Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration 2542 Ham radio – is that still a thing?

Posted on December 5, 2021 by earltaylor

Reminder: the Dorchester Historical Society sales shop is online at www.dorchesterhistoricalsociety.org

You can also give a great gift to yourself or a friend – order a house history for a house in Dorchester or Mattapan. Check it out on the house history page on the Dorchester Historical Society website.

When radio came into American life in the first part of the twentieth century, it opened up communication in a way that was almost unimaginable. In the 1930s and 1940s, residents in Dorchester/Mattapan joined a national craze for communicating through the airwaves at the short end of the spectrum. The small selection of their postcards shown in the illustration testifies to the interest in shortwave broadcasting and receiving, often called ham radio. We don’t know how many operators there are in the neighborhood today, but the ham radio remains popular across the country.

The following is fromhttps://www.hhhistory.com/2015/07/ham-radio-in-1930s.html

During the 1900s, radio (first known as wireless telegraphy) was a new means of communication used by landline telegraphers who left their offices to work on ships or government stations. Soon people who were interested in the new technology started building their own radios. There were no regulations, and many of the amateur stations were very powerful. Two amateurs in a town, communicating with each other, could effectively jam all the other operations in the area.

Frustrated commercial operators referred to the amateurs as “hams.” This was a derogatory term, meant to insult them. But the amateurs embraced the word and made it their own. Many men and boys, and a few women, built radios and became ham operators.

Soon there were too many stations and too few radio frequencies. Amateurs multiplied when vacuum tubes were improved and made cheaper. Then “continuous wave” transmission was invented. This allowed the transmission to concentrate on one wavelength instead of many. Operators began experimenting with shorter waves, and “short wave radio” was born.

In 1927, the government couldn’t ignore radio any longer. They stepped in with regulations. Starting in 1929, all ham operators had to have a license, as well as “call letters” for their station. In 1936, there were 46,000 licensed amateurs in the United States.

During the Great Depression, commercial radio became very popular. Its wide range of live music, comedy, variety shows, and dramatic programming served as a welcome escape from those troubled times. Even though many people were out of work, they desperately struggled to keep up payments on their radios. Amateurs couldn’t put music on their stations. In fact, it was against the law to make any money from their ham radio. But they had their own magazine called QST. The name was derived from the radio Q signal that means “calling all stations.” The magazine has been continuously published since May of 1919. Today they have over 150,000 subscribers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Dorchester, Ham radio, Mattapan, postcards, short wave radio | Comments Off

Dorchester Illustration 2541 Putnam Nail Company humorous advertising card

Posted on November 28, 2021 by earltaylor

The Putnam Nail Company was located in the Port Norfolk section of Dorchester. In addition to weekly advertisements in magazines, the company put out a series of advertising cards. Many of them featured horses, both pacers and trotters, who had won races. There were other trade cards where the connection to horseshoe nails was a little forced. Today’s example has an illustration with the caption “Raising the old man.” The verse has an interesting use of the phrase: “they are the boss.”

The verse reads:

My milk is spilt, my back is bruised,

I am altogether badly used,

I’d rather ride a cantankerous horse,

Shod with Putnam Nails!

They are the Boss.

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Dorchester Illustration 2539 Gibson School, School Street

Posted on November 14, 2021 by earltaylor

Christopher Gibson School

The Gibson School house on School Street was named in honor of Christopher Gibson, an early donor to the schools of Dorchester. When he died in 1674, Gibson left the sum of 104 Pounds to the town of Dorchester for the benefit of the schools. The money was invested in land and, by 1895, had grown to a value of $14,000. The Gibson School Fund is administered by the City of Boston.

The school building in the illustration was built in 1857, a portion of the expense being met by generous gifts from the Hon. Edmund P. Tileston and Roswell Gleason. The upper image shows the front of the building, while the lower image, from about 1910, shows the back side. The Oliver Wendell Holmes School had been built in 1905, nearly obscuring three sides of the former Gibson School building.

According to Orcutt, in 1881 the name, Gibson School, was moved to what later became the Atherton Building on Columbia Street (now Road). Later the name was moved to another building on Ronald Street (formerly Avenue).

Source: Orcutt, William Dana. Good Old Dorchester: A Narrative History of the Town, 1630-1893. Cambridge: The University Press, 1908 [c.1891].

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Christopher Gibson School, Dorchester, School Street | Comments Off

Dorchester Illustration 2538 Lyceum Hall

Posted on November 7, 2021 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2538 Lyceum Hall

Today’s illustration is a photograph of Lyceum Hall and the fire station behind it on Parish Street in 1953. Construction of Lyceum Hall was completed in February 1840. Walter Baker presided at the opening ceremony.

The idea of having popular lectures was just receiving wide popularity at the beginning of the 1840s, and Lyceum Hall took a place in educating the minds of the community and influencing political opinion. Dr. Jerome Van Crowninshield Smith, afterwards mayor of Boston, lectured on Geology; Mr. Purdett talked on Phrenology; Mr. W. Phillips, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. John Pierpont and Theodore Parker cause much excitement in advocating the abolition of slavery. The Hall was opened for enlistment in the Union Army at the time of the Civil War. Over the years, new religious congregations held their first services in the Hall before constructing their own buildings. The Dorchester Whigs once made Lyceum Hall their headquarters. Lyceum Hall was booked for balls and other social events.

In the 20th century the building was used by the School Department, but its condition deteriorated, and in 1955, it was demolished. The Boston Globe reported that year: “It had been condemned by the Boston School Committee after serving for many years as an annex to the nearby Mather School and as a shop training center for exceptional boys.”

The fire station behind Lyceum Hall in the photograph was built in 1928. In 1953, when the photograph was taken, the building had three floors, which is the way it was built, but since then the third floor of the fire station has been removed. The building behind the fire station was at one time the Francis G. Kane Post of the American Legion. It is now the Calvary Church International. The building first appeared on a map in the 1898 atlas. Its visual appearance suggests that it may be from an earlier time period and may have been moved to this site.

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Dorchester Illustration 2537 Mission of the Epiphany

Posted on October 31, 2021 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2537 Mission of the Epiphany

Built as Mission of the Epiphany in Dorchester, the property at 234 Norfolk Street is now known as the Mt. Olive Worship Center. The In 1906, the Mission acquired the lot at the corner to build a church and, in 1918, acquired at least part of the property owned by the heirs of Hezekiah G. Ufford. The image at the top of today’s illustration shows the proposed elevation that appeared in The Boston Globe, June 5, 1908. The bottom image is a snip from Google Street View showing the building today.

In 1968, the Mission of the Epiphany in Dorchester conveyed the property to the Non-Denominational Temple of Christ. In 1995, the property was acquired by the Mount Olive Non-Denominational Temple. The property was known at the Mount Olive Temple at least as early as 1975.

In 1908, Stanton Street already had a church at its other end, the Stanton Avenue [sic] Methodist Church, and less than a block west from the new Mission of the Epiphany, the Norfolk Unitarian Church stood at the corner of Norfolk Street and Capen Streets. By 1910, a parochial residence was located on the second property on Stanton Street, although the new St. Matthews Roman Catholic Church was not yet in place.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Dorchester, Mission of the Epiphany, Mt. Olive Worship Center, Norfolk Unitarian Church, St. Matthews Roman Catholic Church | Comments Off

Dorchester Illustration 2536 Dorchester-born mystery writer Paul Whelton

Posted on October 24, 2021 by earltaylor

In the case of authors, it is always interesting to speculate how spending part of one’s life in Dorchester may have influenced their published works.

Paul Whelton was born in Dorchester in 1895. His family lived on Holiday Street and later Westville Street. Paul lived with his family into the 1920s. His father, John, was a driver of horse-drawn cars for the Boston Police Department. Paul indicated on his draft registration card for World War I that he was working as a newspaper reporter for the Boston Journal. He served in the war and came back a disabled veteran, although the disability was never specified.

By the time he died in 1953, he had worked for the Boston American, Boston Traveler, New York Daily News and Daily Mirror and the Los Angeles Examiner. His brother, Alfred, who was two years younger, became political editor of the Boston American.

In the 1940s, when Paul was living in East Braintree, he began to write crime novels with a main character who was a newspaper reporter named Garry Dean. The books were published as part of the Lippincott Main Line Mysteries. The first in the Garry Dean series was titled Death and the Devil and was also published later under the title Flash-hold for Murder. The book was called a hair-curling thriller about wise-cracking newspaper Garry Dean, who walked out of his job into a stew—ingredients a millionaire, a dead gangster and a dancer of parts, named Renee.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Death and the Devil, Dorchester, Flash-hold for Murder, Paul Whelton | Comments Off

Dorchester Illustration 2535 Dorchester Power Station

Posted on October 17, 2021 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2535 Dorchester Power Station

Reminder: a house history from the Dorchester Historical Society would make a great gift to a homeowner in Dorchester or Mattapan. Take a look at some of the completed histories on the Dorchester Historical Society website www.dorchesterhistoricalsociety.org

The Dorchester Power Station of the West End Street Railway Company generated electrical power for the company’s street cars on the Dorchester, Neponset, Ashmont and Milton lines. The brick power station on Freeport Street with a tile roof and chimney and a wharf for coal delivery was erected in 1896. The building is now occupied by Yale Electric Company.

The building of hard-burned brick with freestone trimmings sits on a foundation of concrete and stone. The roof is carried on arched iron trusses provided by the Boston Bridge Company. The roof is a series of arches “springing from truss to truss. The arches are constructed of two layers of flat fireproof tiles laid in cement. This special roof construction was designed by Mr. Baker and carried out under his instructions by Messrs. Guastavino, of Boston.” The Guastavino tile arch systems is a version of the Catalan vault brought to the United States in 1885 by Spanish architect and builder Rafael Guastavino. It was patented in the U.S. by Guastavino in 1892.

The illustration shows the building from an early photograph and an example of Guastavino arches from the New York Municipal Building.

A coal dock extended into the bay. The coal was delivered in barges and hoisted to the top of a trestle, where it was dumped into automatic self-dumping cards. The boiler room had two batteries of two 500 horse power boilers each.

Sources: H. W. Wheeler. “The Dorchester Power Station of the West End St. Ry. Co., Boston, Mass.” The Electrical Engineer, vol. xxiii, no. 464, March 24, 1897, 309-313.

John Ochsendorf. Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile. (2010)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Commercial Point, Dorchester, Freeport Street, Power Station, Yale Electric | Comments Off

Dorchester Illustration 2534 Bronze Clapp’s Favorite Pear

Posted on October 10, 2021 by earltaylor

Today’s illustration is from WGBH public television. They shared a piece from GBH News’ The Curiosity Desk that digs into the curious story behind Boston’s strangest historic statue, a 12-foot bronze pear in the Dorchester neighborhood. WGBH requested us to share this video with our followers.

The link for the video is

https://www.wgbh.org/news/curiosity-desk/the-giant-pear-of-dorchester

”If there are two things you can’t spit without hitting in Boston, it’s a Dunkin’ Donuts and a historic statue. But how did this delicious fruit end up becoming immortalized on the city’s streets? The idea for the 12- foot pear statue was conceived back in 2007 by artist Laura Baring-Gould as a response to the city’s desire to make a historic sculpture the centerpiece of a renovated Edward Everett Square in Dorchester.

Pears were actually once grown in abundance in Dorchester. Not to mention, a distinct variety of pear, ‘the Clapp’s Favorite’, was invented at the Clapp Family’s 18th century farmhouse, now home to the Dorchester Historical Society. The Clapps were among the founding families of Dorchester, sailing here from England in 1630.

While pears may no longer be a Dorchester staple, Baring-Gould hopes that the statue will serve as a metaphor for Boston’s most diverse neighborhood. A neighborhood of people who according to her, “are tough. They’re resilient. Their skins are thick,” just like the Clapp’s Favorite.

This video is part of a new weekly digital series from GBH News that provides answers to perplexing questions proposed by the audience. The Curiosity Desk video series is hosted by reporter Edgar B. Herwick III who has answered hundreds of questions since the launch of The Curiosity Desk as a radio feature in 2014.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bronze Pear, Clapp's Favorite Pear, Dorchester, Edward Everett Square | Comments Off

Dorchester Illustration 2533 John Tucker’s Harness Shoop

Posted on October 3, 2021 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2533 John Tucker’s harness shop

The house in the illustration, which still exists, is located behind the stores at 1156 to 1160 Washington Street. It was built in 1798. The atlases indicate that the stores in front of the house were first built after 1889 and before 1894, probably following Tucker’s death in 1892.

John Atherton Tucker operated a harness shop at 1158 Washington Street and lived there much of his life. Later in life, sometime between 1857 and 1861, he moved to 1079 Adams Street.

The house on Washington Street, shown in the illustration, was built by John’s father, Atherton Tucker in 1798. In 1830, Atherton divided the property, apparently keeping a third interest for himself, giving a third to his son, William, and giving John a third interest. John’s portion was described as:

the south part of the chaise maker’s shop, bounded by the partition as it now stands measuring about 14 feet more or less, the whole of the south chamber over said shop and the whole of the chamber over the same on the third story and the whole of the bedroom in the entry of the third story in the building ceded by and belonging to me, [and] a certain parcel of land hereinafter described, also one third of the cellar on the south side of said building containing two arches and the privilege of passing to and from said rooms and places in a convenient manner. Also one undivided third part of the barn on said land except the paint shop in the south part of the same, measuring fifteen feet in front with the platform adjoining the same, also one undivided third part of the wood house thereon …

John A. Tucker was born in 1803. At the time of his retirement in 1891, an article in The Dorchester Beacon newspaper stated that John started in business in 1829. The non-population U.S. Census schedules for 1850 and 1860 give the value of his annual production of harnesses as $1,000.

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Dorchester Illustration 2532 the first This Old House

Posted on September 26, 2021 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2532 the first This Old House

Today’s illustration shows the Eliza Clapp House, the first This Old House at 6 Percival Street, Dorchester. In 1979, Boston PBS station WGBH produced the first season of This Old House. The first series was about the renovation of the Eliza Clapp House. The show inspired many other home restoration television shows.

Eliza Clapp (1811-1888) was the adopted daughter of Isaac and Eliza (Cook) Clapp. Isaac and Eliza owned the western end of Jones Hill, and their house was located where the Strand Theatre is today. Eliza inherited the Clapp house, which stood on 363,129 square feet of land. Eliza sold the property to Julia K. Dyer, wife of Micah Dyer, Jr., in 1863. The Clapp genealogy notes that the Clapp House on Columbia Road (formerly Hancock Street) was remodeled, probably by the Dyers before they moved in. Eliza moved to 6 Percival Street, the house that, in the late 20^th century, became the first This Old House.

Percival Street, which runs between St. Peter’s Church and this house, was named for Captain John Percival (“Mad Jack”), a naval hero of the War of 1812 and later the champion of the restoration of the USS Constitution. His house stood opposite this one on the location of St. Peter’s Church.

The following is from The Magazine of Poetry, a Quarterly Review, v. 1 (Buffalo, 1889)

Clapp. One of the most notable of the poems published in the now famous Dial, was one with the title “The Future is Better than the Past,” which has been generally been ascribed to Emerson. It is now known to have been written not by Emerson, but by Miss Eliza Thayer Clapp. As generally printed it appears only in part. Rev. George W. Cooke, of Dedham, Mass., who has written the history of the Dial, gives the poem in full. Mr. Cooke says of it in his history of the Dial: “The poem in the first number of the second volume, entitled, ‘The Future is Better than the Past,’ has often been credited to Emerson. It first appeared over his name n ‘Hymns for the Church,’ compiled by Rev. F. H. Hedge and Rev F. D. Huntington, in 1853. Then it was so printed in the ‘Hymns of the Spirit,’ by Rev. Samuel Longfellow and Rev. Samuel Johnson, and in Dr. James Martineau’s ‘Hymns of Praise and Prayer.’ It was contributed to the Dial, at Emerson’s request, by one of his most ardent disciples, Eliza Thayer Clapp.

Miss Clapp was born in Dorchester, mass, and has always lived a quiet home-life in that suburb of Boston. The transcendental movement brought new life to her Unitarian Faith, and she entered into its spirit with zeal. As a Sunday School teacher, having charge of a class of girls from ten to fifteen years of age, she prepared her own lessons for their instruction. These were published as ‘Words in a Sunday-school.’ A little later, in 1845, another book, prepared n the same manner, was published as ‘Studies in Religion.’ These little books were received with much favor Christian Register, but she has published only a few pieces. The five poems of hers printed in the Dial of July, 1841, all appeared there because Emerson solicited their publication. The one which has been so often credited to him is worthy of his genius, and it embodies, as no other poem of the period does, the very heart and spirit of the transcendental movement.”

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The archive of these historical posts can be viewed on the blog at

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For other resources sharing Dorchester history, see www.dorchesteratheneum2.org

The Dorchester Historical Society’s historic houses are closed at this time due to the COVID-19 corona virus. We will announce when the houses will be once again open to the public. For now our programs have been suspended.

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