Word: steams
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Officer Fitzgerald was not the only man to wander down the wrong tunnel in the steam tunnel maze; his rescuers themselves had at one time fallen behind and temporarily lost their way. Like the layout of University buildings themselves, the tunnels were designed on a cowpath basis...
...Kirkland House), the discovery was made that the existing heating plants--which amounted to nothing more than a separate furnace in every building--could not cope with the new heating demands. So, University officials opened negotiations in 1914 with the City of Cambridge for the use of surplus steam generated by the Boston Elevated power house, located where Eliot House now stands. On March 3, 1914 the Cambridge Board of Aldermen granted Harvard permission to construct a steam tunnel to Smith and Gore Halls and from there snake up Holyoke Street across Mt. Auburn and up Linden Street to connect...
...University spread, steam tunnel construction had to keep pace. In the late twenties, the Buildings and Grounds Department had dug up most of the Yard and were setting in new tunnels. For a while Memorial Hall periodically belched puffs of steam as construction went ahead. The University had already bought the old Elevated power plant and had torn it down; steam came from the boilers of the Cambridge Gas and Electric Company, five blocks toward Boston on Memorial Drive...
...steam tunnels comprise about three and one-half miles which hold over 25 miles of piping and thousands of gauges. Most of the tunnels are the "walk-through" variety--seven feet high and eight wide. There are smaller branch lines and two foot square conduits as well. The "walk-throughs" include at least two spots along the main route that are a claustrophobe's nightmare. The first is crossing Massachusetts Avenue on the way to the Houses. The tunnel height suddenly becomes three feet thanks to the shallowness of the Rapid Transit below; the traveler must hoist himself...
However, this is merely routine for the seventy-two maintenance men who take care of the tunnels around the clock in three shifts. They must check all the instruments, the sixty-five charts, and the miles of piping daily. Beyond steam pipes, they must take care of inter-University phone pipe lines, pipes to recapture condensed water from the steam, and pipes to carry the compressed air that runs the thermostats. WHRB also has a few of its own pipes in the tunnels, carrying coaxial cables that are spliced in with the Houses' electrical systems...