Dorchester

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Map of Dorchester, Massachusetts and surrounding area from the H. F. Walling Map of the County of Norfolk, Massachusetts, 1858.

Dorchester is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is named after the town of Dorchester in the English county of Dorset, from which Puritans emigrated. Dorchester, including a large portion of today's Boston, was separately incorporated in 1630.^[1] It was still a primarily rural town and had a population of 12,000 when annexed to Boston in 1870. Railroad and streetcar lines brought rapid growth, increasing the population to 150,000 by 1920. It is now a large working class community with many European Americans (and is still a center of Irish American immigration), African Americans, Caribbean Americans, Latinos, and East and Southeast Asian Americans. Recently, there has been an influx of young working professionals, gay men, and working artists to the neighborhood, adding to its diversity.

Neighborhoods

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Map showing the locations of Dorchester neighborhoods

Dorchester is Boston's largest and most populous community. Due to its size of about six square miles, it is often divided for statistical purposes. North Dorchester includes the portion north of Quincy Street, East Street and Freeport Street. South Bay Center and Newmarket industrial area are major sources of employment. The main business district in this part of Dorchester is Uphams Corner, at the intersection of Dudley Street and Columbia Road. The Harbor Point area (formerly known as Columbia Point) is also the home of several large employers, including the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Archives, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. The southern area of Dorchester is bordered to the east by Dorchester Bay and to the south by the Neponset River.

Dorchester Avenue is the major neighborhood spine, running in a south-north line through all of Dorchester from Lower Mills to downtown Boston. The southern part of Dorchester is primarily a residential area, with established neighborhoods still defined by parishes, and occupied by families for generations. Yet it continues to change, as best observed in the growth of its distinct commercial districts: Bowdoin/Geneva, Fields Corner, Codman Square, Peabody Square, Adams Village and Lower Mills. Other Dorchester neighborhoods include Savin Hill, Jones Hill, Four Corners, Franklin Field, Franklin Hill, Ashmont, Meeting House Hill, Neponset, Popes Hill and Port Norfolk.

The eastern areas of Dorchester (especially between Adams Street and Dorchester Bay) are primarily ethnic European and Asian, with a large population of Irish Americans and Vietnamese Americans, while the residents of the western, central and parts of the southern sections of the neighborhood are predominantly African Americans. In Neponset, the southeast corner of the neighborhood, as well as parts of Savin Hill in the north and Cedar Grove in the south, Irish Americans maintain the most visible identity. In the northern section of Dorchester and southwestern section of South Boston is the Polish Triangle, where recent Polish immigrants are residents. In recent years Dorchester has also seen an influx of young working professionals, gay men, and working artists (in areas like Lower Mills, Peabody Square and Savin Hill).

Savin Hill, as well as Fields Corner, have large Vietnamese American populations. Uphams Corner contains a Cape Verdean American community, the largest concentration of people of Cape Verdean origin within Boston city limits. Western, central and parts of southern Dorchester have a large Caribbean population (especially people from Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago). They are most heavily represented in the Codman Square, Franklin Field and the Ashmont area, although there are also significant numbers in Four Corners and Fields Corner. Significant numbers of African Americans live in the Harbor Point, Uphams Corner, Fields Corner, Four Corners and Franklin Field areas.

In 2008, plans and proposals were unveiled and presented to public community hearings by the Corcoran-Jennison Company to redevelop the 30-acre (120,000 m²) Bayside Exposition Center site on the Columbia Point peninsula into a mixed use village of storefronts and residences, called "Bayside on the Point".^[2][3][4][5]

Demographics

As of 2000 the population of Dorchester was 92,115 and the ethnic makeup was 36% African American or Black, 32% White non-Hispanic, 12% Hispanic or Latino, 11% Asian or Pacific Islander, 1% Native American, 4% some other race, 5% two or more races. ^[6]

Map showing all ground in Boston occupied by buildings in 1880 just after Dorchester was annexed to Boston in 1870. Dorchester is in the lower left quadrant. From U.S. Census Bureau.

Transportation

The neighborhood is served by five stations on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Red Line (MBTA) rapid transit service, five stations on the Ashmont-Mattapan High Speed Line, commuter rail lines, and various bus routes. Interstate 93 (which is also Route 3 and U.S. 1) runs north-south through Dorchester between Quincy, Massachusetts and downtown Boston, providing access to the eastern edge of Dorchester at Columbia Road, Morrissey Boulevard (northbound only), Neponset Circle (southbound only), and Granite Avenue (with additional southbound on-ramps at Freeport Street and from Morrissey Blvd at Neponset). Several other state routes traverse the neighborhood (e.g., Route 203, Gallivan Boulevard and Morton Street, and Route 28, Blue Hill Avenue (so named because it leads out of the city to the Blue Hills Reservation). The Neponset River separates Dorchester from Quincy and Milton. The "Dorchester Turnpike" (now "Dorchester Avenue") stretches from Fort Point Channel (now in South Boston) to Lower Mills, and once boasted a horse-drawn streetcar.

History

Old Blake House in c. 1905

In the summer of 1614, Captain John Smith of the ship Mary and John entered Boston Harbor and landed a boat with eight men on the Dorchester shore, at what was then a narrow peninsula known as Mattapan or Mattaponnock, and today is known as Columbia Point.^[7] Those aboard the ship who founded the town included William Phelps, Roger Ludlowe, John Mason, Samuel Maverick, Nicholas Upsall, Henry Wolcott and other men who would become prominent in the founding of a new nation. The original settlement founded in 1630 was at what is now the intersection of Columbia Road and Massachusetts Avenue. (Even though Dorchester was annexed over 100 years ago into the city of Boston, this founding is still celebrated every year on Dorchester Day, which includes festivities and a parade down Dorchester Avenue). Most of the early Dorchester settlers came from the West Country of England, and some from Dorchester, Dorset, where the Rev. John White was chief proponent of a Puritan settlement in the New World.^[8] (Rev. John White has been referred to as the unheralded champion of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, because despite his heroic efforts on its behalf, he remained in England and never emigrated to the Colony he championed.)

They gathered as a church in England and founded the town and the First Parish Church of Dorchester, which still exists as the Unitarian-Universalist church on Meetinghouse Hill and is the oldest religious organization in present-day Boston.

On October 8, 1633 the first Town Meeting in America was held in Dorchester. Today, each October 8 is celebrated as Town Meeting Day in Massachusetts. Dorchester is the birthplace of the first public elementary school in America, the Mather School, established in 1639.^[9] The school still stands as the oldest elementary school in America.^[10]

In 1695, a party was dispatched to found the town of Dorchester, South Carolina, which would last barely a half-century before being abandoned.

Baker's Cocoa Advertisement in Overland Monthly, January 1919. The manufacture of chocolate had been introduced in the United States in 1765 by John Hannon and Dr. James Baker in Dorchester.

In 1765, chocolate was first introduced in the United States when Irish chocolate maker John Hannon (or alternatively spelled "Hannan" in some sources) imported beans from the West Indies and refined them in Dorchester, working with Dr. James Baker, an American physician and investor. They soon after opened America's first chocolate mill and factory in the Lower Mills section of Dorchester, and the Walter Baker Chocolate Factory operated until 1965.^{[11]:627[12][13][14]}

Dorchester (in a part of what is now South Boston) was also the site of the Battle of Dorchester Heights in 1776, which eventually resulted in the British evacuating Boston.

Dorchester was annexed by Boston in pieces, beginning on March 6, 1804 and ending on January 3, 1870, following a plebiscite held in Boston and Dorchester the previous June 22.^{[clarification needed]} Dorchester Heights is now considered part of South Boston, not modern-day Dorchester. Additional parts of Dorchester went to Quincy (in 1792, 1814, 1819, and 1855) and the now-annexed town of Hyde Park (1868); the new towns of Milton (1662) and Stoughton (1726) were entirely carved out of Dorchester.

In Victorian times, Dorchester became a popular country retreat for Boston elite, and developed into a bedroom community, easily accessible to the city—a streetcar suburb. The mother and grandparents of John F. Kennedy lived in the Ashmont Hill neighborhood while John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald was mayor of Boston.

In 1845, the Old Colony Railroad ran through the area and connected Boston and Plymouth, Massachusetts. The station was originally called Crescent Avenue or Crescent Avenue Depot^[15] as an Old Colony Railroad station, then called Columbia until December 1, 1982, and then again changed to JFK/UMASS. It is an MBTA rail line station for both the subway and commuter rail line.

In the 1880s, the calf pasture on Columbia Point was used as a Boston sewer line and pumping station. This large pumping station still stands and in its time was a model for treating sewage and helping to promote cleaner and healthier urban living conditions. It pumped waste to a remote treatment facility on Moon Island in Boston Harbor, and served as a model for other systems worldwide. This system remained in active use and was the Boston Sewer system's headworks, handling all of the city's sewage, until 1968 when a new treatment facility was built on Deer Island. The pumping station is also architecturally significant as a Richardsonian Romanesque designed by the then Boston city architect, George Clough. It is also the only remaining 19th century building on Columbia Point and is in the National Register of Historic Places.^[7]

In 1953, Carney Hospital moved from South Boston to its current location in Dorchester, serving the local communities of Dorchester, Mattapan, Milton and Quincy.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on the Columbia Point peninsula

The Columbia Point public housing project was completed in 1953 on the Dorchester peninsula. There were 1,502 units in the development on 50 acres (200,000 m²) of land. It was later known for high rates of crime and poor living conditions, and it went through particularly bad times in the 1970s and 80s. By 1988, there were only 350 families living there. In 1984, the city of Boston gave control of it to a private developer, Corcoran-Mullins-Jennison, who re-developed and re-vitalised the property into a beautiful residential mixed-income community called Harbor Point Apartments which was opened in 1988 and completed by 1990. It is a very significant example of revitalization and redevelopment and was the first federal housing project to be converted to private, mixed-income housing in the USA. Harbor Point has won much acclaim for this transformation, including awards from the Urban Land Institute, the FIABCI Award for International Excellence, and the Rudy Bruner Award.^{[16] [17] [18]}

The first community health center in the United States was the Columbia Point Health Center in Dorchester. It was opened in December 1965 and served mostly the massive Columbia Point public housing complex adjoining it. It was founded by two medical doctors, Jack Geiger who had been on the faculty of Harvard University then later at Tufts University and Count Gibson from Tufts University.^[19][20][21] Geiger had previously studied the first community health centers and the principles of Community Oriented Primary Care with Sidney Kark ^[22] and colleagues while serving as a medical student in rural Natal, South Africa.^[23] The Columbia Point Health Center is still in operation and was rededicated in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center.^[24][25][26]

In 1977, after an unsuccessful bid to have the John F. Kennedy Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts close to Harvard University, ground was broken at the tip of Columbia Point for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, designed by the architect I. M. Pei, and dedicated on October 20, 1979.

The oldest surviving home in the city of Boston, the James Blake House, is located at Edward Everett Square, a few blocks from the Dorchester Historical Society.^[1] Although unconfirmed by radiocarbon dating, its year of construction is conjectured as 1648, 1661 or 1680.

A number of the earliest streets in Dorchester have changed names several times through the centuries, meaning that some names have come and gone. Leavitt Place, for instance, named for one of Dorchester's earliest settlers, eventually became Brook Court and then Brook Avenue Place.^[27]

Education

Primary and secondary schools

Public schools

Students in Dorchester are served by Boston Public Schools (BPS). BPS assigns students based on preferences of the applicants and priorities of students in various zones.^[28]

Dorchester Education Complex (formerly Dorchester High School) is in Dorchester.^[29] The schools within the Dorchester complex include the Academy of Public Service,^[30] the Edward G. Noonan Business Academy,^[31] and TechBoston Academy.^[32] Jeremiah E. Burke High School, a high school, is also located in Dorchester.^[33] Boston Latin Academy, a 7-12 secondary school, is in Dorchester.^[34]

Dorchester High School, then an all male school, first opened on December 10, 1852. In 1870 Dorchester was annexed to Boston and its schools became managed by the City of Boston. A replacement facility opened in Codman Square on Talbot Avenue 1901. The current Dorchester facility opened in 1925 on Peacevale Road to males, while the Talbot Avenue building was for females. In 1953 Dorchester High School consolidated as a coeducational school.^[35] In September 2009 the Academy of Public Service and the Noonan Business Academy will merge into the Edward G. Noonan Academy for Business, Public Service and Law.^[30]

Other schools:

• Boston Collegiate Charter School, grades 5-12
• Jeremiah E. Burke High School, 9-12
• Codman Academy Charter Public School, 9-12
• Paul A. Dever Elementary School, K-5
• Edward Everett Elementary School, K1-5
• Lilla Frederick Pilot Middle School, 6-8
• The Harbor School, 6-8
• Thomas J. Kenney Elementary School, K-5
• The Mather Elementary School, K-6
• John W. McCormack School, 6-8
• Richard J. Murphy Elementary School, K1-8
• Neighborhood Charter School, K-8
• Patrick O'Hearn Elementary School, K-5
• Smith Leadership Academy Charter School, 5-8
• Lucy Stone School, K-5
• Uphams Corner Charter School, 5-8
• Woodrow Wilson Middle School, 6-8

Codman Academy Charter Public School is a charter secondary school in Dorchester.^[36]

Parochial schools

• Boston College High School, 7-12
• Elizabeth Seton Academy, 9-12
• Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy, Pre-K-8^[37]
• St. Ambrose School - closed, K-8
• St. Angela School - (In 2008, closed and reopened as the Mattapan Square Campus of Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy)^[37]
• St. Ann Elementary School, K-8 (In 2008, closed and reopened as the Neponset Campus of Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy)^[37]
• St. Brendan School, K-8
• St. Gregory Elementary School, K-8 (In 2008, closed and reopened as the Lower Mills Campus of Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy)^[37]
• St. Kevin School, K-8 (closed in 2008 ^[38])
• St. Margaret Elementary School, K-8 (Closed and reopened as the Columbia Campus of Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy)^[37]
• St. Mark School, K-8(In 2008, closed and reopened as the Dorchester Central Campus of Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy)^[37]
• St. Matthew School, K-8
• St. Peter Elementary School, K-8 (closed in 2008 ^[39])

Colleges and universities

• The University of Massachusetts Boston campus is located in the Columbia Point area of Dorchester.
• Labouré College

Sites of interest

• Bayside Expo & Conference Center
• James Blake House
• Captain Lemuel Clap House
• William Clapp House
• First Parish Church of Dorchester
• Franklin Park Zoo
• John F. Kennedy Library and Museum
• Neponset River State Reservation
• William Monroe Trotter House

Notable residents

• Charles Baker Adams (1814-1853) - Born in Dorchester, noted academic and naturalist^[40]
• William Taylor Adams (1822-1897) - Wrote fiction under the pseudonym "Oliver Optic" and served on the School Board of Dorchester.^[40]
• Samuel Turell Armstrong (1784-1850) - Born in Dorchester, Governor of Massachusetts ^[40]
• Clarence Cook - Born in Dorchester. 19th century art critic and writer.^[41]
• Norm Crosby - Entertainer^[42]
• Kay Hanley - American alternative rock musician. She is best known as the vocalist for the band Letters to Cleo.
• Alberto Jaramillo - noted scholar and PCF specialist/expert
• George V. Kenneally, Jr. (1929-1999) - Legislator who represented Dorchester in both the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Massachusetts Senate. His crowning achievement was introducing legislation creating The University of Massachusetts Boston.
• Joseph P. Kennedy prominent American businessman and political figure.
• Rose Kennedy was the mother of President John F. Kennedy.
• John King is an American journalist
• Jonathan Knight - American singer, best known for membership in the New Kids on the Block
• Jordan Knight - American singer, best known for membership in the New Kids on the Block
• Calixa Lavallée, Canadian national anthem's composer^[43]
• Dennis Lehane American Author of Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and the Given Day
• John Lowe and Scott Braginton-Smith, contestants on the CBS reality series Amazing Race 9
• Leonard Nimoy - is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. He played the character of Spock on Star Trek.
• Status Quo - Dance Crew, Runners up on MTV's Americas Best Dance Crew
• Lucy Stone was a prominent American abolitionist and suffragist.
• Donna Summer - American pop and disco singer.
• Donnie Wahlberg is an American singer, actor and film producer, best known for membership in the New Kids on the Block
• Mark Wahlberg is an Academy Award-nominated American actor.

Notes

References

• Committee of the Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society, "History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts", Boston : Ebenezer Clapp, Jr., 1859.

• Dutton, E.P. Chart of Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay with Map of Adjacent Country. Published 1867. A good map of roads and rail lines around Dorchester. Note the Horse RailRoad on Dorchester Ave.

• Glover, Anna. Glover Memorials and Genealogies: An Account of John Glover Of Dorchester and Some of his Descendants. Published 1867.

• Orcutt, William Dana. Good Old Dorchester: A Narrative History of the Town, 1630-1893. Published 1893.

• Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell.
  • "Boston's South End", Images of America series, Arcadia Publishing, 1998.
  • "Dorchester", Images of America series, Arcadia Publishing, 2000.
  • "Dorchester: Then & Now", Arcadia Publishing, 2005.

• Seasholes, Nancy S. (2003). Gaining ground : a history of landmaking in Boston. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=GAHs1C9q1EsC&pg=PP1&dq=nancy+seasholes. 

• The Vital Records of Dorchester (Births, Marriages, and Deaths) to 1825 were published in 1890 as the 21st Report of the Records Commissioners of Boston.
• Old USGS Maps of Boston and Dorchester area. See the 1903 southeaster corner map.

Further reading

• "Railroad Transportation in Dorchester" - History by the Dorchester Atheneum
• Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1790 Federal Head of Household Census, Dorchester, Massachusetts, US Census data
• "Dorchester Epitaphs: from Epitaphs First Burying-Place in Dorchester", (not in Dorchester town records), From the back of the book of Dorchester Vital Records to 1850
• "Historical Sketch of Dorchester", Mercantile Publishing Company, Boston, 1888
• Orcutt, William Dana, Good Old Dorchester: A Narrative history of the Town 1630 - 1893, Cambridge : John Wilson & Son, University Press, 1893

External links

• from the Boston Public Library Map Collection
  • 1831 Map of Dorchester by Edmund J. Baker
  • 1850 Map of Dorchester by E. Whiting
  • 1868 Map of Dorchester and Quincy by Dudley and Greenough
  • 1880 Plan of Dorchester by the Boston Engineering Dept.
• Battle of Dorchester Heights in DotNews
• Dorchester Community Website
• History of Dorchester in DotNews
• Dorchester Historical Society
• Colonel Daniel Marr Boys and Girls Club
• Uphams Corner Charter School
• First Parish Church in Dorchester
• Caritas Carney Hospital
• Dorchester Atheneum - Dorchester history
• Map of Dorchester section of Boston - Open Space Plan, City of Boston
• Dorchester maps by City of Boston
• Dorchester Community Website

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Coordinates: 42°19′00″N 71°03′30″W / 42.3166667°N 71.05833°W / 42.3166667; -71.05833

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