 | |
| Length | 5.65 mi (9.09 km) |
|---|---|
| Location | Boston |
| South end | Adams Street / Washington Street |
| North end | Congress Street |
Dorchester Avenue (sometimes calledDot Ave) is a street inBoston,Massachusetts, running from downtown south viaSouth Boston andDorchester to the border withMilton, where it ends. Built as aturnpike, theDorchester Turnpike, it is mostly straight.
The Boston South Bridge overFort Point Channel, on the site of today's West Fourth Street Bridge, opened on October 1, 1805 as the first bridge connecting downtown to South Boston. Until it was sold to the city of Boston on April 19, 1832, it was atoll bridge.
TheDorchester Turnpike Corporation (sometimes called theSouth Boston Turnpike) was created by the state legislature on March 4, 1805, to build a turnpike from the east end of the Boston South Bridge (Nook Point) to Milton Bridge over theNeponset River, on the other side of which theBlue Hill Turnpike later continued.
Construction cost more than expected, and thus high tolls were charged, so many travelers took the old longer route throughRoxbury. Despite that, the Dorchester Turnpike was one of the most profitable turnpikes, with earnings steadily climbing to a peak in 1838. When the parallelOld Colony Railroad opened in 1844, earnings quickly fell.
The North Free Bridge, on the site of today's Dorchester Avenue Bridge, opened in 1826, providing a more direct route form the north end of the turnpike toDewey Square downtown.[1]
On April 22, 1854, the turnpike became a free public road, named Dorchester Avenue. The name was changed to Federal Street in 1856, as it provided a continuation of that street from downtown Boston (via the North Free Bridge), but it became Dorchester Avenue again in 1870.
As part of the building ofSouth Station (opened 1899), Federal Street was cut between the bridge and Dewey Square. Dorchester Avenue was extended north from the bridge around the east side of the new union station, along the shore of theFort Point Channel, intersecting Mount Washington Avenue (which was also cut by the new station) andSummer Street and ending atCongress Street. Additionally, theAtlantic Avenue Viaduct was built as a second bridge just west of the Dorchester Avenue Bridge, connecting toAtlantic Avenue atDewey Square.
By 1923 the viaduct was gone, but the extension of Dorchester Avenue remains to this day. In the 1990s it was closed to the public, includingpedestrians andbicyclists, from the bridge to Summer Street, due to its proximity toBig Dig construction.[2] It has remained closed due to security concerns, as it runs next to the South Postal Annex (a sorting facility of theUnited States Postal Service). In February 2022,Massachusetts GovernorCharlie Baker announced that a $37 million project to replace the Dorchester Avenue bridge passing over theMBTA Red Line will be included in the $9.5 billion in federal funds the state government received under theInfrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.[1][2]
TheDorchester Avenue Railroad, one of the firststreet railways in Boston, started operations in 1857, eventually running over the full length (from downtown to the Neponset River). When the road was realigned around 1899, the tracks were moved, ending at a line along Summer Street.
As theRed Line opened in the 1910s and 1920s, parallel to Dorchester Avenue, most through passengers switched to that, and local routes were rerouted to feed into the newsubway. Tracks were removed by the 1950s. Today the Red Line Ashmont branch is sometimes referred to as the Dorchester Avenue line.
Nowadays the onlybus routes to use the road are local routes to subway stations:
The first numbered routes inNew England were theNew England Interstate Highways in 1922.NE 6 may have used Dorchester Avenue south ofSouth Boston, but it is more likely that it turned northwest towards Morton Street just after crossing theNeponset River. In any case, by 1927,Route 3 (which had replaced NE 6) andRoute 28 turned northwest inMilton, on a route that Route 28 still uses. (By 1928, Route 3 had been realigned to use the new Southern Artery, now Gallivan Boulevard.)
Between 1933 and 1935, the C (city) routes through downtown Boston began to be signed.Route C37, a continuation ofRoute 37, used MDC Parkways (now Morrissey Boulevard), merging with Dorchester Avenue at Old Colony Avenue. From there C37 took Dorchester Avenue to its north end, Congress Street, turning northwest there into downtown. Aone-way pair existed from West Fourth Street to theFort Point Channel, with southbound traffic using Foundry Street and West Fourth Street, but this was later removed, with Dorchester Avenue returning to full two-way operation.
Route C37 was decommissioned circa 1959 when Route 37 was truncated to Braintree (interchange with former-Route 128/current I-93/US 1) following the completion of the Southeast Expressway (current I-93/US 1/Route 3) leaving Dorchester Avenue with no numbered routes. Thus, over the years, the only route to use the road has probably been C37.
The rest of the C routes would be decommissioned circa 1970-1971.
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← Route 37 | MA | → Route 38 | ||
