Dorchester Illustration no. 2306 Cars Decorated for Parade, 1915
Today we have a photograph of two cars from 1915 with flags facing the wrong way on Columbia Road, and the display advertisement from the 1913 Boston City Directory for R.S. Fitch Real Estate. Were the cars going to join the Dorchester Day Parade, or were they out for the Fourth of July? The person who owned the photo thinks the first car may be an Oakland Touring Car. The license plate of the second car has the date 1915.
The brick building in the background with the sign R.S, Fitch Real Estate is now 622 Columbia Road (city assessor gives it as 4 Hamlet Street). The Boston City Directories from 1913 and 1915 have entries for R.S. Fitch Real Estate at 79 Milk Street and 624 Columbia Road. Fitch lived on Sumner Street. On the back of the photo, there is a handwritten note: W.H. Hardy, 19 Parkman Street, and Mr. Milton, 16 Parkman Street.
Neither Fitch nor Milton seems to have owned real estate on Sumner Street or Parkman Street respectively. The 1918 atlas shows the owner of 19 Parkman Street as William H. Hardy. City directories and census show William to have been a building contractor. He would have been 47 years of age at the time of photograph. Too bad we don’t know which man in the photograph he was.
Check out the Dorchester Historical Society’s online catalog at
http://dorchester.pastperfectonline.com/
The archive of these historical posts can be viewed on the blog at www.dorchesterhistoricalsocietyblog.org