Advertisement in Fire Engineering magazine, April 1949, featuring a picture of eight-year-old Thomasina De Beneditto who pulled the fire box alarm when she observed a fire in a nearby factory in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
In 1949, the Gamewell Company was located in Newton. The Gamewell fire alarm was created by George Milliken who lived at 44 Virginia Street, Dorchester, from the 1880s to 1921. Milliken was renowned for his inventions. Among them were the Milliken Repeater and the Duplex System, both of which aided greatly in the development of the telegraph system. By 1867, Milliken had risen to the position of General Manager of the Boston Office of Western Union. During his tenure, he hired and oversaw the work of a young Thomas Edison as a telegraph operator. After many years of service, Milliken left Western Union and by 1885 had become the superintendent of Electrical Development and Manufacturing, a laboratory and factory on Congress Street. Three years later, Milliken was Superintendent at the Gamewell Aux. Fire Alarm Company on Pearl Street.
Within the postcard industry in the early twentieth century, there was a subset of generic postcards with space for a town name to be printed or stamped with a rubber stamp. We have two examples today, where the sender thought the cards appropriate. The generic cards were called pennant cards, named for the shape of the space where the town name was to be entered.
Postcard. Caption on front: To This Little Town of Dorchester, There Surely is Some Style. Postmarked Feb. 9, 1917. With one-cent stamp. On verso: The picture [picture of a carnation] of pink perfection. Regd The Fairman Co., NY.
Postcard. Caption on front: I’m waiting for your mail in Dorchester. Why don’t you write? Postmarked Sep 19, 1912. With one cent stamp.
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Today’s illustration shows a four-master schooner delivering coal to the Cutter coal yard on Commercial Point. The location of the schooner in the photograph would be at the bottom of the detail from the 1898 atlas, just under the red outline of the Cutter property. The location today is where Victory Road enters Commercial Point.
Commercial Point was named for its commercial activity. In the 1830s, a syndicate pursued whaling from the Point. By 1850, three was coal and timber yard at the outer edge of the Point. Ranstead and Dearborn operated a forge on the north side. The Trask Pottery was there as well. From the later 1850s until the 870s, 1John Preston had a chocolate manufacturing facility there. In the 1850s, Spicer & Purrington had a wood and coal yard where the Cutter business was later located. In 1874 Preston owned the coal yard, and The Boston Gas Light Company owned a large portion of the land on Commercial Point. By 1884, the D. J. Cutter Company owned the coal yard and operated from that location, supplying wood and coal for heating. The coal gas holders of the gas lighting company first show up in the 1884 atlas. There have been gas holders on the Point ever since. In the twentieth century, the change was made from the storage of manufactured gas to the storage of liquefied natural gas.
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.
Today’s illustration is a news photograph with caption affixed to the back side:
Make Merry. Wreathed in smiles, Mary Sullivan, Dorchester (left) and Ann Weinberg, Chelsea, offer a toast to each other’s good fortune as 1940 was ushered in at the Brown Derby
Today’s illustration is one of many advertisements issued by the Walter Baker company in the period from the 1890s well into the mid-twentieth century. The company’s logo, the Baker chocolate lady, can be seen on the tavern’s sign.
Winter weather demands hot chocolate or cocoa.
Hot chocolate is just that – melted chocolate. There is a difference between cocoa and hot chocolate. Cocoa is made from cocoa powder, and hot chocolate is made from shaved chocolate bars. Usually, hot chocolate has a richer taste, because chocolate bars have more cocoa butter than cocoa powders.
To make true hot chocolate, you can buy hot chocolate mixes made of tiny chocolate shavings, or you can buy fine shaved chocolate from baking suppliers. You could shave your own from your favorite chocolate bars. You can shave chocolate bars, choosing from dark, milk, white or flavored chocolate. You can combine any of these in your own proportions.
Whether you are making hot chocolate or cocoa, slowly combine your chocolate with a small amount of milk or cream until smooth. Then fill the cup with hot water. You can use re-constituted powdered milk, almond milk, soy milk or rice milk. Sometimes only a couple of tablespoons will do. If you start with unsweetened cocoa powder or chocolate shavings, you will need to add sugar or maple syrup, honey or agave nectar. Sweeten to your taste – some recipes call for as much as two tablespoons of sugar for each tablespoon of unsweetened chocolate.
The illustration is of Elisha Brown Bird and his poster The Red Letter, 1896
Bird was an illustrator who was known for posters and bookplate designs. Winifred Porter Truesdell published a book titled E. B. Bird and His Bookplates. (1904). Truesdell wrote: “Mr. Bird is a Boston man, and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and from his experience there gained his first knowledge of light and shade, the handling of color, and systems of pen work. After his graduation he became head designer for the Boston Photogravure Company and later was with the Art Publishing Company, which he left to go into business for himself. His first large order was the embellishment of Famous Composers and Their Work.
While at the Institute he was always associated with the college publications, and has assisted in the illustration, and superintended the issue of many college annuals throughout the country. During the recent poster craze he was one of the foremost designers, his bold style being very convincing. He has also an enviable reputation as a cartoonist, being at the head of this branch of art on football matters.
His ideas in book-plate making are to get away from the old rectangular shape and general ideas taken by most designers and turn out something new both in shape and handling of the subject.”
Another private publication limited to 110 copies was put out with reproductions of his book plates, A Booklet Devoted to the Book Plates of Elisha Brown Bird. Being a Collection Printed in Photogravure. (1907)
The following is from his obituary:
April 10, 1943, The Boston Globe, Elisha B. Bird. Funeral services for Elisha B. Bird, 75, nationally known illustrator and president of the American Society of Bookplate Designers and Collectors, will be held Monday noon at the Waterman Chapel, 495 Commonwealth av., and burial will be in Forest Hills Cemetery. He died in Philadelphia yesterday.
A native of Dorchester, he attended M. I. T., and after graduation became one of the first to cartoon baseball players in action. For more than 15 years prior to his retirement in 1939, he was in the art department of the New York Times. Permanent exhibitions of his bookplates are on display in the Boston Public Library and in the libraries of Harvard and Yale.
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.
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.
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 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].
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.
