Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1781

Photograph of man doing handstand on MDC sign on Malibu Beach ca. 1950

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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. 1780

Last evening the Boston Landmarks Commission approved the nomination of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church to the National Register of Historic Places based on the contribution of the church complex to the local architectural history of Boston. 

The nomination was presented to the Commission by Timothy Orwig, a consultant, who has successfully nominated more than two dozen sites to the National Register of Historic Places.  The St. Mark’s complex comprises 3 shingle buildings: the chapel, a parish house and a rectory.  In today’s postcard, postmarked in 1908, we see the chapel building.   The architectural design was by Edmund Quincy Sylvester, and the cornerstone was laid in 1904.  St. Mark’s was begun as a mission of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.  Note the steeply pitched roof and the projecting entry porch with elements of half-timbering.

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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. 1779

Yesterday, we saw a painting of Savin Hill, and today we have an electro-type version of that painting from Antique Views of Ye Towne of Boston by James Henry Stark.  First published in 1882.  This page may have been from a turn-of-the century edition.  The engraving is from a painting made in 1830.

The Stark family emigrated from England to Boston, Massachusetts, in the mid-19th century, eventually settling in Dorchester, Massachusetts. James Henry Stark attended Boston schools including the Boston Latin School, but he left school in 1864 to learn the trade of stereotyping and electrotyping, which he pursued until 1900, when he opened a real estate office. He was president of the Photo Electrotype Co., and he was the publisher of the book Antique Views of Ye Towne of Boston.  An avid yachtsman, he founded several local yacht clubs and helped organize the Savin Hill Yacht Club. He helped organize and later served as vice president of the Dorchester Historical Society and authored several guide books and historical works, including The Loyalists of Massachusetts.

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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. 1778

The painting of Savin Hill is by Michael Olcott Barry.    Savin Hill 1830 represents one of the finest accomplishments of 19^th century landscape artistry in Dorchester.  In this painting we see Savin Hill from Pope’s Hill.  Barry was married to Martha Howe Worthington whose father owned nearly all the land shown in the painting.   Today the area known as Savin Hill is home to thousands of residents.

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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. 1777

Today we have a painting of Savin Hill from approximately the same view point as yesterday’s illustration of the railroad bridge.  It is called Dorchester 1856.  “This is one of Edward Mitchell Bannister’s few surviving paintings from the 1850s. In this view of Dorchester, Massachusetts, the artist included the stately homes dotting the coast. This was likely a marketing tactic, for he hoped to appeal to the wealthy merchants living in those “cottages.” Bannister spent summers sailing around Massachusetts and Rhode Island on daily outings that allowed him to sketch and paint familiar views for his wealthy patrons in Boston and Providence.”(Hartigan, Sharing Traditions, 1985). 

Edward Mitchell Bannister was a painter who was active in the Boston area.  He was born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, in 1828, and he died in Providence, Rhode Island in 1901.

It is curious to contrast this painting with the 1855 engraving we saw yesterday showing the railroad bridge.  The railroad line to Plymouth had opened in 1845.  So in 1856 Bannister must have consciously left the railroad out of his composition. 

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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. 1776

In 1855 this engraving was printed in Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, showing an Old Colony Railroad train on the bridge in front of Savin Hill.  The bridge crossed over the water and marsh at Glover’s Corner.  The viewer would have been standing on the hill behind the First Parish Church.

On March 16, 1844 the Old Colony Railroad Corporation was formed to provide a rail connection between Boston and Plymouth, Massachusetts. Construction of the line began in South Boston in June 1844 and the 36.8 mile line opened to Plymouth on November 10, 1845. The extension from South Boston to the newly-completed Kneeland Street in Boston opened on June 19, 1847.

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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. 1775

Today we have a postcard showing Franklin Park.

Postcard. Caption on front: Road Scene, Franklin Park, Boston, Mass. Postmarked Apr 5, 1907 Roxbury Station with one-cent stamp.  On verso: Made in Germany.

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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. 1774

Gladys Edson Locke lived for many years at 33 Grampian Way at the top of Savin Hill with a magnificent view of the city.  She tried her hand at writing detective / mystery novels in the style of the English Country House Mystery and became quite a success.  Locke was of English descent and felt a close emotional and spiritual connection to the English countryside.  The scenes of her books are often located in the British Isles, reflecting her frequent travels to England and Scotland. 

Today’s illustration is the frontispiece of her book The House on the Downs published in Boston by L.C. Page & Company in 1925.  The book is a Dorchester double because its illustrations are by Frank Merrill who lived on Tremlett Street.  He was a well-known late 19^th – early 20^th century artist, and he illustrated hundreds of books.

The caption to the illustration is “Sir Quentin dropped on his knees, gently raising the pathetic form.” – from p. 230

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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. 1773

Photograph of the Bird Sawyer House published in Pathways of the Puritans. Compiled under the Direction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission and published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Second edition, 1931.  The house was located at 41 Humphreys Street.

The Thomas Bird who built the house made his money from tanning, and even in the early 20^th century, there were people who remembered traces of the tanning canals nearby.  It was under Corp. Thomas Bird, fifth owner, that the house played its proudest part.  Aged 21 when he inherited, young Thomas had fought in the Concord and Lexington engagement and at Bunker Hill, when coming home one evening early in March, 1776, from guard duty at Boston Neck, he found himself outranked in his own house.  Col. Gridley of the American engineers was quartered there with his staff—Putnam, Waters, Baldwin and Knox, later to become the famous general.

The house was ideal for use as a headquarters.  Its large upper chambers were used as draughting rooms for drawing up the fortification plan for Dorchester Heights, a hill that was within a short walking distance.  Washington rode over from Cambridge to direct the work, and when the thousands of bundles of birch and elder fascines for the ramparts were carried to the Heights, they passed down the lane in front of the house.

The house was demolished in the second half of the 20^th 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. 1772

Perez and Sarah Morton had their house built in 1796 at a location that today would be approximately 600 Dudley Street (then called Stoughton Street).  The Mortons moved from Boston to the Dorchester site in late 1796 or early 1797.  Sarah said that the house was built according to her own “whimsical plan.”  Charles Bulfinch, however, was her cousin, and the design of the house has been attributed to him by Kimball Fisk, author of Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922.  Bulfinch did design the Swan House across the street from the Morton House.

Sarah was a poet and her publications include poems contributed to literary magazines.  Her first long poem was published in December, 1790, Ouabi: or The Virtues of Nature, An Indian Tale. In Four Cantos. Boston: Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer Andrews, 1790.  Other works include: Beacon Hill. A Local Poem, 1797; The Virtues of Society. A Tale Founded on Fact, 1799; My Mind and Its Thoughts, in Sketches, Fragments, and Essays, 1823.

In 1806 Perez was elected Speaker of the lower house in the General Court of Massachusetts and was re-elected in 1807, 1810 and 1811.  He was appointed to Attorney General in 1810 to fill a vacancy.  He served in this position until 1832.

The property was later acquired by the Tailor family.  It was taken down in 1891.

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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