Dorchester Historical Society

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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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

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1819

The Associated Press reported that a rare original copy of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation sold for more than $2 million.  This brought to mind a painting in the collection at the White House painted by Dorchester artist William Tolman Carlton.

Carlton was a portrait and genre painter who was active in the Boston area from 1836 till after the Civil War.  Perhaps his most famous painting is the one called Watch Meeting –Waiting for the Hour, now in the collection of the White House.  He depicted a group of slaves waiting for the Emancipation to take effect on January 1, 1863.

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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. 1818

All set for the 4^th?

Today’s illustration shows 23 Beaumont Street in 1892 all dressed up for the holiday.

Scan of photo of 23 Beaumont Street in 1892 published in Historic New England Summer 2006 issue, p. 21.  Flags, lanterns and yards of bunting decorated Henry Bowen’s Roseland Cottage.  To the left is 6 Fairfax, partly hidden behind #23 is 4 Fairfax and to the very right is 17 Beaumont.

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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