Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Commonwealth Ave. (2006)
Construction in Back Bay (1870) with the two sides of Commonwealth Avenue flanking the tree-lined Mall.

Commonwealth Avenue (colloquially referred to as Comm Ave by locals) is a major street in the cities of Boston and Newton, Massachusetts. It begins at the western edge of the Public Garden, and continues west through the neighborhoods of the Back Bay, Kenmore Square, Allston, Brighton and Chestnut Hill. It continues as part of Route 30 through Newton until it crosses the Charles River at the border of the town of Weston.

Contents

Description

Often compared to Georges-Eugène Haussmann's Paris boulevards, Commonwealth Avenue in Back Bay is a parkway divided at center by a wide grassy mall. This greenway, called Commonwealth Avenue Mall, is punctuated with statuary and memorials, and forms the narrowest "link" in the Emerald Necklace. It connects the Public Garden to the Fens.

Where Commonwealth Avenue reaches Kenmore Square, the MBTA Green Line "B" Branch rises above ground and dominates the center of the roadway through the campus of Boston University and the neighborhoods of Allston and Brighton to the city of Newton near Boston College. The section in Newton is made up of two roadways separated by a grassy median lined with trees. The south side of the roadway contains the main, two-lane east-west roadway, with a one-way, westbound "carriage road" providing local access on the north side of the median.

History

The Commonwealth Avenue Mall was designed by Arthur Delevan Gilman.[1] Frederick Law Olmsted designed the Newton portion of Commonwealth Ave and included the parkway as part of the Emerald Necklace park system. The first statue on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall was erected in 1865 at Arlington Street.[2]

The Newton end of the roadway was constructed in 1895 with a line of the Middlesex and Boston Street Railway in the median. Train service was cut back to its present terminus at the Boston border in 1930 and buses last ran on Commonwealth Avenue in 1976. An amusement park and ballroom known as Norumbega Park was built at the end of the line on the Charles River in 1897 to increase streetcar patronage.[3]

Statuary

Starting at the Public Garden and going westward, the following statues can be seen on the mall:

Image gallery

Notes

References

External links


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