Scollay Square
Scollay Square (c. 1838-1962) was a vibrant city square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It was named for William Scollay, a prominent local developer and militia officer who bought a landmark four-story merchant building at the intersection of Cambridge and Court Streets in 1795. Local citizens began to refer to the intersection as Scollay's Square, and, in 1838, the city officially memorialized the intersection as Scollay Square. Early on, the area was a busy center of commerce, including daguerreotypist (photographer) Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808–1901) and Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, the first dentist to use ether as an anaesthetic.
As early as the 1950s city officials had been mulling plans to completely tear the Square down and redevelop the area. Eventually more than 1,000 buildings were demolished and 20,000 residents were displaced. With $40 million in federal funds, the city built an entirely new development there, Government Center.
History
Scollay Square was located "at the junction of Tremont and Court streets, Cornhill and Tremont Row." Initially the city designated it Pemberton Square, but changed the name to "Scollay Square" when Phillips Square changed its own name to "Pemberton Square." The building that gave the area its name, Scollay's Building, was the last remnant of a once-larger group of buildings: "at one time a wedge-shaped row of wooden buildings, extending from the head of Cornhill to opposite the head of Hanover street, separated Tremont row from Court street (see Bonner's map, 1722); at the southeasterly end the second schoolhouse in the town was erected, 1683-84; at various times portions of these buildings were removed, leaving only the Scollay brick building, supposed to have been built by Patrick Jeffrey, who came into possession in 1795; named for William Scollay, an apothecary... removed about 1870."
Government Center (MBTA station)
Government Center is an MBTA subway station located at the intersection of Tremont, Court and Cambridge Streets in the Government Center area of Boston. It is a transfer point between the Green Line and the Blue Line. With the Green Line platform having opened in 1898, the station is the third-oldest operating subway station (and the second-oldest of the quartet of "hub stations") in the MBTA system; only Park Street and Boylston are older. The station previously served Scollay Square before its demolition for the creation of Boston City Hall Plaza.
The station is closed from 2014 to 2016 for a major renovation, which includes retrofitting the station for handicapped accessibility and building a new glass headhouse on City Hall Plaza. The current renovation project will make the station fully accessible when it re-opens in March 2016. As of February 2016 the project is on budget and on schedule to reopen on March 26, 2016.
History
Scollay Square
The northern section of the Tremont Street Subway opened on September 3, 1898, with a station at Scollay Square. The station had an unusual platform design. The three-sided main platform served northbound and southbound through tracks plus the Brattle Loop track, one of two turnback points (the other Adams Square) for streetcars entering the subway from the north; a side platform also served the loopBoston Elevated Railway streetcars from Everett, Medford, and Malden (which formerly ran to Scollay Square on the surface) used Brattle Loop, as did cars from Lynn and Boston Railroad and its successors. The last of those, the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway, used the loop until 1935.
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