New Chardon Street is a street in downtown
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...
, Massachusetts, United States, north of
Government Center. It begins at
Cambridge Street
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge became ...
at
Bowdoin Square
Bowdoin Street in Boston, Massachusetts extends from the top of Beacon Street, down Beacon Hill to Cambridge Street, near the West End. It was originally called "Middlecott Street" as early as the 1750s. In 1805 it was renamed after the Governor Ja ...
, across from
Bowdoin Street
Bowdoin Street in Boston, Massachusetts extends from the top of Beacon Street, down Beacon Hill to Cambridge Street, near the West End. It was originally called "Middlecott Street" as early as the 1750s. In 1805 it was renamed after the Governo ...
. The two-way street continues east across
Congress Street, ending at
Haymarket Square with access to the
Sumner
Sumner may refer to:
Places Antarctica
* Mount Sumner, a mountain in the Rare Range, Antarctica
* Sumner Glacier, southern Graham Land, Antarctica
Australia
* Sumner, Queensland, suburb of Brisbane
New Zealand
* Sumner, New Zealand, seaside su ...
and
Callahan Tunnel
The Lieutenant William F. Callahan Jr. Tunnel (colloquially Callahan Tunnel) is one of four tunnels, and one of three road tunnels, beneath Boston Harbor in Boston, Massachusetts. It carries motor vehicles from the North End to Logan Internati ...
s (
Route 1A) and the
Central Artery
The Central Artery (officially the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway) is a section of freeway in downtown Boston, Massachusetts; it is designated as Interstate 93, US 1 and Route 3.
The original Artery, constructed in the 1950s, was named af ...
(
I-93
Interstate 93 (I-93) is an Interstate Highway in the New England states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont in the United States. Spanning approximately along a north–south axis, it is one of three primary Interstate Highways ...
/
U.S. 1
U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 (US 1) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, making ...
/
Route 3), as well as local access to
Washington Street North and the
Surface Artery
A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is t ...
.
History
New Chardon Street was originally Chardon Street, connecting Bowdoin Square to
Merrimac and
Portland Street
Portland Street is a popular street in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The street is known for its business and retailing skyscraper complex Langham Place, numerous restaurants and its red-light district.
Geography
Running north-south and parallel to (a ...
s (where
Congress Street now intersects). The street was originally "laid out through the Parker-Gerrish pasture in 1682. It was called "the highway to Jackson's distill house," "the lane to the mill pond," and in 1785, "Chardon's lane."
Chardon Street was named after a
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Bez ...
descendant, Peter Chardon, who acquired the property on the street in 1733
[ and "built a house on the corner of the street bearing his name. He was a man of polished manners, and an influential merchant of the old time. A school-house was erected in 1804, at the corner of Chardon and Hawkins Streets."] Hawkins Street was also the site of many distilling
Distillation, or classical distillation, is the process of separating the components or substances from a liquid mixture by using selective boiling and condensation, usually inside an apparatus known as a still. Dry distillation is the heati ...
houses.[
In the nineteenth century, Chardon street was home to Chardon Street Chapel (1838), a large church founded by Joshua V. Himes, an early leader of the ]Advent Christian Church
The Advent Christian Church, also known as the Advent Christian General Conference (ACGC), is a "first-day" body of Adventist Christians founded on the teachings of William Miller in 1860. The organization's Executive Director is Reverend Stev ...
.
The full length of the street had streetcar
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport ...
tracks added between 1872 and 1874; they were gone by 1925.
The street stayed in the same configuration until the 1960s, when Government Center was built and the streets in the area were reconfigured. Chardon Street was realigned and renamed New Chardon Street, made one-way westbound, and extended east to Washington Street North and the Central Artery
The Central Artery (officially the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway) is a section of freeway in downtown Boston, Massachusetts; it is designated as Interstate 93, US 1 and Route 3.
The original Artery, constructed in the 1950s, was named af ...
as a continuation of Cross Street
Cross Street (Chinese: 克罗士街; ms, Jalan Silang) is a street in Singapore starting from Shenton Way in Downtown Core and ending at the junction of South Bridge Road in Chinatown which is in Outram Planning Area which then becomes Upper C ...
.
As part of the Big Dig
The Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CA/T Project), commonly known as the Big Dig, was a megaproject in Boston that rerouted the Central Artery of Interstate 93 (I-93), the chief highway through the heart of the city, into the 1.5-mile (2. ...
in the early 2000s, the road was made two-way, along with easier access to the Sumner
Sumner may refer to:
Places Antarctica
* Mount Sumner, a mountain in the Rare Range, Antarctica
* Sumner Glacier, southern Graham Land, Antarctica
Australia
* Sumner, Queensland, suburb of Brisbane
New Zealand
* Sumner, New Zealand, seaside su ...
and Callahan Tunnel
The Lieutenant William F. Callahan Jr. Tunnel (colloquially Callahan Tunnel) is one of four tunnels, and one of three road tunnels, beneath Boston Harbor in Boston, Massachusetts. It carries motor vehicles from the North End to Logan Internati ...
s at its east end provided by new ramps.
See also
* Boston Housing Court
* Bowdoin Square (Boston)
Bowdoin Square (established 1788) in Boston, Massachusetts was located in the West End. In the 18th and 19th centuries it featured residential houses, leafy trees, a church, hotel, theatre and other buildings. Among the notables who have lived ...
* Government Service Center (Boston)
The Boston Government Service Center (BGSC) is a state government complex in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts. The center was designed in the Brutalist style, led by architect Paul Rudolph. It is one of the major components of the Governme ...
References
*Various Sanborn map
Sanborn maps are detailed maps of U.S. cities and towns in the 19th and 20th centuries. Originally published by The Sanborn Map Company (Sanborn), the maps were created to allow fire insurance companies to assess their total liability in urbaniz ...
s
The Boston Atlas
(Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
)
{{coord, 42, 21, 44.97, N, 71, 3, 42.33, W, type:landmark_region:US-MA, display=title
Streets in Boston
West End, Boston
Government Center, Boston