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Nubian station (variously known by its former name Dudley Square, Dudley, or Dudley Street Terminal) is a ground-level Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) bus station located in Nubian Square (formerly Dudley Square) in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is a transfer point between MBTA bus routes, including two Silver Line bus rapid transit lines and local routes. Like all MBTA bus stops, Nubian is fully accessible.
The original Dudley Square station opened in 1901 as a BERy Main Line Elevated station. The last segment of the original Main Line Elevated, the Washington Street Elevated (including Dudley station), closed in 1987; six years later, Dudley was converted into its modern configuration. Silver Line service began in 2002. The station was renamed Nubian in June 2020, following the 2019 renaming of the square.
Nubian is a contributing property in the Dudley Station Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
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 (some into the Tremont Street subway) 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.
As streetcar routes were bustitution 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.
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 (albeit with increased frequency and other rapid-transit-like features). 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.
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.
The MBTA plans to reconfigure the platforms and reverse the direction of buses through the station.
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