History of Elm St + Beech St.
Since I’ve moved to Somerville, I’ve been asking myself “Why is the crosswalk at Beech St. and Elm St. 130’ wide?” Why do we have a street with a slip lane in Cambridge/entering Somerville? How did it get here, and why haven’t we done anything about it?
This morning, I dug in a bit to the history here, and I think I have a few answers.
Current State
For those who don’t know, Beech St. in Cambridge intersects Elm St. in Somerville, just northeast of Massachusetts Ave and North of the Porter Square Shopping Center. The intersection is a complex one, with a slip lane leading from Beech onto Elm Street, with most movements crossing to Willow St. Given that Beech street is a relatively narrow residential street, it is surprising how wide the intersection is. The complex interactions here — with cars turning left onto Elm towards Davis Square, coming up from Somerville Ave along Elm towards Davis, cars from Davis often going at high speeds down Elm, and cars trying to cross to Willow from Beech, it is a common point of conflict. (In March of 2025, I was rear-ended at this intersection in a hit-and run after having to stop short to avoid a speeding car coming from Davis down Elm.)
How Did We Get Here?
The biggest question to me is “How did we get here?” There are no other intersections like this I can think of on residential-style streets in Cambridge or Somerville, so there must be something unusual that causes this unusually wide intersection. There are no train tracks or similar nearby. While Elm St. historically had a streetcar line, Beech Street isn’t wide enough to have had one, so there must be some other reason.
Digging through Maps, we can see that this has been the case for a long time. An 1854 map of Cambridge shows that even with few homes built along the corner of Beech and Elm, there was already an unusually wide intersection here.
So, before Somerville was even a city, we already had an unusual intersection at Beech and what is now Elm Street.
If we go further back in history, we can see that an 1838 map of Cambridge shows that North Ave (now Massachusetts Ave) and Beech Street was the site of Murdock’s Tavern; the map at that time shows that these roads are effectively travelling through empty land, with no buildings indicated on the maps in the are at the time other than the tavern (later the location of the Porter Hotel).
The key thing about this map is that it is the location of a singular connection point between Cambridge and what is now Elm Street. This also shows the reason for the unusual boundary of the City of Cambridge at this point: effectively, a line was drawn on either side of Beech Street, giving Cambridge some land around their connection to the road that is now Elm St, in Charlestown.
But what is this connecting between? Well, it’s connecting from North Ave, the main road north of Harvard, to a road through Charlestown. If we go further back, to 1819, we can see the approximate outlines of this road.
Here we see the same “Tav” mentioned — the site of Murdock’s Tavern in 1838 — and a country road ambling through Charlestown, tracking approximately the modern day Elm Street, through the modern day Davis Square, and up along the modern day College Ave past Powderhouse.
If we look at the broader historical connections, we can refer to the gravestone at Elm + Willow. This gravestone’s inscription reads: “A sharp fight occurred here between the Patriots and the British. April 19, 1775.” This is reportedly “one of the last severe encounters” of the British and Revolutionary troops on that day, so we know that this road through Charlestown was a route back into the Revolutionary period.
Effectively, the reason for the especially wide connection at Beech St. and Elm is that this was the primary connection between North Cambridge and Charlestown in the revolutionary war period. It connected two major routes, and the extra space in this intersection dates to that period.
In the Modern Era
Having answered why this connection is extra wide dating into the past, we now have a question to answer of “Why is it still like this?” The short answer is “I don’t know”, but the longer answer is probably related to this being at an intersection point between two municipalities.
Redesigning this intersection requires cooperation between Cambridge and Somerville, because in practice, the crosswalk and the lane layout on Elm Street act as one component, but owned by two different cities. Cambridge eliminating the slip lane without Somerville redesigning the lane layout on Elm Street would be a problem; the same would be true if Somerville attempted a redesign without involving Cambridge.
Thankfully, in the current Elm-Beacon Connector project, Somerville and Cambridge have agreed to rethink this relic of the Revolutionary War, and the extra-wide pedestrian crossing is expected to be removed in 2026.
This will remove the slip lane, creating a new pedestrian-only space; change Beech to Willow into a two-step movement, and generally should significantly increase safety for travellers of this intersection of all types.
Tl;dr:
- Long ago, Elm Street was the only road through this section of Somerville, and Mass Ave through Cambridge.
- Beech St. was the only connection point between them, so it got a lot of space back when there was nothing else there.
- No redesign probably because of the coordination problem between two cities.
- Should be fixed in 2026.
