Boston Elevated Railway Company. - Bostons Red Line: bridging the Charles from Alewife to Braintree

The first local public transportation in the greater Boston-Cambridge area was provided by omnibuses. As horsecars and electric cars replaced the omnibuses on busy routes, many of them were sold off to suburban or rural operators. Pictured on May 22, 1901, this omnibus is seen in Swampscott, where it carried riders to the local railroad stations.

In this late-1850s view, Harvard Square looks almost rural. To the left is one of the original type of horsecars used on the Harvard SquareBowdoin Square line. In the center, Brattle Street stretches off into the distance. To the right, the Cambridge Gas Light Company occupies the Lyceum Building, which was later acquired by the Harvard Co-operative Society.

Two horsecars of the Union Railway Company of Cambridge are pictured in the center of a rather placid Harvard Square in the mid-1870s. The Colledge House occupies the background, with the tower of the First Parish Church visible to the right. The upper floors of the Colledge House served as a dormitory for Harvard students, and assorted shops occupied the first floor.

It is a bright midsummer day in Harvard Square in this 1889 scene. In the center of the square are the electric trolleys that were installed in February 1889 by the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn. A horsecar approaching from Central Square is passing the Wadsworth House, visible through the trees. The brick block to the right has been replaced by the Holyoke Center.

In the spring of 1889, electric trolley No. 1402, towing a horsecar as a trailer, pauses in front of the North Cambridge car house (out of frame). A former horsecar electrified by Thomson-Houston in February 1889, No. 1402 proved too small to handle the steadily increasing ridership and was sold to Austin, Texas, in 1892 as larger cars were put in service.

(Courtesy Cambridge Historic Commission.)

The West Boston Bridge is pictured in 1889 with a train of Thomson-Houston electric cars bound for Bowdoin Square in Boston. This bridge was first opened in November 1792 and was extensively improved and widened in 1854. However, it would have been totally unsuitable to carry the Cambridge Subway trains and was replaced by the present bridge, completed in 1906.

During the summer months, Cambridge trolley riders had the pleasure of riding on open trolleys. This one is pictured at the North Cambridge car house before departing for Bowdoin Square in Boston.

With ridership increasing on the Harvard SquareBowdoin Square route, the West End Street Railway considered the use of double-deck cars on the busy line and leased such a car from the Pullman Car Company for trial operation. Seating 80 passengers (40 on each deck, with the operators cab on the upper deck), the 18-ton car was in operation from November 1891 through March 1892, when it was deemed unsuitable due to its slow loading of riders and was returned to the Pullman Car Company. Pullman sold the car to a company in Louisville, Kentucky.

The heavy ridership on trolley cars linking Harvard Square with downtown Boston is exemplified in this view of a Cambridge-bound car at Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street in Boston. The photograph was taken in 1897, when construction of the planned Cambridge elevated line had already been approved but delayed, pending construction of the new West Boston Bridge. By the time the new bridge had been completed, the decision to build a subway rather than an elevated line had been made.

Not only were the streetcars themselves usually overcrowded with riders, but many of the main thoroughfares were becoming congested with the increasing numbers of streetcars needed to carry the growing ridership. This situation is exemplified in this view of downtown Boston as a trolley bound for Harvard Square moves slowly through a long line of other trolleys at Tremont and Park Street next to Boston Common. Park Street later became the Boston terminal for the Cambridge Subway.

An early proposal for rapid transit between Cambridge and Boston was put forth by the Meigs Elevated Railway Company in the mid-1880s. The proposal featured a collision-proof steam-powered monorail train, as seen in this investment prospectus issued by the company. The train featured both horizontal and vertical wheels gripping a center rail, making a derailment impossible.

No, this is not a Jules Verne creationit is Capt. Joe V. Meigss patented monorail elevated train, seen here in 1888 on the grounds of the J.P. Squires meat-packing plant in East Cambridge. Demonstration rides were given over a quarter-mile track to prospective investors, of which there were few. J.P. Squires, however, had invested in the scheme.