DID YOU KNOW?

Nineteenth century Harvard Professor John Richardson lived in the house that was Edward Everett’s birthplace, now the site of the multi-family home next to Dunkin Donuts. In 1885 he bequeathed land to the City of Boston that became known as Richardson Park.

LINKS

Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Athenaeum

QUOTE

“Public art, when done well, can be a great addition to a community. Not only does the artwork create a landmark, but it also contributes to a sense of importance and well being. All great cities have great art, and several residents told me how much they feel the neighborhood has improved with the artworks. This benefits us all.”

Laura Baring-Gould, 2012

OUR HISTORY:

Edward Everett Square became an important crossroads as early as the 1600s when the Puritans settled Dorchester and built their dwellings nearby. The Blake House, built in 1661, was one of these dwellings. (The Blake House was originally on East Cottage Street on the other side of the Square. It was moved in 1895 to its present location in Richardson Park – a.k.a. “the Blakie”.) The intersection was known as “Five Corners” for a great many years until 1895 when the City renamed it “Edward Everett Square”. Its renaming coincided with the relocation of the Edward Everett Statue from Boston Public Gardens to the rotary that was in the Square at that time. (The statute was relocated to Richardson Park in the 1930s.)

In mid-twentieth century Edward Everett Square was a thriving hub of small businesses serving the local blue-collar communities. How many remember the Rexall Drug Store, Stacy’s Stationery, the barber shop, Angie’s Delicatessen, Casey’s Liquors, Smith Cadillac-Olds, McDonough Motors, the Texaco station, the dancing school and the bowling alley? Who remembers or were part of the proud community of Northern and Swiss Italians so populous in the neighborhood at that time?

Economic decline and physical blight sadly afflicted the neighborhood in the 1970s. By the 1980s the long, once-beautiful three-decker row structure housing residents and businesses on Columbia Road was a vacant lot. The multitude of businesses that had catered to local neighborhood residents gave way to a few fast-food chains serving a mainly transient customer base. A sort of Dark Age ensued in which the Square’s history, legacy and brighter times were pounded into oblivion by urban neglect and cultural unawareness. Edward Everett Square had become little more than a blighted intersection dominated by chaotic traffic and a tundra of asphalt that put people in a state of terror when trying to cross the street.

But there were embers in the ashes! The phoenix rose up out of the pile in the form of neighborhood civic associations and crime-watches. In 1995 groups bordering three sides of the Square came together to pursue a vision to beautify it, make it safer for pedestrians and traffic and promote its rich historical legacy. They formed the Edward Everett Square Project Committee, whose efforts over the years have gained for the community over $3 million in traffic improvements by the City, and nearly half a million dollars in grant money for landscape design and maintenance and for world-class public art.

The installation and dedication of Laura Baring-Gould’s Dorchester Clapp Pear sculpture in June 2007 was the beginning of Edward Everett Square’s transformation. The subsequent dedication of the ten smaller satellite sculptures titled “Dorchester Voices/Dorchester History” in October 2010 expands what the art is expressing and serves to educate people about the historical experience of the Dorchester community. At long last the ultimate aim is being achieved, and that is to establish in the public mind the significance of Edward Everett Square as a critical gateway to the city, its historic importance, and its potential as a place of attraction, ambience, education and beauty for residents, visitors and tourists alike.