Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1829

Today we have a photo that the Boston Public Library has posted online: Thomas A. Fitzgerald son of Honey Fitz and intended wife Miss Marion H. Reardon of 59 Bakersfield Street, Dorchester.  They were married on Sept. 7, 1921.

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1828

Remember the photo of the longest wooden stairway in the city we saw the day before yesterday?

Here’s a comment:

I lived on Jerome St. from 1941 to 1971 and went to the Mather School, a two mile walk. The stairway had been converted to concrete steps as long as I can recall. Yes, 100 steps. We (school buddies) all counted them.

It ran from Hancock, at Kane Sq. next to the DPW storage facility up to Downer Ave. When we were bored with the Hancock St. trek, we would go up to Downer Ave by the stairway, continue to Sawyer Ave., past St. Margaret’s Hospital, where many of my cousins and sister were born, and then down to Jerome St.

I was referred to the website by Karl Bossi ( Call Me Moose ) a classmate at St. Kevin’s and Boston Tech.

Paul Valleli

Today’s illustration is a drawing by Jack Frost for his column Fancy This in The Boston Herald, Wednesday, April 29, 1936, furnished by Richard Heath.  The caption to the drawing reads:

The Longest Wooden Stairway in Boston

The fatigue inspiring stairway shown in the sketch connects Hancock Street and Downer Avenue in Dorchester on Jones Hill.  There are more than a hundred steps and thirteen landings.  The granite wall shown in the foreground was built by the PWA.  The three family houses are common to the hill.  The building part way up the steps is a dance hall, well known in Dorchester.  After the city had been scoured pretty thoroughly, these Jones Hill steps were the longest wooden ones found—and wooden steps are not as abundant today as they once were.

I conclude from this that the photo we saw earlier this week may have been taken to furnish a model for Jack Frost so that he could sketch the scene.

Now the new mystery is: what was the name of the dance hall and who can tell us more about it?

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1827

Today’s illustration is a mystery.  Can anyone identify this house?  Is that a cross in a building behind the house?  This house seems to have another house quite similar to it situated at the left.

Cyanotype postcard showing a house presumed to be in Dorchester.  Postmarked Jul 12, 1909, Dorchester Center Station, with one-cent stamp.

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1826

I have heard about the hundred steps—a stairway leading from Hancock Street up the side of Jones Hill, but I had never seen a picture.  Does anyone have more information?

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1825

Postcard. Caption on front: The New Dorchester High School.  T.C. Cushing, Dorchester, Mass.  Postally unused.

This postcard has an undivided back, so that indicates it is earlier than the run-of-the-mill cards from about 1910.  The Dorchester High School in Codman Square was finished in 1900, and the card was probably printed soon thereafter.

From the Boston Landmarks Commission description of Codman Square:

Adjacent to the [Second] church, lying southeast on a triangular parcel is the former Dorchester High School, more recently known as Girl’s Latin Academy. Constructed in 1900 from designs provided by Hartwell, Richardson and Driver, this building, by virtue of its massive, yellow brick form and hipped roof has the second highest visibility in the area after the Second Church. This school, with its brick rustication, sand stone blocks and limestone trimmings represents a highly sophisticated foray into Renaissance Revival design. The school complex consists of three building masses. The two which are closely integrated and highly decorated with limestone date from the original period of construction. The less ornate 1910 addition, also designed by Hartwell, Richardson and Driver, is connected by an extension to the east end of the older structure.

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1824

Today’s illustration is an advertisement in The Architectural Record, January, 1955, from The Bryant Electric Company incorporating a picture of Columbia Point.

The following is from: University Press of New England description of the book A Decent Place to Live: From Columbia Point to Harbor Point, a Community History.

When Boston’s Columbia Point housing project was built in the early 1950s on the isolated edge of Dorchester Bay, it was hailed as a noble government experiment to provide temporary housing for working-class families who had fallen on hard times. By the mid-1970s, the model community had disintegrated and become a symbol of failure, decay, crime, and danger. Today, Columbia Point has been redeveloped as Harbor Point, a privately owned and managed mixed-income, racially-integrated complex that stands handsomely alongside its institutional neighbors, the John F. Kennedy Library and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The book A Decent Place to Live chronicles the rise, fall, and rebirth of Columbia Point through the voices of those who struggled to make a life there and who battled to rebuild their community. This absorbing account weaves together engaging narrative, moving personal reminiscences, and 200 illustrations, including family snapshots, posters, blueprints, maps, and aerial photographs, to trace the Point’s history from its initial conception, through its decline, to its innovative redevelopment. A fascinating story of people, conflict, continuity, and change, the work captures the rich, yet troubled heritage of Columbia Point and celebrates the aspirations and tenacity of its residents. It reclaims a neglected piece of Boston’s history and offers important lessons for urban planners and policymakers nationwide

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1823

Card for primary nomination of Daniel J. McLaughlin as the Democratic candidate for state representative from Ward 16 in 1932.  I can find no indication of whether he won or not.

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1822

A good day to sit in the park. 

Postcard. Caption on front: 212487 In Franklin Park, Boston, Mass. Postmarked Roxbury Station with one-cent stamp. On verso: Published by the Valentine & Sons’ Publishing Co., New York and Boston. Printed in United States.

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1821

Scan of drawing on front page of All Saints’ Chronicle, August, 1892, showing the proposed new All Saints Church.

209-211 Ashmont Street, The Parish of All Saints

Source: Codman Square House Tour Booklet 2001

Year Built: 1894

Architect: Ralph Adams Cram & Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue

The Codman Square House Tour is honored to present a building whose architectural significance is truly national in scale, Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue’s renowned All Saints, Ashmont.  Remarkably, it was the first church that either had designed.  Commissioned by members of the old Boston family for whom the adjacent Peabody Square is also named, All Saints illustrates the ardor with which some Gilded-Age Yankees embraced the Anglicanism their ancestors had rejected.  The son of a Unitarian minister, Cram found in the Episcopal Church an architectural ideology that would spark a less romantic and more intellectually rigorous revival of Gothic forms.

Deploring the “aggressive picturesqueness” that to his mind trivialized the style Cram sought instead to convey by its very dignity and simplicity that this was a church of its own time.  This modernity is evident in the unadorned quality of its long nave and massive tower, which forsake medieval precedent to achieve an austere majesty that is wholly new and unmistakably American.

The ascetic interior is intended as a foil to areas of concentrated magnificence at the side chapels and main chancel, which is dominated by a high altar and reredos of superbly carved French limestone.  The high altar cross and candlesticks of gilded brass were designed by Goodhue.  The chancel woodwork (above) depicts scenes from the Old and New Testaments.  Figural stained glass windows installed periodically over many decades illustrate the evolution of the art form from the 1890s through the twentieth century.

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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1820

The City of Boston will officially re-name Wainwright Park or Cronin Playground as the Rev. Loesch Family Park tomorrow. 

The land that is now the play ground was part of the 17th century “Great Lots”, an area that was bounded on the north by Field’s Corner, on the east by Adams Street, on the south by Lower Mills and on the west by Washington Street.  Early settlers received grants of land from the town of approximately 16 acres each within the area of the Great Lots for their planting fields.  This land was almost completely agricultural until after the Revolution.  Over the course of the 19^th century, the town’s population expanded, and development occurred around commercial nodes like Codman Square.

In the 18^th century a mansion was built at the corner of the Upper Road (Washington Street) and what is now Welles Avenue.  The mansion was acquired in the 19^th century by the Welles family, and the land extended from Washington Street to the land where the play ground is located.  The land that is now the play ground was part of the estate owned by George Derby Welles, and this land, like the rest of Welles’ land on Ashmont Hill, was planned for subdivision – a plan of lots appears in the atlases from 1889, 1894 and 1898. 

Ashmont Play Ground

Wainwright Street was named in 1899, and at the same time the city took the land for the Ashmont Play Ground, which was established that year.  The street that became Wainwright Street had been known previously as Carlisle Street.

James L. Cronin Play Ground

In 1921 the City Council requested the Board of Park Commissioners to change the name of the playground to the James L. Cronin playground to honor a soldier killed in the World War.  A stone memorial in the park recognizes 20-year-old Navy Corpsman Joseph F. Keenan, who was killed in action in Korea.

Loesch Family Park

On July 7, 2012, the City of Boston will rename the play ground in honor of Dr. Rev. William Loesch, in recognition of his service to the Dorchester Community.  Festivities start at 11 am at the park with games, face painting, pony rides and BBQ with St. Mark’s parish and Community partners.  The official part of the celebration will occur at 2 pm when Mayor Menino, City Councillors Arroyo, Pressley and Baker, and State Representatives Dorcena Forry and Walsh will be present.  The newly re-furbished park boasts increased green space, new benches, play equipment, lighting, and bike racks. 

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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