Boston’s real outer edge: The road connecting New England’s commercial core - by Thomas House

Though I-495 is functionally more interstate than beltway, it would be one of those interstates that don’t actually cross a state line. (It gets close though, within 400 ft. of New Hampshire.)

But for the fact that it crosses I-95 twice, it could conceivably have been given its own two digit designation. In fact, the Outer Circumferential Highway was initially designated I-95W and lived that way for a few months in 1958, before its submission to Interstate Urban Numerology. 

But I-495 has over performed its role as a beltway.

Depending on your starting and endpoints, the highway is a through route. That is, if you’re trying to travel from Hartford to Portland, I-495 is simply the direct route – not a route around Boston. (That job belongs to Rte. 128….oh, sorry, I -95. That was the number of a planned route through Boston, but the stretch of Rte. 128 now signed as I-95 is now its own beltway.)

From Worcester to the Cape Cod? Same deal. A through route.

Mill town milestones
One of its magnificent economic achievements was to turn the mill towns strung along Rte. 110 – Lawrence, Andover, and Lowell especially – into technical hubs, dulling Rte. 128’s ‘America’s Technology Highway’ shine.

Pathbreaking digital technologies were birthed not just in MIT-adjacent Kendall Square, but in the startups and labs in rehabbed Merrimack Valley textile mills. 

Already prominent before they finished pouring pavement at the Cape Cod end was Wang Laboratories, which made the typewriter obsolete and ushered in what would become the PC revolution.

Rte. 3, north to southern New Hampshire saw the spread of Digital Equipment Corp. to Spit Brook (now a Fidelity Investments campus) or south to Billerica and E Ink.

Though it seems some of these firms have been eclipsed by Silicon Valley, it is more that the ground breaking technologies developed along I-495 such as Lucent Technologies, Cascade, and others were acquired – and in many cases the offices and tech remained, along with expertise in network switching.

Some have never left, of course - prominent among them Raytheon, headquartered in Andover with outposts distributed around the area, E Ink in Billerica, and Kronos time management software in Chelmsford.

Until it was merged with Lowell State College into the University of Lowell, the Lowell Technological Institute was a specialist in high technology and industrial development – and the genetic signature is still evident. 

A pedestrian-level lookup on Wikipedia reminds us that the University of Lowell “is one of the few public universities in the U.S. to offer accredited undergraduate degrees in meteorology, sound recording technology, nuclear engineering, and plastics engineering”. Among its six colleges are the Kennedy College of Sciences, the Francis College of Engineering, and the Zuckerberg School of Health Sciences.

Before it was the Lowell Technological Institute, it was the Lowell Textile School, reflecting an evolution mirrored along the highway.

Go west young man
Some prominent non-tech firms maintain prominence as you head south and west, where I-495 connects with the Massachusetts Turnpike (Mass Pike). This combination is an interconnect bringing northern New England into direct contact with Connecticut, New York City, and New York State (and beyond, until the road ends in Seattle).

This cluster, in what is unimaginatively known as Metro West, includes companies you’ve heard of and do business with. Cumberland Farms. Staples. TJX. Bose. Drive the southeast wraparound, you reach Marlborough (Boston Scientific) and if you veer off onto plain old I-95 for a few minutes, you get to Providence, R.I. (CVS).

The quality and reliability of surface transportation to all parts of the U.S. south and west makes this a natural crossroad. All the forest visible from your flight into T.F. Green, Manchester, and Logan hides an awful lot of commercial activity.

And all those firms that seemed lost to the Silicon Valley borg? Their founding offices are often still here – or new campuses have been opened with all those big names to tap the talent available from all six New England states that crisscross from the magnificent universities that are still at the top of the nation’s best. The smart money eventually migrates to where the smart people are.

We would argue that I-495 may be the key reason why Boston isn’t an isolated city, an island outpost surrounded by an ocean of forest. Below the leafy canopy is an entirely independent ecosystem, teeming with commercial life. The golden thread woven through this tapestry of surface transportation networks isn’t the Mass Pike, but rather I-495, a road that connects the five coastal New England states without ever leaving its own.

If it hadn’t acquired a personality all its own, we might consider reverting to its original name, I-95W.

Thomas House, AIA, is principal of THA Architects, LLC, Stratham, N.H.