Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1754
The Vietnamese American Initiative for Development (Viet-AID) is finishing their new building at 455-475 Geneva Avenue or 4 Bloomfield Street. The city’s Assessing department calls the parcel 4 Bloomfield Street, while Inspectional Services calls it 455-475 Geneva Avenue. The project is described as 4 stories, 27 units of affordable housing and 13 parking spaces. The lot was once occupied by the Stewart Building, designed in 1896 and extant from that time through the first half of the 20th century.
From American Series of Popular Biographies. Massachusetts Edition. This Volume Contains Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boston: Graves & Steinbarger, 1891:
JOSEPH IRVING STEWART, of Dorchester, a prominent real estate dealer and builder, now serving as Representative in the Legislature for the Twentieth Suffolk District, was born in Kings County, New Brunswick, April 25, 1847, a son of Joseph and Mary (McVey) Stewart. His ancestors on both his father’s and mother’s side were Scotch, the former settling first in Nova Scotia.
Mr. Stewart’s early years after his school days were spent in active employment on his father’s farm and in the saw and grain mills, where he made himself generally useful. In April, 1867, at the age of twenty, he came to Boston and entered L.F. Whiting’s iron foundry as an apprentice, but thus continued for only one year and nine months, when on account of his health he gave up that business. For two years subsequently he was employed at the cabinet-maker’s trade in Cambridge. He then worked for a while in the piano factory of Chickering & Sons, after which he was engaged for seven years in the fancy wood business. This was followed by an industrial period of six years with the Bell Telephone Company. Then in 1886 he began business as a real estate dealer and builder, in which line of industry he has achieved an unqualified success. The assessed value of the property he has built in Dorchester alone amounts to about one million dollars. At Ashmont he erected sixty-one houses and three blocks. In four and a half years the value of this property had increased to five hundred thousand dollars. He purchased sixteen acres of land in Dorchester Centre, and built thereon fifty-four houses, putting in three-fourths of a mile of sewers and the same length of streets, all of which he subsequently released to the city of Boston. This property also included a large brick block known as the Stewart Building and Bloomfield Hall.
_____
The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com
If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org