Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1654

Reaction from Doug Wynne to yesterday’s photo with the hose hanging down –

Good morning, Earl.

The hose on the left looks like an illuminating-gas line for her desk lamp, most likely hooked up to a ceiling fixture.  If I remember correctly, such gas lines were visible in the series of Victorian interiors you provided earlier this year.  That ceiling fixture might be an early example of the “dual-fuel” concept, i.e. both illuminating-gas and electric, because I think I see an electric cord hanging down on the right, maybe for an electric desk lamp.  Based on my reading about the early development of toy electric trains, initial attempts at home electric power were unreliable.  So maybe the gas light indicates this picture was taken before Tesla’s more reliably generated and transmitted AC reached ascendency over Edison’s DC, which was limited to very local generation and distribution.  By the way, for someone who composed such lighthearted tunes, she doesn’t look all that lighthearted herself.  The influence of George Washington looking down from the wall over the bookcase?

Today’s Illustration:

A Methodist Church was located on Parkman Street at no. 29.  Today the land at no. 29 has been added to no. 27, and the whole is owned by the Shawmut Congregation.  There is a modern church building on the site.

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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. 1653

Elsie G. Phelan, who lived at 175 Glenway Street, was a composer of light-hearted music in the early 20^th century.  Internet searching that she composed the music for the following: Toy-Shop Jingles. No. 5 The Monkey on a String, Litle Leaves and I, Little Story by the Chocolate Soldier, On Parade with Christmas Canes, Playing Injun, Roly-Poly at the Popcorn Ball, Caramels Hide in Their Paper Coats, Jack Rabbit Steals a Molasses Kiss, What Makes the Thunder Sound, The Jumblies, Sugar Sailor Who Would Roll About, First Snow, Giant Killer, On the Gridiron March.

What is that hose hanging down on the left side of the photograph?

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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. 1652

The following is from the Boston Landmarks Commission neighborhood description of Lower Mills.

Gregory’s Roman Catholic Church at 2221 Dorchester Avenue represents an earlier church of 1863-64 that was extensively rebuilt between 1895 and 1902. Originally designed by Brooklyn, New York-based church architect Patrick C. Keeley, its present appearance dates to the turn-of the-century remodeling by Boston architect Patrick W. Ford. This Gothic Revival church is constructed of red pressed and common brick with brownstone and molded brick trimmings. It rests upon a rubble and quarry-faced granite foundation. The floor plan is that of a Latin Cross with two sacristies flanking the sanctuary at the head of the cross. The steeply pitched roofs of the nave and the transept are clad with gray slate tiles. Rising from the point of the nave and transepts’ gable roofs’ intersection is a low octagonal copper belvedere with louvered windows and pyramidal roof cap. The unusual main facade is characterized by a broad central gable flanked by round, conically capped. gold cross-topped towers. These distinctive towers render this church a major landmark on the Lower Mills “skyline” and when viewed from elevated areas such as Codman Hill, serve to locate and contribute to the still-discernable village qualities of this area. The central gable’s first floor is treated as a pointed arch loggia with entrances set within the two center arches. Above the entrances is a great recessed brick and brownstone trimmed pointed arch which contains five lancet windows of graduated height.

Rising from the center of the brownstone-edged central gable is a gold cross. St. Gregory’s side walls are pierced by six tall lancet windows. Noteworthy interior features include oak pews, a ceiling elaborately stenciled with geometric and floral designs in red, blue, green, black and gold leaf. The interior columns were once marbleized and each has a shallow Corinthian capital. The Corinthian acanthus leaf motif is continued in the gilt cornice below the ceiling as well as in the smaller half-columns and pilasters found throughout the 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. 1651

Since there was some interest in Friday’s illustration of the Church of the Holy Spirit, today we have another. 

Scan of photo of Church of the Holy Spirit, Mattapan, Mass., published in The American Architect and Building News, Dec. 25, 1886.  Rotch & Tilden, architects.
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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. 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