Stony Brook (Charles River tributary, Boston)

This article is about the brook in Boston. For the brook in Weston, feeding the Lincoln and Cambridge reservoirs and emptying into the Charles near Auburndale, see Stony Brook (Charles River, Weston).

Stony Brook is a 8-mile (13 km)-long subterranean river in Boston. The largest tributary stream of the lower Charles River, it runs mostly through conduits built to prevent flooding. Stony Brook originates at Turtle Pond in the Stony Brook Reservation and flows through Hyde Park, Roslindale, Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury. It empties into the Charles River Basin just upstream of the Massachusetts Avenue bridge.

History

Early changes

Stony Brook originally fed into the Muddy River and the Back Bay in a windy channel. It was known for its unusually clear water; a number of breweries including the Haffenreffer Brewery were located along its banks. The flow also powered industry including mills and tanneries. The Norfolk and Boston Turnpike was constructed along the Stony Brook valley in 1803, followed by the Boston and Providence Railroad in 1834. (That section of the railroad is now the Southwest Corridor, which includes Stony Brook station.)

The Stony Brook valley is very flat; during heavy rain and freshets, the brook would overflow its banks and inundate surrounding meadows. As development increased around the brook, this flooding became problematic (partially due to increased surface runoff from cleared land). A section near Forest Hills station was placed in a culvert by 1845; this was extended in 1873. In 1851, a segment in Roxbury east of Tremont Street was placed into a culvert. Culvert Street (now Whittier Street) was built over part of the culvert; other sections of the filled land were sold for development. The segment from Tremont Street to the Back Bay basin was diverted into a channel under Rogers Avenue and Bryant Street (now Forsyth Street) in 1865. The segment from Roxbury Crossing (Tremont Street at Pynchon Street) to Vernon Street was channelized and covered in 1866–67, completing improvements north of Roxbury Crossing.

In 1873, the city of West Roxbury channelized Stony Brook through the Roslindale and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods. After the 1873 annexation of Hyde Park, the channel was extended south from Roxbury Crossing to Jamaica Plain in 1880–84. In 1881–82, a 7-by-7-foot (2.1 m × 2.1 m) conduit was constructed from Bryant Street under the east bank of the Muddy River to the Charles River. The Stony Brook Gatehouse controlled the flow of the Stony Brook; under normal conditions, the full flow was directed into the new conduit. The four decades of channelizing and culverting the river were done haphazardly, with varying cross sections and slopes resulting in inconsistent attainable flow rates along the river. Heavy rain and melting snow in February 1886 resulted in flows of 500 cubic feet per second (14 m³/s), overwhelming the capacity of the culvert north of Roxbury Crossing. This resulted in flooding of 63 acres (25 ha) and 1,437 buildings, showing the inadequacy of the existing culverts.

Sanitary channels

In 1887–89, a bypass conduit (the Commissioner's Channel) was constructed from Roxbury Crossing to Huntington Avenue, largely under Parker Street. It was built at a cost of $650,000 (equivalent to $20 million in 2023) and was among the largest storm sewers in the country. From Huntington Avenue to the Muddy River, Stony Brook ran in a 42-foot (13 m)-wide open canal. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Muddy River channel was reconstructed in the Fens under the direction of Frederick Law Olmsted to serve as a holding basin for storm overflow from the Muddy River and Stony Brook.

The railroad was raised onto an embankment through the Stony Brook Valley in the 1890s to eliminate grade crossings, and Columbus Avenue was widened around the same time. The railroad project built a deeper conduit under Forest Hills, plus a new 2,600-foot (790 m) conduit between Boylston Street and Centre Street, while the Columbus Avenue project extended the conduit from Centre Street to Roxbury Crossing. In 1896, the Boston Globe asserted that the "apparently inconsequential waterway has has in its history cost more money to control and provide for than probably anything of its size in this part of the country".

In 1897, the full flow of Stony Brook (rather than merely storm overflow) was redirected into the Commissioner's Channel and into the Fens. Although a separate sewer had been built in the Stony Brook valley by the 1890s, it was inadequately sized to handle even small storms and was prone to breakage, resulting in sewage often entering the Stony Brook. In 1898, the city was forced to dredge accumulated sewage from the Fens. A new 12-by-12-foot (3.7 m × 3.7 m) conduit, paralleling the 1881-built conduit, was built in 1903–05 to carry the whole Stony Brook flow directly to the Charles River. A second gatehouse was built to control flow into the new conduit. The bridge carrying the Fenway over the no-longer-used canal was demolished with explosives in October 1905; the canal was filled in (partially with the bridge rubble) to create Forsyth Way.

The construction of the Charles River Dam, which effectively changed the Charles River Basin from saltwater to freshwater, necessitated a conduit extension along the Charles River Esplanade in 1909. A third gatehouse was built at the connection point near Back Street and Charlesgate East. By the time this work was complete, the city had spent over $5 million (equivalent to $121 million in 2023) controlling Stony Brook.

External links

Template:Attached KML/Stony Brook (Charles River, Boston)

KML is from Wikidata

Media related to Stony Brook (Boston, Massachusetts) at Wikimedia Commons