Today’s illustration shows a four-master schooner delivering coal to the Cutter coal yard on Commercial Point. The location of the schooner in the photograph would be at the bottom of the detail from the 1898 atlas, just under the red outline of the Cutter property. The location today is where Victory Road enters Commercial Point.
Commercial Point was named for its commercial activity. In the 1830s, a syndicate pursued whaling from the Point. By 1850, three was coal and timber yard at the outer edge of the Point. Ranstead and Dearborn operated a forge on the north side. The Trask Pottery was there as well. From the later 1850s until the 870s, 1John Preston had a chocolate manufacturing facility there. In the 1850s, Spicer & Purrington had a wood and coal yard where the Cutter business was later located. In 1874 Preston owned the coal yard, and The Boston Gas Light Company owned a large portion of the land on Commercial Point. By 1884, the D. J. Cutter Company owned the coal yard and operated from that location, supplying wood and coal for heating. The coal gas holders of the gas lighting company first show up in the 1884 atlas. There have been gas holders on the Point ever since. In the twentieth century, the change was made from the storage of manufactured gas to the storage of liquefied natural gas.