Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1650

Remember – Farm Day at the Dorchester Historical Society, this Sunday, October 16, from 2 to 4 pm.  Bring the great-grandkids.

Church of the Holy Spirit

The Church of the Holy Spirit was a mission of All Saints’ Church in the 1880s. It was during George Bennitt’s tenure that All Saints’ began services in Mattapan, which later resulted in the establishment of the Church of the Holy Spirit, the only mission of All Saints’ to become a parish. Father Bennitt went to Mattapan because Annie Rotch offered to assist in the work there. In April 1895 fourteen communicants were set off from All Saints’ to Mattapan. The Church building was given by Annie Lawrence Lamb in memory of her father Benjamin Rotch. It is Dorchester’s second stone Gothic Revival church and was designed by Arthur Rotch to draw the puddingstone of the church and the grounds into a rural ensemble sensitive to the topography of the site. The Church of the Holy Spirit is the first recorded association of Ralph Adams Cram with church architecture, for he was an apprentice in Rotch’s office and drew sketches of the church. Twenty-five years later, after he designed All Saints’, Ashmont, and after he had become perhaps the most eminent ecclesiastical architect in the United States, Cram designed the parish house next to Rotch’s church.

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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. 1649

Remember – Farm Day at the Dorchester Historical Society, this Sunday, October 16, from 2 to 4 pm.  Bring the great-grandkids.

The Immanuel Baptist Church was organized January 26, 1897, and the congregation erected their church building at 191 Adams Street next to the municipal building in Fields Corner.  Fire struck the building on February 24, 1983, and the building was demolished.

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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. 1648

Second Church in Codman Square

The following is from the Codman Square House Tour booklets:

Although it now stands but little removed from the commercial bustle of a reviving neighborhood shopping district, Codman Square’s oldest building remains among its most important as well as its most enduring.  Constructed of Maine timber during the administration of Thomas Jefferson, it still enjoys a useful life today nearly 200 years later.  Clearly indebted to the architectural pattern books of the day, its unknown designer composed an exterior of classic Federal form, with projecting vestibule and graceful steeple.  The latter’s belfry houses a bell cast by Paul Revere; the internally illuminated clock dial was added in 1914.   Although the front-facing or west façade of the building remains essentially unchanged from its early nineteenth-century appearance, the church has been enlarged several times toward the rear.  The first visible alteration, the frame ell of 1892, replaced an earlier addition of 1869; the brick wing beyond was added in 1929.

Brightly lit by its many large, plain-glass windows, the interior was remodeled extensively in the 1850s.  At that time, the present slip pews with lithe scroll arms replaced the original pews.  Although it is reasonable to surmise that these may have been the box pews prevalent at the time of the original construction, church records indicate only their paint color, which was green!  A splendid high pulpit of highly figured bookmatched mahogany was also installed at this time.  The displaced original pulpit ahs been retained as an historical relic under the gallery to the right.  Behind the pulpit is a large reredos whose Ionic columns support a shell enclosed by a heavily molded arch.  More explicitly neoclassical in feeling, this element may represent a still later modification.  Later still, dating from the turn of the twentieth century, is the choir loft’s massive pipe organ with its elaborately carved case.

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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. 1647

The Convalescents Home shown in this postcard was the earlier building of the Boston Home at the corner of Dorchester Avenue and Gallivan Boulevard.

Postcard. Caption on front: Convalescents Home, Dorchester, Mass. Postmarked May 19, 1910. Dorchester Center Station, Boston. With one cent stamp. On verso: No. B 13528 Published by The New England News Company. Boston, Mass. Leipzig-Berlin

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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. 1646

Text by Robert Severy:

Cedar Grove Cemetery Lot 53, Cedar Avenue and Linden Avenue, of the Benjamin Stone Jr. Post of the Grand Army of the Republic at 91 Park Street in Field’s Corner

This is the most visited lot in the cemetery with speakers, prayers, flags, wreaths, and the firing of volleys on every Memorial Day whether it rains or shines.  Forty one Civil War soldiers and sailors were interred in this lot from 1872 to 1933.  Wisely the Stone Post acquired the space not long after its organization and the first burial at Cedar Grove Cemetery in February of 1870.  The post built a now vanished hall at 91 Park Street in Field’s Corner which in 1942 was occupied by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2235. The records of the post are now in the Grand Army of the Republic Room at the State House on Beacon Mill 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. 1645

The Blaney Memorial Baptist Church was located on the corner of Dorchester Avenue and Richmond Street.

Postcard. Caption on front [Blaney Memorial Baptist Church] cannot be read fully. Postally unused. On verso: Pub. by Herbert E. Glasier & Co., Boston, Mass.

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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. 1644

Today we have a scan of alcohol prescriptions given during probation.

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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. 1643

Trade card or blotter from National Diaper Service, 1208 Dorchester Avenue.

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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. 1642

Raising the flagstaff at Uphams Corner from Dorchester Day book 1909.

It seems as if the street must be Columbia Road, but what is the building (or buildings) behind the flagpole?  It may be the Edward Everett School when it was located on Sumner Street.  I am guessing that the flagpole in the distance must be at Richardson Park near Edward Everett Square.

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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

Saturday, October 1st, Michael Kozuch lead a walking tour of the historical, social and architectural history of Clam Point from 1840 to 1900.