Dewey Square is a square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, USA. It lies at the intersection of
Atlantic AvenueAtlantic Avenue is a street in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, USA, partly serving as a frontage road for the underground Central Artery and partly running along the Boston Harbor...
,
Summer StreetSummer Street in Boston, Massachusetts extends from Downtown Crossing in the Financial District, over Fort Point Channel, and into South Boston...
,
Federal StreetFederal Street is a street in the Financial District of Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to 1788, it was known as Long Lane. The street was re-named after state leaders met there in 1788 to determine Massachusetts' ratification of the United States Constitution...
, Purchase Street and Surface Artery, with the
Central ArteryThe John F. Fitzgerald Expressway, known locally as the Central Artery, is a section of freeway in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, designated as Interstate 93, U.S. Route 1 and Route 3. It was initially constructed in the 1950s as a partly elevated and partly tunneled divided highway...
(I-93) passing underneath in the
Dewey Square TunnelThe Dewey Square Tunnel in Boston, Massachusetts, is part of Interstate 93 , running under the heart of the city's financial district, including Dewey Square...
and Big Dig.
South StationSouth Station, New England's second-largest transportation center , located at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Summer Street in Dewey Square, Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest train station and intercity bus terminal in Greater Boston, a prominent train station in the northeastern...
is on the southeast corner of the square, with
AmtrakThe National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union...
and
MBTA Commuter RailThe MBTA Commuter Rail serves as the regional rail arm of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, in the United States. It is operated under contract by the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company a joint partnership of Veolia Transportation, Bombardier Transportation and Alternate...
services, as well as
Red LineThe Red Line is a rapid transit line operated by the MBTA running roughly north-south through Boston, Massachusetts into neighboring communities. The line begins west of Boston, in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Alewife station, near the intersection of Alewife Brook Parkway and Route 2...
subwayA rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on...
trains and
Silver LineThe Silver Line is the only bus rapid transit line currently operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority . It operates in two sections; the first runs from Dudley Square in Roxbury to downtown Boston, Massachusetts and South Station, mostly via Washington Street, with buses...
bus rapid transitBus rapid transit is a term applied to a variety of public transportation systems using buses to provide faster, more efficient service than an ordinary bus line. Often this is achieved by making improvements to existing infrastructure, vehicles and scheduling...
underneath.
It is named for the only
Admiral of the NavyAdmiral of the navy is a senior-most rank of a naval service.Some navies use the term admiral of the navy as a title bestowed upon a fleet admiral or other senior naval official...
in U.S. history,
George DeweyGeorge Dewey was an admiral of the United States Navy. He is best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War...
.
History
After the naming of Dewey Square in 1898, Summer Street was extended east as a local road, and in 1899 the Summer Street Bridge was built across
Fort Point ChannelFort Point Channel is a maritime channel separating South Boston from downtown Boston, Massachusetts, feeding into Boston Harbor. The south part of it has been gradually filled in for use by the South Bay rail yard and several highways...
. Also in 1899, Federal Street was closed south of Dewey Square to make way for the new South Station, and Atlantic Avenue was extended along the west side of the new terminal along with a realignment of the
Union Freight RailroadThe Union Freight Railroad was a freight-only railroad connecting the railroads coming into the north and south sides of downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Almost its entire length was along Atlantic Avenue and Commercial Street...
. The
Atlantic Avenue ElevatedThe Atlantic Avenue Elevated was an elevated railway around the east side of downtown Boston, Massachusetts, providing a second route for the Boston Elevated Railway's Main Line around the Washington Street Tunnel...
came in 1901 with a station (South Station) one block south of Dewey Square. It was closed in 1938 and torn down in the early 1940s; the Union Freight Railroad lasted until 1970.
The next major change came in the 1950s when the Central Artery was built. The whole area on the north and south sides of the square was cleared, and the Artery was built underground via the Dewey Square Tunnel. Atlantic Avenue became one-way northbound and Purchase Street one way southbound to the north of the square, and the new Surface Artery came in as a two-way road above the tunnel heading southwest from the square. Between 1969 and 1978, Boston closed both Federal Street and Summer Street for a block west of the square (they had formerly operated as a
one-way pairA one-way pair, one-way couple, or just couplet is a pair of parallel, usually one-way streets that carry opposite directions of a signed route or major traffic flow, or sometimes opposite directions of a bus or streetcar route....
). Summer Street has since reopened (as a two-way road), but Federal Street is still a
pedestrian mallPedestrian malls in the United States are also known as pedestrian streets and are the most common form of pedestrian zone in large cities in the United States. It is a street lined with storefronts and closed off to most automobile traffic...
.
The Big Dig in the late 1990s and early 2000s kept the one-way configurations north of the square, but now Atlantic Avenue continues as one-way (northbound) south of the square, and Surface Artery is one-way southbound.
For some time, a temporary
intercity busAn intercity bus is a bus that carries passengers significant distances between different cities, towns, or other populated areas. Unlike a municipal bus, which has frequent stops throughout a city or town, an intercity bus generally has a single stop at a centralized location within the city, and...
depot for providers such as
Peter PanPeter Pan Bus Lines is a long-distance bus carrier headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts. It operates in the northeastern United States. Over four million passengers per year travel on Peter Pan's bus routes....
, Trailways and others was located just north of Dewey Square over the Central Artery. This temporary bus station replaced an earlier Trailways bus station that had been located in Park Square. All intercity buses were relocated in 1993 to the nearby
South Station Bus TerminalThe South Station Bus Terminal is the main gateway for interstate buses into Boston, Massachusetts. It is located at 700 Atlantic Avenue, at the intersection with Beach Street, in the Chinatown/Leather District neighborhoods. The facility is immediately south-southwest of the main MBTA/Amtrak...
just south of South Station, situated above the train tracks.
By the 21st century, use of the term "Dewey Square" to describe the locale had all but disappeared from common vernacular, although directional signs inside South Station still use the term. The area is now largely an open plaza at the southern end of the
Rose Kennedy GreenwayThe Rose Kennedy Greenway is a roughly 1.5-mile-long long series of parks and public spaces being created in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, USA. It is the final part of the Big Dig that put Interstate 93 underground and removed the elevated freeway that served as the main highway through downtown...
.
Occupy Boston
Beginning on September 30, 2011, Dewey Square became the focus of
Occupy BostonOccupy Boston is a protest that began on September 30, 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts, on Dewey Square in the Financial District opposite the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston...
, a loosely-organized protest movement that is an offshoot of
Occupy Wall StreetOccupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters which began September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district...
. Several hundred protesters set up a camp and vowed to stay indefinitely. This event has reintroduced the name "Dewey Square" to the public.
External links