In 1984, Lou Jones took an aerial photograph of the two Boston gas tanks at Commercial Point at Expressway and Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester.
Boston Gas built the two tanks in 1971 – after paying Corita to paint one of them with their rainbow swash/Ho Chi Minh memorial. The company removed the Corita tank in 1992, but took care to reproduce the mural – the largest copyrighted work of art in the world – on the remaining tank.
The two solids tanks replaced an even larger “gas holder” on the site – about six times the size of one of the new tanks. This holder, a holdover from the days when Boston had many similar buildings for storing naphtha gas and coal gas, was a sort of giant balloon in a steel grate – when gas was pumped in, the cover would rise into the sky and then slowly deflate as gas was pumped out.
In the 1880s, the Boston Gas Light Company built two gasometers on this site:
The pump at the bottom of one of the tanks:
Both photos are from the Boston Gas Company records at Boston College.
Going back even further, Commercial Point was once, albeit briefly, a residential area that featured two palatial homes. As the Dorchester Historical Society notes:
Soon after 1800, Joseph Newell and Ebenezer Niles, believing that Commercial Point would prosper from whaling and cod fishing, built large, square, palatial houses on the south side of the headland, looking south toward Port Norfolk. They joined together as business partners, building ships and engaging in active trade, but the panic caused by the War of 1812 put an end to their business speculations and prospects.
Later, others tried to follow in the footsteps of Newell and Niles and catch whales at Commercial Point. In the 1830s:
A syndicate was formed to carry on the whaling and cod fishing at Commercial Point. This syndicate consisted of Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, brother of John E. Thayer, founder of the well-known firm of Kidder, Peabody & Co.; Mr. Elisha Preston of Dorchester, who was the managing member of the firm of Preston & Thayer; Mr. Josiah Stickney, a well-known Boston merchant; and Mr. Charles O. Whitmore of the firm of Lombard & Whitmore, who lived near Commercial Point and acted as master of the ships of the fleet. Their aim was to hunt whaling in the Pacific, Indian and North Atlantic Oceans. The ships purchased by the company were the Charles Carroll of Nantucket; the Courier, the Herald and the barque Lewis; and they also equipped twenty schooners, two of which – the Belle and the Preston – were built at the point. They not only bought the wharf, but also a good tract of land in the immediate vicinity, where they stored flakes for drying their cod. They also built some cooperages and a warehouse for supplying sailors’ equipment and ship chandlers’ supplies. The warehouse was built from material taken from the granary which formerly stood on the site of the present Park Street Church in the town proper.”
In the 1850s, a merchant began storing wood and coal on the headland. And then:
In 1872, Dexter Josiah Cutter established a fuel oil company at Commercial Point, delivering lumber and coal on boats. The 1874 atlas shows that the Boston Gas Light Company occupied the outer part of Point and John Preston had a chocolate factory and wharf on the southeast corner. By the 1880s, the Boston Gas Light Company owned almost all of Point and added two gasholders (coal gas tanks) as well as a coal shed, retort house, cleaning house, condensing house, machine shop and other buildings. DJ Cutter maintained his coal yard at this location at least until the 1930s. They later became a fuel oil delivery company based further north on Freeport Street.
Top cropped photo copyright Lou Jones. Used under this Creative Commons license.
