June 10, 2019 Beer + Mortar: A Walking Tour in Dorchester & Roxbury
In June, Historic Boston and the Boston Preservation Alliance teamed up to conduct a historic walking tour through Dorchester and Roxbury, highlighting historic architecture and art along a 2.5 mile route.
A group of twenty people gathered at the Strand Theater, a restored Vaudeville theater located on Columbia Road, to start the tour. The group represented neighborhoods and cities including, Everett, Malden, Walpole, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain. From the theater, the tour headed down to the Upham’s Corner Comfort Station and Dorchester Burial Ground to learn about the history and construction progress of HBI’s latest project.
The former 1912 comfort station (read: public restroom) sits on land that was once meant to be part of Frederick Law Olmstead’s Emerald Necklace, which was originally planned to extend from the Boston Common through the Fenway, and down Columbia Road, ending at Marine Point. The last few green jewels were never connected to the necklace we know today.
The tour group continued down Columbia Road past the Boston Fire Department Engine 21 Station, an early 20th century contemporary to the Comfort Station, and stopped at The Blake House (Boston’s Oldest House), Laura Baring-Gould’s Clapp’s Pear in Edward Everett Square , the recently renovated Shirley Eustis House and Gardner Carriage House, the Eustis Street Firehouse, and the Eliot Burial Ground.
The tour ended with a visit to the Feldman Land Surveyors’ offices in the renovated 19th century piano factory at 152 Hampden Street, and as was fitting for one of the first 80 degree days of June, some of the group grabbed a beer at Backlash Brewery.
A big thank you to Michael Feldman and William S. Kuttner for allowing us access to your beautiful, historic spaces!