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BU Bridge Logo

Week of 30 April 1999

Vol. II, No. 33

BU Yesterday

If you think Kenmore Square is impossible nowadays, here's a taste of what it was like when the subway station was a surface station. Until October 1932 the Green Line emerged just east of Raleigh Street, adding streetcars to the growing automobile congestion of the square. This late-1920s view shows a three-car train of center-entrance trolleys heading toward Commonwealth Avenue and what would soon be BU's new campus. At the top of the photograph is 660 Beacon Street, the Peerless Automobile Showroom and the original anchor of Automobile Row, now the home of Barnes & Noble at Boston University. Today the auto legacy of Commonwealth Avenue is commemorated with the restored Citgo sign atop 660 Beacon. Older readers will remember it as the Cities Service sign, and before that, as the Socony sign.