Boston’s hospital-and-research district: Harvard’s marble medical quad, shift-change crowds on Longwood Avenue, and the Gardner Museum and Olmsted’s Riverway at its edges.
Best forMedical-history buffs, a museum day near the Gardner, and anyone with an appointment and an hour to spare.
The feelA campus city of hospitals and labs: brisk on weekdays, quiet on weekends.
Getting thereGreen Line E branch to Longwood Medical Area or Brigham Circle; Green Line D branch to Longwood, across the Riverway in Brookline.
From Downtown CrossingAbout 25 minutes by T: one stop to Park Street, then the Green Line E branch.
ParkingStreet parking is close to nonexistent. Use a hospital garage, or take the T.
A hospital district eats fast and early: Anna’s Taqueria for a burrito at shift change, Longwood Grille + Bar for a weekday sit-down dinner, and Café G at the Gardner next door for the one civilized lunch.
Longwood, formally the Longwood Medical and Academic Area (LMA), is not a neighborhood of rowhouses and corner cafés. It is a working district of hospitals, research towers and colleges between the Fenway, Mission Hill and the Brookline line. The Longwood Collective, which coordinates transportation and planning here, counts more than 70,000 workers and 20,000 students.
Most people come for an appointment, a class or a shift. With an hour to spare, you will find a medical-history gallery, a century-old marble quadrangle and one of Olmsted’s finest parkways, with the Gardner and the MFA a few minutes away. Skip it for nightlife or a long dinner; the pubs are a short walk away in Mission Hill.
Getting around
Green Line E branch: Longwood Medical Area (Huntington Avenue at Longwood Avenue) and Brigham Circle (Huntington Avenue at Francis Street). Neither has elevators; the MBTA lists portable boarding lifts at both.
Green Line D branch: The D’s Longwood station is across the Riverway in Brookline, on Chapel Street, and is not the same stop as Longwood Medical Area.
Buses: Route 39 runs along Huntington Avenue between Back Bay station and Forest Hills; route 47 crosses the district on Longwood Avenue and Avenue Louis Pasteur.
Bluebikes: Docks include Avenue Louis Pasteur at Longwood Avenue, Brigham Circle and Huntington Avenue at MassArt.
Parking: Hospital and institutional garages serve patients and visitors; the Gardner points its visitors to a nearby Simmons University garage. See the parking chapter.
When to go
Weekday mornings and late afternoons bring shift changes, full E branch trains and crowded sidewalks; mid-day is calmer. Weekends are quiet. The Riverway is at its best in fall.
A short history
The name comes from across the Riverway: in the early 1830s, developer David Sears named his Brookline estate district Longwood, after Napoleon’s house of exile on St. Helena. The Boston side was still farmland when Harvard Medical School broke ground in 1903 and moved in for the fall term of 1906. Boston Children’s Hospital settled next door on Longwood Avenue in 1914, and Boston Latin School, founded in 1635, moved in 1922 to Avenue Louis Pasteur, on the district’s Fenway edge. Olmsted’s Riverway, established in 1890, already framed the western side. In 1972, eleven institutions founded MASCO to share services such as shuttles and planning; it now operates as the Longwood Collective.
Local tips
Longwood (D branch) and Longwood Medical Area (E branch) are different stations on opposite sides of the Riverway. Check which one your trip planner means.
Coming for an appointment? Leave the car at home if you can; the E branch and route 39 stop at the hospital doors.
Address Riverway, along the Muddy River from the Back Bay Fens to Route 9 (Olmsted Park), Boston–Brookline lineT Longwood Medical Area (Green Line E) for the Longwood Avenue bridge; Longwood (Green Line D) for the Chapel Street bridgeHours 6 a.m.–11:30 p.m. (city park hours)Admission FreeWebemeraldnecklace.orgAccess Paved, mostly level paths on both banks
The Riverway is the Emerald Necklace at its most convincing: just over a mile of Olmsted’s Muddy River Improvement, finished in 1895, where a polluted, flood-prone stream on the Boston–Brookline line became a winding river under willows and honey-colored granite bridges. Olmsted redrew the river’s course to clean the water and stop the floods, and the two cities moved their boundary to follow his new channel. The Longwood Avenue and Chapel Street bridges are the set pieces, and the Round House, a rustic stone shelter near Chapel Street, is the place to sit.
From the hospitals it is a 2-minute escape. Walk the old Bridle Path south toward Olmsted Park and Jamaica Pond, or north into the Fens; the whole chain, and the walk that follows it, is in The Emerald Necklace.
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Harvard Medical School Quadrangle
Historic SitesIf you have time
Address Longwood Ave at Avenue Louis Pasteur (Gordon Hall, 25 Shattuck St), LongwoodT Longwood Medical Area (Green Line E), 5-minute walkHours Grounds and exteriors only; the buildings are closed to the publicAdmission FreeWebhms.harvard.eduAccess Level paths and lawn, viewed from Longwood Avenue
Harvard Medical School moved here in 1906 and announced itself in white marble: five Beaux Arts buildings by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the firm that inherited H. H. Richardson’s practice, set in a U around a long lawn open to Longwood Avenue, the marble originally cut for another project. At the dedication Harvard president Charles W. Eliot called them “an expression of the intelligence and public spirit of many generations.” What surrounded them was farmland and marsh; the hospitals followed the school, and the result is the Longwood Medical Area, where more than 70,000 people now work.
Stand at the Longwood Avenue end for the full axial view, best in low morning light, then walk the perimeter; the interiors are not open. The Warren Anatomical Museum is at the Countway Library beside the quad, and the Riverway is two blocks west.
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Warren Anatomical Museum
MuseumsIf you have time
Address Countway Library, 10 Shattuck St (visitor entrance 695 Huntington Ave), LongwoodT Longwood Medical Area (Green Line E), 5-minute walk; Brigham Circle (Green Line E)Hours Sat 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Sun noon–5 p.m. (the only public hours; Harvard ID holders any library hours)Admission Free; a government photo ID is needed for the visitor passWebcountway.harvard.eduAccess Elevator to the 5th-floor gallery; human remains are on display
Phineas Gage is the draw: the railroad foreman who in 1848 survived an iron bar driven through his brain, and whose skull is the most famous object in the 15,000-piece collection that John Collins Warren founded in 1847 from his own 160 specimens. Its highlights fill the fifth-floor gallery of the Countway Library, and the inhaler used in the first public demonstration of ether surgery in 1846 is on long loan to Massachusetts General Hospital, so look for that in the Ether Dome instead.
Only weekends are public. Show a government photo ID at the security desk inside the 695 Huntington Avenue entrance, take the visitor pass, and ride up to the gallery. Human remains are on display, so it is not a stop for squeamish children. The marble Medical School quadrangle is at the end of Shattuck Street.
Tip Minors must come with an adult, and work or student IDs are not accepted for the pass; bring a passport or driver’s license.
Where to eat
Restaurants in Longwood
Longwood eats on a hospital schedule: counters, a food court and cafés built for a fast weekday lunch, with little open after dark or on weekends. The pleasant exception is Café G, inside the Gardner Museum and listed with the Fenway–Kenmore restaurants; for dinner or a pint, walk south to the pubs of Brigham Circle in Mission Hill.
The restaurant of the Inn at Longwood Medical, attached to the Longwood Galleria, is the district’s main sit-down choice and handy for anyone visiting the hospitals. Expect a hotel grill’s menu: clam chowder, steak tips, chicken pot pie, fish and chips and pub pizza. Breakfast is served daily, but lunch and dinner are weekdays only. Reservations accepted.
B
Anna’s Taqueria
Burritos and tacos · $
360 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02215 · T Longwood (Green Line D), 6-minute walk
The Longwood branch of a local burrito chain sits in the Longwood Center building between Beth Israel Deaconess and the Joslin Diabetes Center. It is fast, filling and open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, with breakfast burritos and tacos in the morning. Order chicken tinga tacos or a taquito burrito. Expect a line at shift change.
Where to stay
Hotels in Longwood
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The Inn at Longwood Medical
Mid-range · $$
342 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 · T Longwood (Green Line D) or Brigham Circle (Green Line E)
Access Rooms with accessibility features, bookable by phone at 617-731-4700
Set in the Longwood Medical Area beside the Longwood Galleria, this inn puts Boston Children’s, Harvard Medical School and the neighboring hospitals within a short walk, and the Longwood Grille + Bar is on site. It works for culture, too: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts are each well under a mile away.
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