Which of the "Seven Hills" still exist?

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

According to the city Historic Preservation Commission, there are seven hills in Somerville. (EDIT: There are also seven hills in Worcester, where I attended college, but I digress.)

1. Central Hill
2. Mount Benedict or Plowed Hill
3. Cobble Hill
4. Prospect Hill or Mount Pisgah
5. Spring Hill
6. Winter Hill
7. Walnut Hill, Strawberry Hill or Clarendon Hill

I know Winter Hill is on Broadway, Clarendon Hill is by Johnny Foodmaster, and Prospect Hill is where the tower overlooks Union Square.

I read that Mt. Benedict, home to the former McLean Asylum for the Criminally Insane (before it moved to Belmont), existed in East Somerville by Franklin Street and is now leveled.

I'm guessing Cobble Hill was also leveled, down where the Cobble Hill condos are on Washington Street. But there's also a Cobble Hill Laundromat on the corner of Medford and Central Streets.

I'm guessing Central Hill is where Central Street meets Broadway.

Spring Hill?

Comments

[lena-a-mermaid.livejournal.com]

According to the city Historic Preservation Commission, there are seven hills in Worcester.

Perhaps you could edit your post to say SOMERVILLE instead of Worcester. Where did you get Worcester on your brain?

[aki.livejournal.com]

Before you get ten billion comments saying this. ^_^

[aki.livejournal.com]

Spring Hill seems to be Highland? At least there's a Spring Hill Liquors or Laundry or some such in that direction out of Davis.

Ite!

[aki.livejournal.com]

PS: Also 7 Hills of Rome.

[grateful1311.livejournal.com]

Spring Hill is Summer St, Belmont St, Spring St...St Catherine's, Kelley park area.

[http://users.livejournal.com/deviant_/]

have fun (http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/BostonNorth7.5MA.htm).

[elements.livejournal.com]

Have you ever walked up Lowell Street? I was always under the impression that that was Spring Hill.

[elements.livejournal.com]

Also, this Somerville by Bike map () (second page; first page is useful cheat sheet on bike laws & safety in a city and worthwhile in its own right) shows the gradation areas of several "steep hills." I believe that the stretch along Highland is Spring Hill on the left, merging into Prospect Hill on the right as it approaches Union Sq.

[thelastcity.livejournal.com]

Your bike map link takes me right back to this thread. Could you post the link again, please?

actual Somerville by Bike map link

[elements.livejournal.com]

Sorry - looks like I was even sleepier than I thought when I posted that.

http://www.ci.somerville.ma.us/CoS_Content/documents/somervillebybicycle.pdf

a confession...

[turil.livejournal.com]

FYI, I made that map, and I have to admit that I wasn't completely accurate when I created the hill gradations. I kind of eyeballed it and guessed some stuff from my memory, and did a bit of referring to the Rubel Bike Map.

So, yeah, don't beleive everything you read (or look at) is a good bit of advice, especially when dealing with stuff that volunteers create :-)

(edited to add a more appropriate icon! )

Re: a confession...

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see a map that shows where the entrances to the Linear/Community Path are. There are various official openings in the fences that connect to dead end streets and parking lots, and also places where there aren't openings where you might expect them.

Could you add this information to a future edition of the Somerville bike map?

Re: a confession...

[turil.livejournal.com]

That's a great idea!

However, I did that map a long time ago, when I volunteered for the city. I'm not doing that anymore (for a variety of reasons), and unfortunately, I don't think I have the original Illustrator file anymore - I think it got corrupted at some point - so even if someone else wanted to update it for the city, they'd probably have to start from scratch...

Maybe the city could get a grant for a "green" community map like some other cities have, with biking, public transit, greenspace, farmer's market, local food, recycling, and other sustainable/green goodies on it.

Re: a confession...

[elements.livejournal.com]

Eh, I think you got it pretty accurately, at least as accurately as I was looking for. So that large longish gradation really is Spring Hill - Central Hill - Prospect Hill, all next to each other, if I grok the other info in this post's comments right.

[xjustquietx.livejournal.com]

Spring Hill is up Summer Street, east of Porter. Not sure where the crest of it actually is, Somerville Hospital perhaps? Somewhere north of the corner of Spring St... go figure.

If you look up Somerville in Google Maps and zoom in enough, they have a few of the hills marked.

Also, you can find information on the existence of the seven hills in Seven Hills Park, behind the T station on Holland. For example, they spell it Ploughed Hill.

[elements.livejournal.com]

As far as I remember from walking it frequently when a friend lived on Lowell (and some times since to get to the VNA), the crest is basically at Lowell in the block between Summer and Highland. So the Hospital is definitely not far off - the crest may extend along several streets, but I always walked up Lowell so haven't compared Porter etc except when in cars.

[ron_newman]

I believe the top of Spring Hill is Bailey Park, on Lowell Street just north of Summer Street.

Wasn't McLean Asylum on the (now levelled) Cobble Hill?

[ron_newman]

The #85 bus from Kendall Square, which ends at Central and Avon streets, displays "Spring Hill" as its destination.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Go to the park behind the Holland St T entrance in Davis. The seven pillars there (with strange things like fish and houses on them) each have a plaque describing the history of one of the seven hills in Somerville. I think they say where they are too and which ones haven't been plowed under. Check it out!

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

In fact, I believe that is called "Seven Hills Park"

[znhoward.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that the dimensions of the park rather crudely describe the boundaries of Somerville, and that the pillars are placed where the corresponding hills sit within the city.

Or maybe that's just what I would've done.

[whodameg.livejournal.com]

A couple of the plaques are gone. I had the urge to read each and everyone a couple of weeks ago, and I was very sad to find that not all the plaques were there.

[ron_newman]

There seems to be some disagreement on which Hills are the actual Seven. The park has two separate pillars for Clarendon Hill and Walnut Hill, but no pillar for Central Hill.

I didn't realize that the Walnut Hill and Prospect Hill plaques were missing. Now that you mentioned it, I filed a 311 request.

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

Walnut Hill is the Hill that Tufts is on. Packard St. leads up it, as do the memorial stairs and other Tufts stairs, most of which are officially in Medford. For easy access to the top, take the parking garage elevator from Boston Ave up to the top of Dowling Hall.

[ron_newman]

I like your userpic! Are you coming on my bike ride this Saturday? We go through the Tufts campus, past the sign denoting the Medford-Somerville boundary on College Ave.

[gildersleeve.livejournal.com]

Central Hill is where City Hall and SHS are located. (Central and B'Way is Winter Hill)

[ron_newman]

Mount Benedict was on the north side of Broadway, from about the Somerville-Charlestown line to Cross Street. It's not there anymore.

McLean Asylum was on Cobble Hill, also no longer standing. The Inner Belt Industrial Park occupies roughly the same area today.

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

Speaking of the Inner Belt park, I drove through there the other day (to discover the entrance to the MBTA facility) and noticed the mini viaduct where cars drive through bored holes. Any idea which came first: the road or the rail?

[ron_newman]

The whole Inner Belt Industrial Park was formerly a huge railroad yard. Take a look at the 1943 map.

McLean Asylum moved to Belmont because their peaceful little hill got surrounded by railroads. Once they left, the hill was levelled.

[glen-highland.livejournal.com]

The USGS map (http://docs.unh.edu/MA/bsnn46sw.jpg) shows Winter Hill is around where Central meets Broadway. I think the top of Central Hill is along Highland from the high school to the Masonic building. Kind of an extra bump on the back of Propect Hill.

[ron_newman]

On that 1943 map, it looks like a little piece of Mount Benedict remained, north of Broadway near Sullivan Square. I think the later construction of I-93 removed even that piece.

South of East Somerville, the 1943 map shows a huge tangle of railroad tracks labelled "B AND M YARDS", where Cobble Hill once stood.

[gildersleeve.livejournal.com]

The whole Cobble Hill/Inner Belt Road area years ago was Yards 7,8,9, and 10 of the Boston & Maine R.R. Yard 8 was the 'hump' yard and a little sliver of it is still in use, though the hump was removed years ago. Yard 10 was roughly where the Holiday Inn on Washington Street was, and was also known as the milk yard b/c all the milk trains dropped off there. Yard 7 is where the North Point development is being built.

There also used to be a little muddy river there called Miller's River that was a total cesspool of waste- the last of it was filled in during the 80's, but much of Cobble Hill was used as landfill on Miller's River and in general landfill around the railyards.

Cobble Hill was also the location of one of Somerville's Victory Gardens during WWII.

There was a great talk on all this stuff at the Somerville Museum a few years ago.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I think some of Mount Benedict still exists. There's a retaining wall along the southbound 93 service road with houses on top. It looks like they removed half the hill but kept the other half. Looking at a map, Maine Terrace seems to be the street that runs along the top of the wall.

(I could never understand why that stretch of 93 has so many service roads which weave over each other on multiple overpasses, but there still isn't a direct connection from 93 to 28, or entrances from Broadway or Cambridge [Washington] Street to 93 south.)

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

Thanks, all!

[jbdowse.livejournal.com]

The top of Clarendon Hill, in the most precise terms, is actually just a block or two north of Teele — Fairmount Ave goes right up over it, which you can see if you walk past there on Curtis. You can see at the right edge of this USGS map (http://docs.unh.edu/MA/lext46se.jpg) (thanks deviant_ for that link!).

Central St is a really thorough running workout if you cross Somerville on it from south to north because you get the brunt of both Spring Hill and Winter Hill on their steep sides.

This is a great thread. I am glad to finally know the name of the Tufts hill, and conversely to know what Walnut Hill is! Also to know about the fate of the southeastern hills. Poor things.