Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1762

The Dorchester Reporter last week carried a story about Douglas MacKinnon.  Dorchester Reporter, April 5, 2012: Memoir with a Message: Dot native MacKinnon tells of rough-and-tumble journey. By Bill Forry.

The article begins: “Douglas McKinnon, a son of Dorchester, begins his memoir as a riveting, rat-a-tat account of a childhood punctuated by near-daily narrow escapes from the undertow drag of his reckless parents, whose taste for drink and excess in 1960s Boston was surpassed only by their ambivalence about their own kids’ survival.”

For the rest, take a look at:

http://www.dotnews.com/2012/memoir-message-dot-native-mackinnon-tells-rough-and-tumble-journey

Douglas MacKinnon is former White House and Pentagon official who spent three years working in a Joint Command. Douglas MacKinnon was also press secretary to former Senator Bob Dole. Douglas MacKinnon has published hundreds of columns in every major paper in the country, and Douglas MacKinnon is heard and seen regularly on radio and television as a political commentator. Douglas MacKinnon is also an author and novelist.

He is the author of The Apocalypse Directive, Vengeance Is Mine, and Rolling Pennies in the Dark.

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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. 1761

Yesterday we saw the Lucy Stone School, one of two school buildings that the Roxbury Prep Charter School will begin to use.  Today we have the other one: the Quincy E. Dickerman School.

The Quincy E. Dickerman School was closed by the city’s school department in 2009.  It was built in 1915 to a design by architect J. A. Schweinfurth.

Quincy Dickerman was a teacher in the Bosotn Public Schools for 50 years. He served as Master of the Brimmer School.

Source: What’s In a Name? Names of Boston’s Schools: Their Origin. Boston: School Volunteers for Boston and the Boston Public Schools, 1980.

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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. 1760

The building in the lower part of today’s illustration was built in 1937, and this week the Dorchester Reporter announced that the Roxbury Prep Charter School will expand to the Lucy Stone School building and the Quincy E. Dickerman School building (not pictured).

The building in the upper part of the illustration was constructed between 1918 and 1933, and I am not sure when it was taken down.

http://www.dotnews.com/2012/charter-school-will-expand-two-shuttered-schoolhouses

“After winning approval from the city, Roxbury Prep will be expanding out of its original campus in Mission Hill to two additional sites: the Lucy Stone building on Regina Road and the also-vacant Quincy E. Dickerman School building on Magnolia Street near Uphams Corner.

Roxbury Prep was awarded 1,800 seats by the Commonwealth a year ago February through a state process called charter authorization.

While the school was searching for space last year to accommodate those students both in private real estate and by working with the Boston Public Schools, District, the city was offering three vacant school buildings for lease. Roxbury Prep won its bid to secure leases on the two it will move into soon.

The first of the two additional middle school campuses actually opened last September, but its 75 fifth-graders have been meeting at a temporary location at 214 Harvard Ave. On March 7, Roxbury Prep staff found out they would be moving into the Lucy Stone building.

Today, the Mission Hill campus has 240 students in the sixth through eighth grades. Beginning in September, there will be 300 students there in Grades 5 through 8, 150 students in Grades 5 and 6 at the Lucy Stone campus, and 75 fifth-graders in the Dickerman building. …”

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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. 1759

Students from the North Bennet Street School repaired windows at the First Parish Church.  The First Parish Church’s steps in the plan for restoring the building are as follows.

The Massachusetts Historical Commission provided a $50,000 emergency fund grant to help match the George B. Henderson Foundation’s grant of $100,000 for recent emergency repairs to the chimneys, parapets, and tower. This project finished on schedule and under the original estimates of our architects, McGinley Kalsow & Associates. 

The next project will restore the original steeple: preserving and returning the two lantern sections that were removed in 2006 due to structural instability, and preserving the clock section (including the clock faces and the historic mechanism.) The original estimate for material and labor: $350,000, but there will be a significant reduction in labor costs if the church secures the North Bennet Street School involvement.  The Church has received a verbal commitment from NBSS’ preservation carpentry program that their second-year students will restore the two lantern sections.

Designed in 1896 by the architectural firm Cabot, Everett and Mead, preliminary research indicates that the church building is one of the oldest ecclesiastical examples of Colonial Revival architecture.   The congregation is the oldest congregation within the present-day boundaries of the city of Boston and one of the older in the United States. Gathered first in England in March 1630, it was the second congregation planted in the Massachusetts Colony, the third in New England, and through annexation became the oldest church in Boston.

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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. 1758

The birthplace house of Edward Everett stood on the corner of Columbia Road and Boston Street, where there is now a three-decker with a Dunkin Donuts behind.

 Edward Everett (1794-1865), was an American statesman, educator, and orator, born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard University and the University of Gottingen, Germany. Everett was the editor of the North American Review from 1820 until 1824. In 1825 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served for ten years. He was governor of Massachusetts from 1836 to 1840. The following year he was appointed U.S. Minister to Great Britain, returning to the U.S. in 1845 to beome president of Harvard University, a position he held from 1846 to 1849. Everett served as Secretary of State (1852-53) under President Millard Fillmore and as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1853 to 1854. In 1860 he ran unsuccessfully for the vice-presidency on the ticket of the Constitutional Union party as the running mate of John Bell of Tennessee. His orations, including the one he delivered at Gettysburg just before Lincoln’s Address, were published in four volumes (1850-92).
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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

Note that our April program is scheduled for Sunday, April 29^th.  This is different from earlier announcements about the date.

Come and be entertained by John Horrigan.

John Horrigan, historical lecturer, has been called “New England’s Pocket Historian.”  Mr. Horrigan joined us once before with a lecture on the history of New England Blizzards.  Now he returns with:

“Booms, Bubbles, Busts, Depressions, Recessions and Panics: A History of American Financial Crises”

Description: New England folklorist and economic historian John Horrigan presents a chronology of recessions, bank crashes, slides, panics and manias in American finance including: The South Sea Bubble, The Mississippi Land Scheme, the Darien Scheme, The Financial Crisis of 1785, Canal Mania and Duer’s Panic of 1792, The Panic of 1797, The Panic of 1807, The Panic of 1819, The Panic of 1825, The Jacksonian Financial Crisis of 1837, The Financial Crisis of 1847, The Western Blizzard Panic of 1857, The Financial Crisis of 1860, The Silver Panic of 1866, The Panic of 1869, The Panic of 1873, The Financial Crisis of 1878, Grant’s Last Panic of 1884, The Panic of 1890, The Silver Panic of 1896, The Panic of 1901, The Panic of 1907, The Financial Crisis of 1920, The Crash of 1929, The Great Depression, The Panic of 1937, The 1953 Recession, The 1958 Recession, The Kennedy Slide of 1962, The Johnson Erosion of 1966, The 1967 Oil Embargo, The 1973 Oil Crisis, The 1979 Energy Crisis, The Recession of 1982-83, Black Monday (October 19, 1987), The Junk Bond Recession (1988-92), The Third Energy Crisis (1990), Black Wednesday (1992), The Mini Crash of October 27, 1997, The Slide of ’98, The Dot Com Bubble (2001), The 9/11 Slide, The Emerging Markets Correction of May, 2006, The Great Stock Market Draw Down (August, 2007), The Grand Dow Slide of October 19, 2007, The Mortgage Crisis (2008) and The Great Humbling (2009 – 2012).

Horrigan puts these economic troughs in a cyclical historical perspective and also equates them with their subsequent booms.

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1757

Today we have a photograph of organ pipes at the Skinner Organ factory.
In 1914 the Skinner Organ Factory company moved into a new factory building in Dorchester at Crescent Avenue and Sydney Streets. The building still stands in part on Sydney Street—part of it was demolished to create the ramp from Columbia Road to the southbound side of the Southeast Expressway.

Ernest M. Skinner was the most prominent organ builder of the early 20th century who believed an organ should be able to play all music effectively and with infinite tonal variety. His organs were highly orchestral in character. The succeeding generation rejected his “all-purpose” organ and insisted upon absolute authenticity in the performance of early music. Many of his organs were rebuilt by them to satisfy this change in opinion. There is, however, a renewed interest in the Skinner organ in more recent years. The pinnacle of Skinner’s career may have been the installation of one of his organs in the Washington National Cathedral.
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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. 1756

Postcard. Caption on front: The Tuttle House, Savin Hill, Dorchester.  Postmarked Uphams Corner Station. With one-cent stamp. On verso: Pub. by Putnam Art Co., Dorchester, Mass.

The Tuttle House, which was located at the corner of Savin Hill Avenue and Tuttle Street, existed as a “sea-side” hotel from 1822 to 1924.

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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. 1755

Don Rodman of Rodman Ford grew up in Dorchester near Franklin Park

The following is from the company website: http://rodmanford.com/displayContent.asp?keywords=history

The “History of Rodman” began in Dorchester with a young man’s love of automobiles.  Don Rodman’s major interest as a child was solving the complexities of the machine that to many represented both mobility and wealth.  His interest in auto mechanics started by working after high school and weekends on the cars of friends and relatives.  Approximately one year prior to his graduation he made the decision to drop out of school to make auto mechanics his chosen field, and took a full time job as a laundry truck mechanic.  His quest for knowledge led him to enlist as a mechanic in the U.S. Army where he received his first formal training. While in the Army, Don met and married his wife, Marilyn.  Following his time in the service, Don worked at a number of dealerships where he moved from mechanic to salesman to general manager.  His growing reputation in the industry led to an offer from Ford Motor Company to take over a small, struggling dealership in Foxboro Center.  He accepted that offer in 1960 and quickly recruited his brother, Gerry, who left a career in the Air Force to become a partner and salesman extraordinaire.  This was the start of Rodman Ford Sales, Inc.

In 1964, Don and Gerry’s success enabled them to expand to a new location on Route One, the present location of Rodman Ford.  In 1972, Don acquired a Lincoln-Mercury franchise, which was located with the Ford franchise.  In 1988, the Rodman Lincoln-Mercury franchise moved to a facility of its own – one mile south of Rodman Ford on Route One in Foxboro.

A commitment to health and fitness led to the opening of the Rodman Health & Fitness Center in 1989.  Located behind the Foxboro Lincoln-Mercury dealership, the center features all of the amenities you’d expect from one of the region’s premier fitness clubs.

In 1990, Rodman expanded beyond Route One with the opening of a second Lincoln-Mercury dealership on Route 44 in Raynham. 

The Rodman’s exemplified their commitment to total automotive care by opening the technology-driven Rodman Collision Repair Center and Rodman Car & Truck Rentals in 1996.  The Collision Repair Center is located on Route One, between the Ford and Lincoln-Mercury dealerships. 

New Year’s Day 2001 marked the grand opening of the new, state-of-the-art Ford store and Quick Lane, which replaced the original Route One Ford dealership.

 In 2002 Lincoln Place, a commercial business and office building, opened on Lincoln Road across from the Health & Fitness Center. The building houses the Ride for Kids headquarters, Rodman’s primary philanthropic endeavor

Rodman Ride for Kids.  It would be a gross understatement to say that Don Rodman has many charitable affiliations.  In fact, there are literally too many to mention.  However, you should be aware of the most visible one.  The Rodman Ride for Kids began in 1989 with the idea of creating a fun bike-riding event to raise money for inner-city kids at risk.  The first Ride raised $10,000 to support the work done with over 200 children. Currently, the yearly event hosts thousands of riders who, along with many corporate contributors, raise over three million dollars annually to improve the lives of thousands of kids and their families, and communities across Massachusetts.

In June of 1996, he received an Honorary Doctorates Degree in Commercial Science from Suffolk University for charitable endeavors.  In June of 1999, he received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston for his most remarkable rise in the business world in conjunction with years of dedicated charitable activities on behalf of the needy in Massachusetts and beyond.

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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