Two Centuries Ago University-Owned Ferries Carried Students to Boston--Omnibuses Later Were Transporters

To go into Boston nowadays, the Harvard student descends into the bowels of the earth, drops a dime into a box, and enters a coffin-like case of steel. He is whirled over the Charles to Park Street Under in ten minutes, almost before he realizes it, to be spat up on the surface again via an escalator.

For an age of steel and speed, all that may be very fine, but the past history of Harvard has certainly seen more romantic, more interesting, though perhaps less convenient, means of getting to Boston town.

In 1740, when Cambridge was only a pleasant village lying between the University and the river and Boston was merely a thriving town, students and citizens of Cambridge were wont to use the Charlestown Ferry, or for variety's sake, they journeyed on the more round-about way of "Roxbury Neck." The ferry belonged to the college by a grant from the General Court and brought in to the University every year an income of about 500 pounds in New England currency, or 50 pounds sterling, a considerable sum according to the standards of the time.

Even 100 years later, with a greatly "modernized" system of transportation, the trip to Boston was probably more interesting than the short ride of today. In 1840, the omnibus used to start from Willards Tavern, according to accounts a worthy pub which stood where the carbarn is today, and it took an hour, when the roads were in good condition, to get to Boston. In the Spring, when the roads were thick and deep with mud, it was a common experience for the passengers to climb out of their coach and lift the wheels out of the mire. The service was more or less irregular, and persons waiting for the omnibus at the Cambridge end, were able to pass the time pleasantly in the tavern until the time of their departure.