William J. Reid Overpass

This scene is in Cambridge early in the spring. Some of the deciduous trees are just beginning to get their leaves. One of the nice things about doing pictures when the leaves are off the trees is that views are available which are normally obscured during the warmer months.

The overpass takes Memorial Drive over a rotary and was dedicated around 1974. The cars going toward the left eventually reach Harvard, and those going toward the right reach M.I.T. The rotary allows access to the BU bridge which goes over the Charles River to Boston University on the other side.

Driving over the overpass was more interesting back when the driving surface was just a ridged metal grid. It pretty much took over steering the car and must have made evasive maneuvers difficult, which I imagine is why now the gaps in the grid are filled with cement.

The building in the background was built by Henry Ford and housed his first assembly line outside of Detroit. He built trucks there. Fred Gray, a long-time resident of Shirley who grew up in Cambridge, learned to drive in one of those trucks.

April 23, 1997