Roads, Rails, and Trails - Secretary of the Commonwealth

The Metropolitan Railroad Site, Roxbury
Every day the Orange Line of the MBTA carries
thousands of people through downtown Boston and areas to the
south and southwest. Construction of this vital mass transit
route was preceded by archaeological studies that searched
beneath today’s urban surfaces for traces of the city’s past. In
1979, in the area around Roxbury Crossing, archaeologists
from the Museum of Afro American History found a complex
of sites from the infancy of urban mass transit.
Roxbury, Massachusetts
The archaeologists excavated by hand and, when
necessary, with a backhoe, hoping to find the site of the
Metropolitan Railroad Company, which according to early
maps existed here. The Metropolitan Railroad Company
(which merged with the West End Street Railway Company in
1887) was one of the original mass-transit companies that grew
up in the mid 1800s. Early mass transit was run by private
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businesses that built and operated street railways in the
growing city of Boston. Their railcars would look both familiar
and strange to twenty-first century “T” riders. The car was a bit
smaller than a modern subway car; it was more open in design,
like a trolley, but it would be clearly recognizable as a form of
passenger train car. But the cars were not linked into trains
powered by engines. Instead, individual cars were pulled along
their rails by teams of horses.
Above: stock certificate from the Metropolitan Railroad
Company of Boston issued in the 1880s. Below: detail from
the certificate of a horse-drawn street railroad car.