Harvard station
Harvard station is a rapid transit and bus transfer station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Located at Harvard Square, it serves the MBTA's Red Line subway system as well as MBTA buses. Harvard averaged 18,528 entries each weekday in FY2019, making it the third-busiest MBTA station after and.
Harvard station is located directly beneath Harvard Square, a transportation, business, and cultural focal point in Cambridge. The Red Line rail platforms lie underneath Massachusetts Avenue just north of the center of the square. Many connecting surface transit routes are served by the Harvard bus tunnel, which runs on the west side of the station. The primary station entrance leads to a central atrium fare lobby under Harvard Square; there is also a secondary fare lobby for the Red Line toward the north end of the station, with entrances at Church Street and opposite it, near Harvard's Johnston Gate; and an unpaid entrance to the bus tunnel at Brattle Square.
Station layout
Harvard station has a complex structure located largely under triangular Harvard Square, from which Massachusetts Avenue runs to the north and east and Brattle Street to the southwest, and under the surrounding streets. The main lobby is located under the square itself, and approximately matches its triangular shape. The glass-and-steel main headhouse is located in a sunken concrete plaza at the south end of the square. The plaza, locally known as "the Pit", plays host to homeless people, street artists, skateboarders, and activists. Passengers descend eastward from the headhouse on a bank of stairs and elevators, then turn and descend northwest on a second escalator bank into the lobby. An elevator is located adjacent to the headhouse; the station is fully accessible.The Red Line platforms are located on two stacked levels, north of the square under Massachusetts Avenue. The outbound track is above and slightly east of the inbound track; both have side platforms on their west sides. These split platforms run from near the south end of Harvard University's Straus Hall to the south part of Flagstaff Park near Garden Street. A pair of ramps lead from the main lobby— which has faregates on its north side— to the platforms. A secondary fare lobby is located above the middle of both platforms, with small brick headhouses on both sides of Massachusetts Avenue at Church Street near Johnston Gate.
Bus tunnel
Immediately west of the subway platforms is the -long Harvard bus tunnel, used by MBTA buses and formerly trackless trolleys. Like the Red Line, it is split into two stacked tunnel levels; the northbound level is above and slightly east of the southbound level. Both levels have platforms on their east side, located under Brattle Street southwest of the main lobby. A pair of ramps connect the main station lobby to the platforms; a small set of stairs also connects the lower platform to the west side of the lobby. A headhouse and an elevator to the upper level are located at Eliot Square at the southwest end of the platform.The south portal of the tunnel is located on Mount Auburn Street; it runs slightly west of Brattle Street to Harvard Square, then northward along the west side of Massachusetts Avenue. The north portal is located inside Flagstaff Park near the south end of Cambridge Common, with an incline to the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Cambridge Street. Bennett Alley, a private alley south of Mount Auburn Street, is used for layovers and for northbound buses to access the tunnel from Bennett Street.
The platform is located on the left side for southbound buses. Because buses using the tunnel do not have left-hand doors, passengers must alight next to the wall and cross in front of the bus. MBTA trolleybuses were equipped with an additional left-hand door for boarding on this level; because this door did not have a farebox, passengers instead paid while alighting from routes 71 and 73.
Harvard is a major transfer point for MBTA bus routes. routes— — use the Harvard bus tunnel. All board on the upper level; all use the lower level for alighting except the 71 and 73 and the southbound 66, 86, and 109. routes – – stop at street level at several locations in Harvard Square. Southbound buses on routes 66 and 86, and terminating buses on route 77, also serve a stop on Eliot Street at Bennett Street.
History
Original station
service between Harvard Square in Cambridge and downtown Boston began in 1826. The hourly service soon increased to ten-minute headways to meet demand. In late 1849, the Fitchburg Railroad opened the Harvard Branch Railroad, with a Harvard Square station near where Austin Hall is now located. With only six daily round trips, the branch failed to compete with the omnibus service and was closed in 1855. On March 26, 1856, the Cambridge Railroad began horse-drawn tram service between Harvard Square and Bowdoin Square— the first such service in the Boston area. Following the opening of its Beacon Street line earlier that year, the West End Street Railway began electric streetcar service on the North Cambridge–Bowdoin Square line on February 16, 1889. Murray Street Carhouse was built for the new electric cars. The West End rapidly expanded its electric operations, including other lines meeting at Harvard Square.After the success of the 1897-opened Tremont Street Subway, the Boston Elevated Railway planned an elevated system with lines to Cambridge, South Boston, Charlestown, and Roxbury. The latter two lines opened in 1901 as the Charlestown Elevated and Washington Street Elevated, while the South Boston line was determined to be infeasible. After debate about running an elevated line above business districts in Cambridge, the BERy agreed in late 1906 to build a line under Beacon Hill in Boston, over a new West Boston Bridge, and under Main Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge to Harvard Square. Construction began on May 24, 1909. The Cambridge Subway opened from Harvard Square to Park Street Under on March 23, 1912, with intermediate stations at Central Square and Kendall Square.
The two-level underground Harvard Square station largely matched the triangular shape of Harvard Square. The subway platforms were oriented east-west under Massachusetts Avenue at the east end of the station, with the outbound platform above and slightly north of the inbound platform. The outbound platform was long and at least wide; the inbound platform was long and at least wide to accommodate passengers waiting for trains. West of the platforms, the tracks merged onto a single level, with a pocket track between them. This three-track tunnel ran southwest under Brattle Street to a maintenance facility known as [|”Eliot Shops”]; outbound trains could reverse direction at the pocket track or continue to the yard.
A two-level streetcar tunnel formed the west part of the station, with platforms long. The southbound level was for streetcars running on Mount Auburn Street, while the northbound level was for streetcars running on Massachusetts Avenue and Garden Street. The streetcar platforms were divided into unloading and loading sections for the [|through-routed streetcar lines], allowing separation of passenger flows in opposite directions. This philosophy was used throughout the station, with dedicated one-way transfer passages between trains and streetcars in all directions. All passages were level or sloped downwards for ease of movement, and stairs were only necessary for entering or exiting the station at the surface. The platforms and floors were made of granolithic. Station walls were tiled with white enamel, with a red tile band above the floor and white plaster above. The exit to Harvard Yard also had dark granite inside and black marble at the surface.
Early plans called for a monument-like headhouse in Harvard Square matching that of Scollay Square station. However, a one-story, oval-shaped brick and stone entrance/exit structure was constructed instead. Like the rest of the Cambridge Subway, it was designed by a committee of architects led by Robert Peabody. Additional entrances were located on the south side of Massachusetts Avenue east of Holyoke Street, and inside a BERy waiting room on the south face of the square. Secondary exits were located on the northeast side of the square and on the north side of Massachusetts Avenue east of the square near the Wadsworth House. The original headhouse was replaced by a smaller structure in 1928. Otherwise, the station was little changed until the 1970s.
Streetcar tunnel
With an eight-minute running time between Harvard Square and Park Street, the Cambridge Subway was fifteen minutes faster than surface streetcars. No longer needing to run to downtown Boston, lines from the north and west were truncated to Harvard Square. The streetcar tunnel served lines to Watertown, Waverley Square, Belmont, Huron Avenue, and Arlington Heights via North Cambridge. Some lines were through-routed: Arlington Heights with Watertown, and North Cambridge line with Waverley and Belmont; the Huron Avenue line terminated at Bennett Yard. Lines to Lechmere Square, Kendall Square, and Boston continued to use surface tracks in the square. On May 4, 1912, Lexington and Boston Street Railway cars from Lowell began using the tunnel. This lasted until the line was replaced by buses in 1924.By 1922, 104 streetcars per hour ran northbound through the tunnel during the afternoon peak. In response to overcrowding, the BERy extended the loading section of the northbound platform from to and widened the existing portion, doubling its area. Construction work started in late 1922 and was finished in 1923. At that time, the BERy believed that Harvard would be the permanent terminus; the heavy ridership from the north was expected to be handled by extending rapid transit from Lechmere Square.
Bus routes added in the 1920s and 1930s originally stopped on the surface. Trackless trolleys began to use the tunnel with the conversion of the Huron Avenue streetcar line on April 2, 1938. The busy Arlington Heights line was converted to surface-stopping diesel buses on November 19, 1955.
In the late 1950s, the MTA needed additional streetcars to run the new Riverside Line, but no domestic manufacturers were still producing PCC streetcars. The City of Cambridge also planned road work that would interrupt streetcar service, and wished to eliminate "safety islands" from Massachusetts Avenue. The MTA replaced Arborway-based trolleybus lines with diesel buses, then transferred the trolleybuses to replace the Harvard-based streetcars. Some off-peak and Sunday service was replaced in 1956, followed by Cushing Square short turn service in 1957. On September 5, 1958, the Watertown and Waverley lines and the North Cambridge short turns were replaced with trolleybuses, ending streetcar service through the tunnel.
The four trolleybus routes continued to use the tunnel. As of 2006, it was one of only two urban trolleybus subways in the world, following the end of trolleybus service in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel in 2005; the other was the South Boston Transitway.
On March 30, 1963, the MTA replaced all remaining trolleybus routes except for the Harvard-based routes with diesel buses. The Harvard tunnel was closed on Sundays, with trolleybuses replaced by diesel buses operating on the surface. Original plans had called for the trolleybuses to be replaced by diesel buses at all times, but this was delayed while the MTA investigated methods to ventilate the tunnel. Diesel buses equipped with early catalytic mufflers were tested from 1962 to 1964, with the hope of eliminating most surface bus traffic from Harvard Square. In January 1965, catalytic-muffler-equipped diesel buses on route 77 began using the tunnel, followed by route 96 in March 1966. However, the trolleybus lines were not replaced with diesel buses until 2022. In August 2024, northbound route buses began using the tunnel.