Harvard Square’s Subterranean Nexus

The Red Line’s resounding rumbles echo loudly throughout Harvard Square. The subway has an uncanny ability to make itself known in many places. The junction between Massachusetts Avenue and Linden Street, however, isn’t one of them.

Students speed through the unassuming intersection on their way to and from class, rarely taking much notice of their surroundings. Tourists, too, ignore the crossroad, their gazes shifting from the Santander Bank on one side to Zinnia Jewelry on the other as they make their way to more interesting destinations.

But if they were to stop for a moment and look down, they could see the way the scaly mosaic of the asphalt rises so that the alabaster crosswalk strips may meet the ochre curb lining. Then, like the spine of a colossal burrowing reptile, the asphalt falls again. Salt-stained graffiti and construction markings paint the textured canvas, while glinting granules reflect the winter sun.

Inside the belly of the beast, an entire subterranean universe exists. In addition to the out-of-sight subway cars hurtling toward Harvard Station, manhole covers point to the numerous utilities funneling more of the unseen through the intersection. Just out of sight, cast iron pipes carrying city water meet in a T-shaped node, and sewage is channeled away through vitrified clay casing. Arterial gas and electrical lines further contribute to the labyrinth, snaking through the network like a complex ecosystem of mangrove roots.

The Harvard steam tunnels add yet another layer of complexity.

The stuffy, walkable catacombs responsible for heating most of campus contain the only passage connecting the River to the Yard: a musty tunnel running along Linden Street and through the intricate Class of 1889 Gate on the other side. Immediately below the beautiful — yet consistently overlooked — crosswalk, this tunnel narrows into a cramped cavity, wedged under the street but above the Red Line.

Most maintenance workers go aboveground to avoid traversing the gap, but when they can’t avoid it, scattered records from five decades ago suggest that they must climb up a ladder and squeeze themselves into a rickety, rolling wooden cart. Lying flat, they inch their way through the three-foot-tall shaft by tugging themselves along using a rope on the side.

As the passageway goes on, metal beams on the ceiling tightly press down into the claustrophobic space as the cement walls, floor, and pipes all close in. The thundering of the subway tunnel it perpendicularly bisects feels uncomfortably close, and the stale heat clinging to all surfaces is stifling.

Above this world, people are lost in one of their own. They travel to and from buildings that are heated thanks to the magnificent tapestry of connections they pass over. They board trains that will rattle beneath where they just were. They see the path ahead thanks to the illuminated streetlights that are powered by the wiring woven all around them.

Unbeknownst to them all, they are united by hidden connections, their lives made easier by the unseen puzzle pieces that animate the underside of the inconspicuous intersection.

The deceptively humble corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Linden Street is a nexus, a point of convergence and emergence — both on the street and below it. People and automobiles mirror the underground traffic traveling through the infrastructure that supports them. What, for some, is a mundanity, is actually a microcosm of Harvard: a place of motion and connection, of life and energy, of the seen and unseen. And, of course, it stands as another reminder to occasionally pause and just look down.

Adam V. Aleksic ’23 is a joint concentrator in Government and Linguistics in Kirkland House. His column “The Harvard Beneath Our Feet” appears on alternate Thursdays.