Dorchester Illustration 2513 Bussey House 1203-1205 Adams Street
Later today, the Dorchester Historical Society will host a program to hear Joe Bagley talk about his new book Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them. The buildings range in date from 1661 to 1794, and several Dorchester properties are featured in the book. The oldest of them all is the James Blake House in Dorchester, built in 1661.
Today’s illustration is about a building in Dorchester that just missed the list. Maybe it is the 51st oldest building in Boston.
In 1795, merchant John Bussey purchased the property at 1203 Adams Street from Daniel Vose, a property that included the already-existing house. The prior deed in 1790, when Vose acquired the property, did not mention a building. The house was built by 1795, possibly before, but we have no documentation to say with certainty which year.
Bussey, who was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, lived to 90 years of age, and his name appeared the year before in an 1840 Census of military pensioners in Dorchester. In a list of Strangers in Dorchester, Mass., compiled by Noah Clapp, town clerk, published in New England Historical & Genealogical Register, 1906, we find that John Bussey & his family came into this town to live, in the year 1785 or 1786, from Milton.
In 1837 John Bussey, Gentleman, also known during his life as Colonel Bussey, transferred the property to his son John Bussey, Jr. The property remained in the Bussey family until it was purchased by Henry L. Pierce about 1890, possibly intending to use it for the Walter Baker & Company, of which he was the head. Pierce, a one-time Mayor of the City of Boston and a Representative to the United States Congress, died in 1896, and the property was transferred from Pierce to the Company sometime between 1894 and 1898. The chocolate company turned the building into a reading room.
Bussey used the property as a store as well as a home. In The History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Dorchester, Massachusetts, by John R. Chaffee (Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1917), we find a statement on p. 42 referring to 1203 Adams Street in the period from 1840 to 1846: The Walter Baker & Co. reading room, opposite the Pierce Mill, was then the Bussey store.”
The association of this property with the chocolate company makes this building with its storefront reading room a valuable adjunct to the National Register district that includes the commercial buildings of Walter Baker & Co.
The house is a 5 bay Federal house that was probably built about 1790, just prior to its acquisition by John Bussey. In the late 19th century or early 20th, the house acquired a colonial revival shop front, quite probably constructed by the Walter Baker & Company when it decided to use the property as a reading room. The house is prominently sited on Adams Street, the old road from Boston to the south shore.