WHY THE HARVARD BRIDGE?

Travelers by tram or foot to Boston have often wondered why the ricketty structure that conveys Massachusetts Avenue across the Basin should be dignified with the name of Harvard. A few facts from history will soon clear up that point. When the College was first founded, Back Bay was a narrow neck of land lined with marshes, and the water between Boston and Newtowne (Cambridge) was a river instead of a bay. Travelers in those day did not have the convenience of a bridge; their only means of transport was a primitive cable ferry, for which a small fee was charged. By its original chanter, the Commonwealth granted to the College the right to collect these fees, which became its chief source of revenue. Nearly two centuries later, when the bridge was built, that income was out off. The least the builders could do in compensation was to name the bridge for the College.

Now the ferry and the toll are forgotten and the antique bridge is about to be replaced. Times and faces have changed; M. I. T. controls the waterfront, and it proposes to name the new structure the Technology Bridge, with an architectural central span, the gift of the Institute, as a memorial to its World War heroes. Harvard heartily approves, and cedes its name-claim with good will; in fact it would do so cheerfully if only the new span be wide enough for crews to pass under without danger in the races.