died.