On March 4, 1897, a devastating gas line explosion at the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets blew up two trolley cars and left 10 people dead, just six months before the Boston subway was scheduled to open. Photo by Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins, courtesy Boston Pictorial Archive via Boston Public Library

Transportation History

125 Years Ago, Like Today, Many Bostonians Feared Their Subway System

Instead of fires, collisions, and derailments, the biggest fear with America’s first subway was simply going underground

On March 4, 1897, William McKinley was inaugurated as the 25th president of the United States. In cities across America, this naturally was the story of the day, the excitement of a new administration taking office. But not in Boston.

It was six months before Boston’s subway, the country’s first, was scheduled to open. The people in this city were nervous—and for good reason.

For starters, they were terrified of the idea of traveling underground—a sensation few Americans had ever experienced unless they had traveled across the pond to ride the London Underground. And the placement of those first Boston subway tunnels didn’t exactly relieve anyone’s anxiety. The first section of the subway route along the edges of the Public Garden and Boston Common had unexpectedly crossed into a Revolutionary War graveyard; 900 corpses had to be relocated after a worker digging the subway trench picked up a bone that he thought was a twig. And even though city officials insisted a subway was going to transform Boston by relieving the streets of unbearable congestion and whisking passengers through bright, clean, and dry tunnels, the public remained skeptical. One newspaper editorial described the idea of a subway ride as “living in a tomb,” a citizen said the mere idea of a subway gave him a “buried alive” feeling, and another called it “a menace to the health of the public.”

Confidence in the future subway was already low on that Thursday morning 125 years ago. And then tragedy struck only minutes before President-elect McKinley’s inauguration.

While working on the tunnel beneath the corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets, a worker accidentally nicked a six-inch gas pipe supported by steel beams, unknowingly causing gas to leak and pool just below the street surface. With the sidewalks crowded that morning as people walked to work, at precisely 11:47 am, two trolleys rounded the corner in opposite directions. With sparks flying off their metal wheels riding on the metal tracks, the unthinkable happened. Boom! A giant explosion sent the wooden trolleys soaring into the air, shattering them into pieces and killing 10 passengers and a few horses. Mayhem ensued as debris rained down on the streets in a ball of fire.

It was a disaster, of course, because of the loss of life. But in the hours and days that followed, city officials also faced broader concerns. They suddenly had to reassure an already nervous public that all their fears about the safety of the subway were not warranted. Trust us, those officials pleaded. It’s still safe. Among the coverage of the tragedy was a short story in the next day’s Boston Globe, under the headline, “Subway Is Not Injured.”

Does any of this sound familiar?

Commuters in Boston right now are once again afraid of their transit system. Trolley cars are colliding. Engines are catching fire. Trains are derailing. Doors are closing on people’s limbs (and not reopening) as trains pull away. Escalators that lead down to the tunnels don’t work, or malfunction. With just four words in a Globe opinion essay, one passenger, Jennifer Thomson-Sullivan, spoke for many when she wrote: “I don’t feel safe.”

Even though the MBTA is working to implement changes after a federal safety review, and MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak has said, “I take the MBTA every day, my family takes the MBTA, the MBTA is safe,” many riders remain wary. Some, like Thomson-Sullivan, are furious.

Six months after that March 1897 explosion, on September 1, Boston’s historic subway did open, on time and under budget (insert Big Dig joke here). It was a day of celebration. The tunnels were, as promised, bright, clean, dry, and safe. “I thought it would be quite dark and gloomy looking,” one passenger on that first ride of the day said. 

And yet, it took precisely four hours into the first day of America’s first subway for an incident to occur that would serve to remind passengers that not every trip was guaranteed to be smooth and safe. At 10:20 am, subway car No. 2022 was heading outbound toward Jamaica Plain. But as it climbed out of the tunnel at the Public Garden near Arlington Street, its roof somehow clipped a crossbeam before emerging into the open air. The motorman immediately stopped, climbed up on top of his trolley, checked out the damage, and then jumped back into his seat, satisfied that his car was safe to continue.

A few minutes later, the transit commissioner at the time, Horace G. Allen, walked down into the Park Street station. For a moment, at least, he seemed pleased with what he saw. Trolleys moved through cleanly, collecting and disembarking passengers. People paid their fares and navigated the turnstiles. Still, he knew it wouldn’t last. “If a woman should fall,” he said, “or somebody gets thrown by a sudden start, there would be a chorus of, ‘Subway! I told you so!’”

And just like that, his smile vanished. Too many passengers were waiting on the platform, with no arriving trolley in view. With each second they waited, Allen grew more anxious. He wanted every passenger’s first ride to be memorable—in a good way.

But before he could worry anymore, a trolley pulled in, and then another, and another. He hopped onto one himself. “I think Boston is going to like it and like it a great deal,” he said with a smile through his muttonchops. “It will surprise them.”

The fires, collisions, and derailments of the past few years were not the surprises Allen had in mind. Like their forebears who, in 1897, had to convince their riding public to trust them after a deadly explosion, today’s T officials face a similar challenge. Time will tell how they fare. 

Doug Most is the executive editor of BU Today, and the author of The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America’s First Subway.