Dorchester Illustration no. 2256 Columbia Road at Bellevue
Photograph of Roy Wilkes, bay pacing gelding. Owned by Solly Wolfson. Published in The Dorchester Gentlemen’s Driving Club. Year Book 1905. Edited and compiled by Ernest H. Morgan.
The house in the center background is the Samuel Bowen Pierce House at the corner of Columbia Road and Glendale Street, designed by John A. Fox and built between 1874 and 1879. The family moved from the corner of Columbia Road and Dudley Street where their former house was demolished in 1898-1899 to make way for the S.B. Pierce Building constructed in 1899.
Solly Wolfson was a member of the The Dorchester Gentlemen’s Driving Club. The club members were owners of pacers and trotters who had their first public parade in 1900. They felt the need for a speedway and agitated for one to be built at Franklin Field.
The active fight for a permanent speedway for Dorchester and vicinity began on May 14, 1900, when a hearing was given representatives of the Dorchester Gentlemen’s Driving Club by the Boston Board of Park Commissioners, relative to a track on the Talbot Avenue side of Franklin Field. The petition, signed by 2000 men, including such well-known horsemen as John Shepard and the late John M. Forbes, was presented by S. Howard Mildram, then councilman for Ward 24 and an active member of the club.
The fight ended on Thanksgiving day, 1904, when wth a drizzling rain overhead and several inches of mud underfoot, a long procession f prominent men and women in natty rigs, led by a tally-ho and brass band, started from Codman Square, and reaching the new speedway via Washington Street, Columbia Road, Blue Hill and Talbot Avenues, formally dedicated the speedway to the public use.