Massachusetts Avenue (colloquially referred to as Mass Ave) is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts, and several cities and towns northwest of Boston. According to Boston magazine, "Its 16 miles of blacktop run from gritty industrial zones to verdant suburbia, homeless encampments, passing gentrified brownstones, college campuses and bustling commercial strips."[1]
The road, by the same name, continues northwest and west, through many different cities and towns. It largely parallels or joins Route 2 and Route 2A, all the way into central Massachusetts, with a few gaps at towns that have different names for the central road.
For much of its length, Massachusetts Avenue is a center of commercial activity, especially through the larger towns. Apartments, shops, and restaurants fill both sides of it, and there is a lot of pedestrian traffic.
On the night of April 18–19, 1775, Paul Revere rode his horse down a portion of this road, then known as the Great Road, on his "Midnight Ride", and William Dawes and Samuel Prescott also rode on portions of this road on their way to Concord. These travels were on the Cambridge side of the Charles River; the Harvard Bridge was not constructed until the 1880s.
Early names and evolution
Massachusetts Avenue was formed at the end of the nineteenth century from what were separate roads. In Boston the road was previously called East Chester Park south of Chester Square and West Chester Park to the north (Chester Square is in the South End and is now called Chester Park). Across the river in Cambridge the road follows part of what was once Front Street near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then follows the former Main Street to Harvard Square (Main Street originally ran between Kendall and Harvard Squares, and the part to the east of Central Square retains the original name). From Harvard Square to the Arlington line at Alewife Brook it follows what had been North Avenue since 1838, and prior to that the Road to Menotomy. In Arlington it follows the former Arlington Avenue, and in Lexington it follows the former Main Street south of the Battle Green and the former Monument Street north of the Battle Green.
Mass transit
Massachusetts Avenue is served with direct connections for a number of the MBTA's bus and subway routes between Lexington and Boston.