Salem station is an MBTA Commuter Rail station served by the Newburyport/Rockport Line. The station is located off Bridge Street (Route 107) near its interchange with North Street (Route 114) at the north end of downtown Salem, Massachusetts. The station has a single accessible full-length high-level platform serving the single track of the Eastern Route. Just south of the station is the Salem Tunnel, which carries the line under Washington Street. Salem is a major park and ride center, with a 700-space parking garage, as well as an MBTA bus terminal. It is the busiest commuter rail station in the MBTA system outside of the central Boston stations, with an average of 2,326 daily boardings in a 2018 count.
The Eastern Railroad opened between Salem and East Boston in August 1838. The first passenger accommodations were a ticket office and waiting room inside a warehouse; a wooden station was soon built. An extension to Ipswich (including the Salem Tunnel) and a branch to Marblehead opened in December 1839. In December 1847, the railroad opened a massive castle-like stone station designed by Gridley James Fox Bryant. The opening of the Essex Railroad in 1847, followed by the South Reading Branch Railroad and the Salem and Lowell Railroad in 1850, made Salem a major railroad junction. A yard with a roundhouse and coaling tower was built in the wye between the Eastern and the Essex. The Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) controlled the Eastern and the other lines meeting at Salem by 1887.
In the late 1940s, the B&M and the state began a three-part project to eliminate grade crossings in the downtown area. Overpasses for Bridge Street and North Street, the former acting as an extension of the tunnel, were completed in the early 1950s. The B&M began demolition of the station in October 1954 to make way for a southward expansion of the tunnel to eliminate the last two grade crossings. The extended tunnel opened in August 1958 along with a new station, which had platforms in the trench south of the tunnel and a brick station building at street level. Service on the branch lines connecting to Salem declined in the 20th century, with the final branch service to Marblehead ending in 1959. In January 1965, the 1964-formed Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) began subsidizing some B&M suburban service, including the Eastern Route.
After a fire destroyed the bridge to Beverly in November 1984, the former rail yard at the north end of the tunnel was used as a temporary station to connect to buses, which replaced the northern branches of the line until December 1985. In August 1987, as part of a larger project to improve the line, the MBTA opened an accessible permanent station at the site, replacing the non-accessible station to the south. After years of planning, construction of the parking garage and new platform began in June 2013. The garage and part of the platform opened in October 2014, with construction continuing into 2015. Proposals by the MBTA and the city of Peabody have called for passenger service to be restored from Salem to Peabody and Danvers.
Station layout
The station is located on a triangular plot of land at the north end of downtown Salem, bordered by Bridge Street (Route 107) on the south, the MBTA track on the east, and the North River on the northwest. The station is fully accessible; a curved -long high-level side platform serves the single track of the Eastern Route on which the Newburyport/Rockport Line runs. Just south of the station, the track enters the -long Salem Tunnel, which runs under Washington Street through the downtown area. A preserved interlocking tower is located near the tunnel portal.
The eastern half of the site is occupied by a 700-space, five-story parking garage. A bicycle cage and passenger waiting room are located on the first floor of the garage. A footbridge connects the garage and platform to Bridge Street. The western half of the site includes a surface parking lot, a kiss-and-ride lane, a busway and taxi lane, and an access road from Bridge Street. The single track of the freight-only Peabody Branch parallels the river on the northwest.
Salem serves as a terminal for several MBTA bus routes – – serving Salem, Danvers, Peabody, and Beverly.
History First station
After the railroads from Boston to Lowell, Worcester, and Providence were chartered in 1830 and 1831, railroads to other surrounding cities including Newburyport and Portsmouth were soon proposed. The Eastern Railroad was chartered on April 14, 1836. Work began at East Boston in late 1836; construction was slowed by the Panic of 1837 and did not reach Salem until 1838.
Service from Salem to East Boston began on August 27, 1838, with fares half that of competing stagecoaches. A wooden train shed was built at Salem; since it was not certain whether the line would be extended, the shed was closed at the north end. Passenger accommodations were initially limited to a ticket office and waiting room in a nearby warehouse. A wooden station similar to those at Lynn and East Boston was soon constructed near Norman Street, with bells imported from Spanish churches. The two-story station had three pairs of columns mimicking a Greek temple, a common style for the earliest stations in the northeast United States. Within days of opening, the line was already seeing commuter traffic from Salem, and it has been a heavily used commuter stop since.
With the railroad receiving more traffic than expected, a branch line from Salem to Marblehead opened on December 10, 1839, replacing a stagecoach connection from Marblehead station on the mainline. Salem was the terminus of the Eastern Railroad until December 18, 1839, when the extension to Ipswich opened as the first phase of the line's completion to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The extension to Ipswich included a tunnel under Washington Street in Salem - one of the nation's first railroad tunnels. At the time, it was among the largest granite structures in New England. The unlit tunnel was "happily known as the 'Kissing-Bridge' of this route, and the locale of more than one bright osculatory poem."
Second station
On June 16, 1846, the Eastern Railroad stockholders authorized the sale of $450,000 of new stock to fund various branch lines plus new depots at Salem and Lynn. Gridley James Fox Bryant designed a massive stone structure, one of his first major commissions. Eastern president D.A. Neal requested the style after being inspired by a similar station - possibly English, possibly the 1844-built Leipzig Thüringer Bahnhof - during a European trip. The Washington Street side of the new station had two towers, resembling those of a medieval castle, flanking a granite archway which spanned three tracks. The wooden trainshed was constructed to the south, partially on piers over the South River (which was not filled until the 1880s). A massive sea wall was built to protect the station from flooding. The station opened on December 1, 1847. In 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne described the station in The House of the Seven Gables:
The first of the Essex Railroad from Salem west to Danvers opened on January 19, 1847, with a wye connecting to the Eastern Railroad at the north end of the tunnel, and the remainder to North Andover in 1848. The South Reading Branch Railroad and the Salem and Lowell Railroad (a subsidiary of the Lawrence and Lowell Railroad) opened in 1850 and used the Essex's tracks between Peabody and Salem. The South Reading Branch was built to compete with the Eastern for Boston-Salem traffic; it connected to the rival Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) at South Reading (Wakefield Junction). The Salem and Lowell and the South Reading Branch shared a station at the north end of the tunnel rather than using the Eastern's station, even after the Eastern acquired the South Reading Branch in 1851. The Salem and Lowell extended north from the station to the Salem Harbor Branch, which intermittently served a coal port.
With direct connections to most of the major cities of northeastern Massachusetts by 1850, Salem became a major railroad junction. By the 1870s, a roundhouse, coaling tower, and water tank were located inside the wye to serve the three lines from the west. This was expanded into a large repair shop; the roundhouse was later rebuilt with more stalls and access from the south to serve commuter trains. A large freight yard was located south of downtown. Other minor passenger stations were located in Salem at various times: Grove Street, Carltonville, and North Street on the Essex Railroad; Castle Hill (Atlantic) at the junction of the Eastern and the Marblehead Branch; Pickman Park on the Eastern; and Loring Avenue and Forest River on the Marblehead Branch.
On April 7, 1882, a fire resulting from an explosion of a can of fusees destroyed the wooden trainshed, although the granite facade and towers were intact. A wooden replacement was built around the burnt section. On December 2, 1884, the Eastern was acquired by the B&M. When the B&M acquired the Boston and Lowell Railroad (which by then owned the Salem and Lowell) in 1887, it controlled all lines serving Salem. For much of the early 20th century, Salem was the turnback point for a limited number of short turn trains. The tunnel flooded on several occasions, including 1898 and 1927, due to during high tides and storm surges on the North River. (second page)
The B&M proposed an electrified four-track tunnel in 1910 as part of plans to quadruple-track and grade-separate the Eastern Route from Boston to Beverly. (part 2, part 3) However, these plans were left unfulfilled after New Haven Railroad control of the B&M ended in 1914; only a section at Lynn was built. In 1921, a Boston engineering firm proposed to extend the tunnel south to the station site, resulting in a two-level Washington Street, and to rebuild the station at the same location.
Railroad traffic began declining after World War I due to competition from streetcars and private automobiles. Passenger service on the South Reading Branch, largely redundant after the B&M consolidation, ended on January 2, 1926. Service on the eastern part of the Salem and Lowell ended in 1932. Passenger service on the Essex was cut back to Salem–Danvers in 1926; that service lasted until massive B&M service cuts on May 18, 1958. Marblehead service was halved to one daily round trip during the 1958 cuts, and cut entirely on June 14, 1959. For a brief period, Portsmouth trains were combined with Rockport trains at Salem.
New tunnel and station
By the 1940s, the grade crossings at Norman Street and Mill Street bracketing the depot, plus Bridge Street (Route 107) and North Street (Route 114) nearby, had long been a nuisance and hazard in the busy downtown. A plan to lengthen the tunnel and demolish the station received Works Progress Administration funds in 1938, but it was not enacted. In 1949, then-mayor Joseph B. Harrington called the crossings "the worst hazard in any city in the United States." Construction of a $2.5 million overpass to carry Bridge Street over the railroad was begun in 1948 and completed in 1951. It effectively extended the tunnel northwards by , with separate north portals for the Eastern Route mainline and the Danvers Branch (ex-Essex Railroad). A $1.35 million overpass carrying North Street over the Danvers Branch was completed around 1953.