The Boston Elevated Railway opened its Main Line Elevated on June 10, 1901. The line ran from Sullivan Square on the Charlestown Elevated, through the Tremont Street subway, and on the Washington Street Elevated to a southern terminal located at Dudley Square. Along with the rest of the Washington Street Elevated, Dudley Street Terminal was designed by Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, Jr.. It featured a Beaux Arts-style waiting area, clad in copper with an internal arched structure. Like many BERy stations, Dudley Street Terminal was designed for efficient transfers between streetcars and subway trains. Many streetcar routes that had operated to downtown were curtailed to Dudley, where two elevated loops offered cross-platform transfers to Main Line trains, using platforms on both sides of the northbound track. Other streetcars - largely on crosstown routes that did not terminate at Dudley - stopped at street-level platforms underneath the elevated station. On December 2, 1905, the Old Colony Street Railway began operating through service between Dudley and Quincy.
Modifications and decline
The Washington Street Elevated was extended south to Forest Hills on November 22, 1909. The loop allowing trains to return downtown from Dudley was kept, and a new southbound platform was added. In 1910, the elevated streetcar loops were expanded and roofed to handle larger-than-expected crowds. Dudley quickly became overcrowded; in 1917, a streetcar transfer area was built at Egleston to the south and some streetcar routes diverted there. As streetcar routes were bustituted during the 1940s and 1950s, the streetcar platforms were modified for use by buses and trackless trolleys. The east loop was completely rebuilt over a six-month period for trolleybus operations, reopening on December 25, 1948. The Main Line Elevated was renamed the Orange Line in 1967. From 1979 to 1987, the Southwest Corridor was rebuilt, with 2 Orange Line and 3 commuter rail tracks in a trench replacing a 4-track embankment. Trains last ran on the Elevated on April 30, 1987, and the relocated Orange Line opened on May 4, 1987.
Modern reuse
Even without the Elevated, Dudley Square remained a major bus transfer location. After several years, the former Elevated station was converted into a new bus station. The station building was lowered to the ground and rolled to the south. The original station building covers north–south oriented bus platforms A, B, and C; new shelters in a similar style were built for east–west platforms D, E, and F. When completed in late 1993, the new Dudley Square bus station served over 10,000 daily passengers, with over 100 buses per hour stopping at peak times. When the Washington Street Elevated was removed, the MBTA originally promised to run light rail service over its former route. After 15 years of debate and changing plans, the Washington Street section of the Silver Line bus rapid transit system opened on July 20, 2002. It ran between Dudley and Downtown Crossing, replacing the 49 bus. On October 13, 2009, this service was re-designated the SL5; a new SL4 service was added between Dudley and South Station, sharing most of the route of the SL4. With the December 2019 renaming of Dudley Square to Nubian Square, community leaders stated they would seek to have the station renamed. In February 2020, the MBTA agreed to rename the station to Nubian Square. The renaming took effect in June 2020.
Future plans
Dudley was also a proposed stop on the MBTA's planned Urban Ring Project. The Urban Ring was to be a bus rapid transit Line designed to connect the current MBTA Lines to reduce strain on the downtown stations. The project is currently shelved due to financial difficulties and questions about spending priorities. The closing of the Washington Street Elevated in 1987, which also closed the Dudley Square elevated station, prompted a 2012 review; the Roxbury-Dorchester-Mattapan Transit Needs Study, recommended for some form of proposed replacement rail service to access southern Metro Boston neighborhoods—one option being studied within this review would re-use the Tremont Street subway's now-unused southern Pleasant Street tunnel coming from the Green Line's Boylston station to eventually run a light rail line to, and likely beyond Nubian Square to the south. The new light rail service proposed in the 2012 review, to replace the rapid transit access the Elevated previously provided, could go from Nubian Square as far south as the Red Line's Mattapan station, with a northern turnaround terminus at Government Center.
