This is Interstate 93 in Somerville, MA. Drive along this stretch (it's just a few minutes north of Boston) and you are indeed motoring over some very fine Boston area glass insulator history!

The Boston Bottle Works was located on Mystic Avenue in Somerville and had buildings on each side of the street. Mystic Avenue closely pararells this highway along the right. There wasn't a railroad nearby to receive and ship goods. A large approximately 300 foot long wooden building with docking sat on the Mystic River shoreline to do so. An image of this is within one of the company's well-known ads.

I do not know what happened to the Boston Bottle Works river-side operations building after the company closed. I read somewhere that it was used as a coal yard. When the interstate was built a lot of fill was used to widen the highway, right to the "new" shoreline. That happened in the late 1960s. I know of nobody who pursued digging around the old sites at any time before then. Given the fact that everything has been built or paved over, there is no chance of going here for a dig.

As I just mentioned, the company had buildings across the street for approximately 2/5s of a mile. A large apartment complex now stretches along that entire area.

I wonder if any insulator enthusiasts live there :-)

Please refer to an 1874 map of this area (click "Next") and a current one, which will give you an idea where things once stood.

The Boston Bottle Works' facility that stood along the edge of the Mystic River can be seen in this 1870s advertisement: [id=582506118]. More precisely, that building was several hundred feet behind the Google photographer; on this side of where the shoreline makes a bend.