Ancient names. | present names. |
Braintree Street | Harvard Street and Harvard Square. |
Spring Street | Mount Auburn Street. |
Long Street | Winthrop Street. |
Marsh Lane | South Street, and part of Eliot Street. |
Creek Lane | Brattle Square and part of Eliot Street. |
Wood Street | Brighton Street. |
Water Street | Dunster Street. |
Crooked Street | Holyoke Street. |
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Auburn Street. The “Town” and all the grounds originally impaled were on the southeasterly side of this path.
The “common pales,” so called, were about a quarter of a mile south of the path, at the present Somerville line, and about two hundred yards from it at Gore Hall.
Among the earliest of the streets laid out for the use of the Town were four, running easterly and westerly, crossed by four others at right angles.
These eight streets, with a single exception, remain substantially in their original ___location; but many of them have been made wider, and the names of all have been changed.
Besides these principal streets were sundry highways.
The “highway to Watertown” extended from Brattle Square through Brattle Street to Mason Street; and thence was identical with the “Path from Charlestown to Watertown.”
From this highway three others diverged southerly: one, to the ox-marsh, passing near the site of the Brattle Mansion-house; one to Windmill-hill, now Ash Street; and one to Watertown marsh, not far westerly from the residence of Samuel Batchelder, Esq. The first and last of these three highways were long ago closed.
Mason Street was early distinguished as the “highway from Charlestown to Watertown.”
The original “highway to the Fresh Pond” followed the track of the present Garden Street, Wyeth Street, and Vassall Lane, except that it passed across the common from Harvard Square to its northwesterly corner.
As far as to Wyeth Street, Garden Street was called both the “highway to the Fresh Pond,” and the “highway to the Great Swamp;” northwesterly from Wyeth Street, it had the latter name exclusively.
An old range-way on the easterly side of the Botanic Garden, now made wider and called Raymond Street, was “the other highway to the Great Swamp.”
The “highway to the Common” indicated that portion of North Avenue which led from Harvard Square to the point where the Old
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