Dorchester Illustration no. 2284 Peabody Square subway tunnel
Boston City Archives has put a huge number of pictures online. You can view them by going to www.flickr.com. Enter City of Boston Archives in the search box, and you will see a number of collections with many photos in each.
Today’s photograph comes from the City Archives: Northerly View of Opening of Peabody Square Bridge, Sept. 24, 1927. The photographer would have been standing in the middle of Peabody Square. Talbot Avenue is on the left with street cars. At the far left, the building where the bike shop is located today was an auto garage with billboard on top. At the very right, you can see a small piece of Dorchester Avenue. The building we can between the tunnel and Dorchester Avenue was a market with billboard on top. The Archives allows downloading their images a various size. By downloading at full size, I can see that the billboard company is Donnelly Advertising. The billboard advertises Two Completely New Lines of Motor Cars. Fours. Sixes. Internet searching shows that this was probably from a local Buick dealership. In front of the market, there appears to be a small steam engine being used in the work on the tunnel.