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Week of 12 February 1999 Vol. II, No. 23 BU Yesterday Streetcars have been lumbering down Commonwealth Avenue west of Kenmore Square since the turn of the century, nearly four decades before Boston University began pulling up stakes from its Copley Square facilities and digging in on the banks of the Charles. The original trolley tracks were put down by the Boston Elevated Railway Company (BERy), a private firm that was absorbed by the public Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) when it was established in 1947. (You can still see BERy manhole covers adjacent to the tracks at BU Central.) The MTA, in turn, gave way to the MBTA -- the T -- in 1964. This picture was taken in 1966; the streetcars in the photo were built in 1941. Boston University Photo Services