As part of a series of quick-hit jaunts through Boston this spring, I checked out the outer reaches of Nubian Square, mostly along Dudley Street. Earlier that day, I was in Egleston Square (see July 18, 2026, "Scrambling Through Boston's Egleston Square"), and subsequently I walked through Newmarket Square. I don't plan to publish anything about the latter neighborhood, having covered it pretty well a few years back (see May 15, 2022, "Busting Ghosts in Boston's Newmarket Square").
I'll admit that when I steered myself toward Dudley Street, I didn't realize that I wasn't far from Nubian Square (formerly Dudley Square), which I wrote about last year (see March 4, 2025, "Nubian Square: New Name, Old Buildings"). My first stop, Montesino & Sons Tire Shop, is located just a half mile from Hibernian Hall, the historic events venue in Nubian Square that I wrote about in the post linked above.
Situated at the northern end of Blue Hill Avenue, where it intersects with Dudley Street, the tire shop has been in business for at least 30 years. I like Montesino's sign, with a tire forming the "O" in "Sons." Adjacent to the store is a large parking lot and work area. I can't say I've ever seen a storefront tire repair joint before. Usually they're located in service stations.
The building rose in 1890, per MACRIS.
I headed southeast on Dudley Street, passing a park (Dudley Town Common), the old St. Joseph Home for the Aged, numerous three-decker homes and brick apartment buildings, until I spied Davey's Super Market (formerly F and T Supermarket).
I'm guessing that there has been a market here for several decades. "We're like a staple in the community," Jacqueline Teixeira, owner of Davey's, told the local CBS news station, WBZ, in this article. "We're not only like a grocery store; we're like a community center."
At the left of the photo, you can see part of the mural that runs the entire length of the store along Clarence Street. The art work depicts "heroes from our community," according to the web site for the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. The mural was the first that DSNI produced.
Continuing along, I stepped into an alley next to Nos Casa Cafe (Spanish and Portuguese fare) to check out a ghost sign for a much older business.
I don't know how old this sign for Smith Grocery is, when the business was started, nor when it went out of business. I always love seeing relics like this, fossils from earlier times.
Located at 475 Dudley Street, this building is known as the Adolph Miller Building, which dates to 1897, according to MACRIS.
Further south on Dudley Street, at the corner of Albion Street, I made an image of the side of Market Borinqueña.
This is one of those photos that I just walk into. The bold lettering on the sign telling potential customers important information, the contrast of the tan and blue section of painted wall, the stacks of plastic crates, the bike, the pallet. I really like this image. The next one is no slouch either.
I walked past Market Borinqueña, then turned around and headed back toward my starting point. I was thrilled by the sign painted on the side of Ideal Sub Shop. Again, the sign tells you everything you need to know, in a bold but simple fashion.
A little further north, I looked east down Rockford Street, a narrow way running down the side of a two-and-a-half story building that, I found out later via MACRIS, is a former Metropolitan Street Railway car house (so sorry, no photo). I spied a carriage house and thought, "Oh, that's cool. And in really good condition."
Then I walked up a series of short stone stairways up a small hill in front of me and saw the main house. "This place is beautiful," I said.
I'd heard of the Shirley-Eustis House, and knew it was in Roxbury, but I had no idea I was close by. I'm thankful that my backside nose led me to it.
"The Shirley-Eustis House was built in bucolic Roxbury in 1747 by William Shirley as his country estate," according to the web site for the non-profit organization that operates the home as a museum and event and education space. "Shirley was Royal Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1741-1749 and 1753-1756. In 1756 he was also appointed by King George II Commander-in-Chief of all British and Colonial Forces in North America. In this grand example of English Palladian design, Governor Shirley and his family lived very public lives as representatives of the British Empire. Their persons, their house, and the grounds were cared for by a staff of enslaved Africans, indentured servants, and sometimes idle soldiers."
In 1759 Shirley was reappointed as the Governor of the Bahamas and he deeded the property to his son-in-law, Eliakim Hutchinson, according to MACRIS. Hutchinson, who served as a member of the governor's council and Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, lived in the property until his death in 1775.
The estate served as a vital property for the colonists during the Revolutionary War. "Despite Hutchinson's demise, the Americans seized his property officially in 1782, but practically in 1775 because of its former owner's Loyalist sentiments. Beginning in 1775 the house was used as barracks and hospital for men stationed in Dorchester during the [British] siege [of Boston]," MACRIS continues.
Per the Shirley-Eustis House Association, the home was owned by a succession of wealthy Bostonians in the following decades, including Capt. James Magee, a merchant; and former diplomat William Eustis and his wife, Caroline. In 1865, Hannah Osgood purchased the property and ran it as a boarding house.
"By 1900...the aging structure was a tenement falling quickly into disrepair," per the web site. "In 1913 it was condemned and slated for demolition."
Preservationists stepped in to save the home. "Led by Lillie B. Titus and William Sumner Appleton, the Shirley-Eustis House Association managed to rescue the house and worked diligently over several decades to restore it to its former grandeur. With the exception of the lost piazzas and verandas, the house now looks very much as it did in 1820."
I've danced around Boston's Egleston Square quite a bit over the years I've been publishing this blog. I've roamed Jackson Square, the Fort Hill Tower area, Franklin Park and parts of the nearby Jamaica Plain neighborhood (see the bottom of this post for links to those articles). Recently, I finally checked out the Egleston area, using as motivation my hope that there was an old sign still hanging outside the final Skippy White's Records store to close.
My jaunt through the square was part of a one-day whirlwind tour including Jamaica Plain (to make photos, once again, of Boston's old breweries), the outskirts of Nubian Square and the gritty streets of Newmarket Square (where I've also been before).
I recently decided that I want to make photos of as many Boston-area record stores as I can. I included Skippy White's on the list, even though the store in Egleston Square had closed in January 2020. I noticed on Google Street View that as of October 2022, there were signs promoting "CD's - Videos - DVDs" above the windows at 1971 Columbus Avenue. Alas, when I arrived in early spring of this year, those signs were gone. The good news is that another small business now fills the space -- I forget what sort of outfit it is, and a Google search did not provide an answer.
I never had the pleasure of going to any Skippy White's store. Founded in 1960 in Boston's South End as Mass Records, the chain grew to include shops in other Boston neighborhoods, as well as Cambridge, Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as well as New Orleans (!), according to this Bay State Banner article.
"For more than six decades, White sold gospel, R&B and soul music to Boston’s African American community and other lovers of Black music," the article indicates. I encourage you to read that Bay State Banner article.
The Skippy White signs were gone, but there were other things that caught my eye in Egleston Square, which straddles Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.
Right across Columbus Avenue from the old record store is the circular residential tower known as the Doris Bunte Apartments. Completed in 1970 for the Boston Housing Authority, the cylindrical building was originally known as Walnut Park. The architecture firm of Richmond & Goldberg designed the project. The firm, which was in business from 1946 to 1973, also designed the Egleston Square branch of the Boston Public Library; a number of temples in Brookline; and many other municipal and religious structures.
The building reminds me of Chicago's Marina City, a mixed-use residential and commercial complex along the Chicago River. I mentioned those towers in a post about the Windy City several years ago (see May 18, 2018, "Rollin' On the River").
The Bunte building is slated for renovation.
The tower was renamed for Doris Bunte, who was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1973 to 1984, and administrator of the Boston Housing Authority from 1984 to 1992. She was the first African-American woman to hold either position, according to Wikipedia.
I've taken a liking to storefronts of late, be they old or new.
On the corner of Weld and Columbus avenues stands Violeta Appliance, a store that I believe is relatively new. I really love the bold colors in the lettering and background.
Around the corner on Washington Street is Egleston Liquors. I like that the sign tells potential customers in both English and Spanish what type of store it is.
On the corner of School and Washington streets, I found a beautiful doorway.
Erected in 1905, the Queen Anne / Richardsonian Romanesque commercial/apartment block was built for D.F. and W.S. Littlefield, brothers who owned a fruit market. Currently the ground-floor retail space is occupied by a market and a barber shop.
At the corner of Washington Street and Chilcott Place stands Pika Pollo, a Dominican fried chicken joint. On the side there is a fantastic mural.
Painted by Philadelphia-based artist Betsy Casañas, the work is a vibrant addition to the neighborhood.
The furthest west I went on this jaunt was the former Franklin Brewery building, which towers over Washington Street. If you enlarge the image below, you can see the beer brewer's name chiseled into the stone rectangle in the middle of the entryway.
I wrote about (and shared images of) this place in the blog post linked above about Boston's old breweries. In part, I wrote: "Built in 1894, this Queen Anne fortress was a brewery until...1918," shortly before Prohibition kicked in. "In 1900, 'the Franklin Brewery became a branch of the Massachusetts Brewery Co., a consortium which included the American Brewery at 249 Heath Street, the Alley Brewery at 123 Heath Street, H. and J. Pfaff Co. at 1276 Columbus, and the Robinson Brewery at 55-71 Amory,' per MACRIS."
"'The brewery was named for nearby Franklin Park....Around 1918, the Franklin Brewery building was vacant and a year later was owned by the Union Wool Co. and used for storage. By the 1920's, 3179 Washington had become the home of the D.W.. Dunn Storage Company,'" MACRIS continued.
Today, this beauty is home to Extra Space Storage.
At this point, I headed north-northeast to Columbus Avenue. Standing at the corner of Washington and Atherton streets, I had to rub my eyes as I looked across Columbus. "Is that part of the old elevated railway?" I said out loud, to nobody but myself.
No, the 14,000-square foot Egleston Center isn't a relic from Boston's transit days gone by. But is an homage. Located on the site of the former Egleston Station stop on the Washington Street elevated rail line, the commercial development was built in the mid-1990s by Urban Edge, a community developer founded in 1974.
Pretty cool!
Check out this image of the old elevated station, from Digital Commonwealth.
Heading north on Columbus Avenue, I passed #1945, a large triangular property that was once a used car lot.
(The former sales office for Columbus Auto Sales and, more recently, Roxbury Motors.)
Looking at Google Street View, I saw that the last business to occupy this lot was Roxbury Motors. For years prior, it was home to Columbus Auto Sales. Sometime between August 2019 and October 2022, Roxbury Motors vacated the lot. The site has been owned by Larosa Development Corporation of Norwood, Mass., since early 2019. I haven't been able to determine what, if any, plans there are for the property.
At the corner of West Walnut Park and Columbus Avenue sits my favorite site of that day.
I love the layers of history here. In reverse order: El Cruce Market, which replaced Salcedo Market within the last three years; Columbus Market, which, judging from the plastic sign, dated back at least a few decades; and the name carved into the building, C.J. Spenceley Block, and the date "1888."
Of late, I've focused my lens on storefronts such as this one. I love the bold colors, the variety of food and other products catering to local ethnic groups, the sense of community they engender. As painter Debbie Shirley writes to describe an exhibit of hers showcasing immigrant-owned convenience stores, "Each piece celebrates the cultures, communities, and everyday encounters that give these storefronts their stories."
So, who was C.J. Spenceley?
"Christopher Jackson Spenceley was born in Wicasset, Maine on August 16, 1840," according to this Jamaica Plain Historical Society article. "He...came to Boston at the age of 17 [where] he learned to be a carpenter and by 1863 had started his own business. He became engaged in the building and selling of structures in the South End and Roxbury."
Spenceley served three consecutive terms on the Boston Common Council, a precursor to the Boston City Council. He also served a Trustee for the Boston City Hospital (now known as Boston Medical Center) for several years. He married Rebecca Staples (from Truro, Nova Scotia) on August 16, 1863 and they had three children: Joseph Winfred, Fred and Mineola, the article continues.
The family lived at 367 Walnut Ave, just a few blocks from the C.J. Spenceley Block. He died on August 12, 1903 and is buried at Fox Hill Cemetery in Billerica.
My final Egleston Square image is of a simple yet effective and eye-catching sign, in front of IAO Auto Repair, at Columbus Avenue and Bancroft Street.
The sign seems to date from when E & J Auto Tech was on the site, in early 2016, according to Google Street View.
Check back soon for my write-up about a stretch along Dudley Street on the outskirts of Boston's Nubian Square.
Surely you must be interested in one of the busiest commercial areas of Revere, Mass.
Well, then, welcome to Shirley Avenue!
This is the fifth installment in my series of short posts about Revere. Links to the previous four are listed at the bottom of this post.
I love walking through commercial districts in the cities of Eastern Massachusetts. Many of the buildings in these zones date from the late 1800s through the 1950s, and have a wonderful human scale to them. I love the old signs, the hints of days gone by, the variety of locally owned businesses. In the first post in my Revere series, I chronicled part of the city's Broadway district. Today, I present Shirley Avenue, which runs east-to-west from Revere Beach Boulevard to the VFW Parkway.
On the side of Ocean Liquors, just steps from the Revere Beach MBTA station, is a mural that was funded through the Revere Cultural Council and private donors as part of the Shirley Avenue Gateway Initiative.
Artist Ann Steinman worked with Alex Gerasev to design and paint the mural. The work features Shirley Avenue businesses and organizations, as well as the nearby Revere Beach bandstand and people of all ages strolling, driving, riding bikes and communing with each other.
Next door to the liquor store block is the Revere Lodge of Elks Club.
Built in 1912, this brick building appears to have been altered over the years. MACRIS doesn't have anything on file about the lodge. The rooftop sign is great. I hope it lights up at night.
Shirley Avenue presents a mix of older and newer commercial and apartment buildings, which is no surprise, as the beach is a very short walk away. When I walk down streets like this, I find myself wishing that I'd been there five years earlier, or 10, so I could've seen more older buildings. At the corner of Shirley Avenue and Walden Street, I spied an older building that appears to be near the end of its life.
Home to seafood retailer and wholesaler Ocean Mac, Inc., this building dates to 1964, per the Revere assessor. I can't tell whether Ocean Mac is still in business; if it is, the building doesn't reflect that. If the seafood company has indeed gone under water, I suspect this property will sell and new apartments/retail will rise.
Continuing west a short distance, I fell for the old-school look of Tobie's Jewelers, with the hand-painted primary sign and fading secondary ones.
The building appears to date to the early 20th century. I found a listing online (the store doesn't have a web site) indicating Tobie's has been in business since 1997. I would guess it's older than that, but what do I know?
At the corner of Shirley and Nahant avenues is a building about which I wish I could find out more detail.
Currently home to Super Convenience Store, ICAN Chiropractic and Thmor Da Restaurant, this place was built around 1900. The main part of building used to have a name chiseled near the roofline, but there's nothing left of it. The stores seem to have been added on later. I'm not sure if this was a small factory, or just an apartment building.
The final place I spied before turning back east is home to Two Brother's Market II.
Offering American groceries alongside "productos de Centro, Sur America y del Caribe," the market is located in a circa-1920 building. I believe the market opened in 2011.
On the south side of the avenue, between a parking lot and North Shore Road, there is another commercial building from the early part of last century. Anchoring one end is Angkor Thom Market, which has been there for quite a few years.
The shop has another wonderful hand-painted sign, this one featuring a misspelling of the name of the avenue, and some symbols or letters up top that I'm unable to decipher. Next door is Ocean Plaza, which also has some pretty great signage.
I have a confession: I made a close-up photo of the sign earlier in my walk, and wasn't planning on taking another shot, but once the guy with the amazing pancho walked across the street, I couldn't resist a photo with him and the sign. Ocean Plaza is a mini-mall, I believe, with several small shops.
The final storefront in this block is empty; it was most recently occupied by a jeweler called El Brilliante.
Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for a few more short pieces on Revere. Below are links to the previous posts.
Maybe Elvis Costello didn't want to go the affluent London neighborhood of Chelsea back in the 1970s, but I bet he'd dig the more working-class city of Chelsea, Mass., sandwiched between East Boston, Revere and Everett. I wrote a four-part series about Chelsea -- the smallest Massachusetts city in terms of total area, and the one with the second-highest percentage of Latinx residents in the state -- back in 2013 (see Part IV, about the Condor Street Urban Wild; Part III, about the waterfront; Part II, a short one about the filming of a movie; and Part I, about a short stroll near the downtown area).
For this post, the first of a two-part series, I explored part of the southwestern corner of the city, near Market Basket, and crossed into Everett for a time. This is a largely treeless area filled with scrap yards, autobody shops, trucking operations, storage facilities and small industry, but it's also one that is undergoing redevelopment, with the addition of apartment buildings, restaurants and non-industrial businesses.
I started near Market Basket because in doing a search for ghost signs in Chelsea on Flickr, I discovered a treasure trove just behind the grocery store. I love stashing my car at grocery stores because they offer free parking for as long as I need it. The signs I'd seen on Flickr were pretty fantastic in person.
Visible from the Market Basket back parking lot, across the tracks for the Newburyport/Rockport commuter train line, these signs are remnants of the Atwood and McManus Box Company. This warehouse dates to 1909, according to MACRIS. That date is significant because the prior year, a fire started at the box company that, due to high winds that day in April, eventually spread across a great portion of the city, destroying approximately 1,500 buildings and leaving 10-15,000 residents homeless. Chelsea suffered another "great fire" in 1973 that started very close to the 1908 origin point.
I'm assuming the original Atwood buildings were constructed of wood and were lost in the fire.
(Side view of the old warehouse.)
(Front of the old Atwood and McManus facility, which is currently home to Catalent, which manufactures spray dry dispersion, powder encapsulation, blister packaging and blister sleeving products.)
After thoroughly enjoying the Atwood ghosts, I headed northeast on 3rd Street, crossing the commuter train tracks and, unbeknownst to me at the time, into Everett. I passed a Peter Pan bus line lot, a large produce wholesale business, a scrap metal dealer (the first of many I would see on this adventure) and an autobody shop.
It's not every day you see a Pontiac Fiero mounted on the exterior wall of a business. Manufactured from 1984-88, these mid-engine sports cars looked kinda cool...but ran kinda hot. As in "catch on fire" hot. From Wikipedia: "Safety issues escalated rapidly by the summer of 1987, when the fire count for 1984 models reached a rate of 20 fires per month. Fieros were catching fire at the rate of one for every 508 cars sold, surpassing all other mass-market automobile cars. Pontiac engineers knew about the problems early on: one wrote an urgent memo dated October 6, 1983, to report that two Fieros had suddenly caught fire during test drives. This was only 3 months after the production of the Fiero began. It was first thought to be caused by antifreeze leaking out of poorly installed hoses, when in reality it was defective connecting rods."
Spare the rod, spoil the Fiero.
Across 3rd Street, I spied a ghost sign on an old industrial building.
I walked north to Boston Street, then west until I hit 2nd Street. From there I proceeded southeast, past an Extra Space storage facility, determined to get a better look at the old sign.
And there, looming over Second Street Iron & Metal, I got a good gander.
You may be able to make out the words "Carpenter Morton" in the above photos. That's the name of the outfit that operated a varnish business here beginning in 1900, under the name Boston Varnish Company, according to MACRIS. "The paint and varnish industry arrived in Everett in 1881 and soon became one of the city's major industries," MACRIS continues. "The first company was founded by White & Wiley, two clerks who previously had been employed at the Wadsworth-Howland Varnish factory in Maiden, Nine years later the firm changed its name to the Richardson Varnish Company." That company, in turned was acquired by the Carpenter Morton business.
Eventually, the business "expanded into paint manufacturing, adopting the name Kyanize Paints. By 1947 the company, with 200 employees, was one of the largest and best-known independent makers of paints and varnishes." Kyanize is a name I recognize; I recently explored more of Everett, and came across a paint store with a sign for that brand (I'll post about that trip in the near future).
Other businesses that may have used this facility in more recent years include Andler Bottle Company and Andler Packaging.
As I mentioned, this area of Everett is lousy with scrap metal dealers and the remnants of former scrap businesses.
Across 2nd Street from Extra Space is Mattuchio Scrap Metal ("Changing Metal to Money"), which has been in business hard by the commuter train tracks for more than 60 years.
Across 2nd Street from Mattuchio and opposite the Extra Space facility at the corner of Boston and 2nd streets, the former HH&M Metals scrapyard is no longer clanging with the sound of copper, brass, aluminum, insulated wire and catalytic converters being recycled. The business recently merged with Solomon Metals in Lynn.
The old HH&M site is just a short distance from a major new residential project rising at the corner of Boston and Vale streets, which I will mention below. I haven't been able to find out whether the old scrapyard is being considered for redevelopment, but I wouldn't be surprised.
At the corner of 2nd and Garden streets, I dug the old painted sign for General Steel Products.
Around since 1945, General Steel manufactures "heavy-duty steel Rolling Scaffolding and Fall Protection equipment in both standard and custom-made configurations," according to its web site. Continuing east-northeast on Garden Street, I found a ghost sign on a building where The Owens Companies operates.
I have no idea what this sign says. The Owens Companies, as best as I can tell, is the umbrella organization for a moving company, storage/warehousing outfit and trash removal operation. Founded in 1927 as Henry F. Owens, Inc., the company now known as Owen Movers has quite a history. "In the early 1920s, it was no small feat for a black man to successfully open a business in the United States," according to this article at the Massachusetts Gaming Commission web site. "But in 1927, at the age of 16, Henry Owens, Jr. bought his first moving truck, and Henry F. Owens, Inc. was open for business."
Eventually the business expanded beyond household moves to commercial and industrial jobs. The company also has a partnership with the nearby Encore Boston Harbor Casino. I'm uncertain whether Owens Movers is still in business, as the company sold the building shown above to a developer for $15 million in late 2020. There is still a sign out front that says "The Owen Companies." Part of the sprawling building is rented to the scene shop for Boston's Huntington Theatre Company.
While the property is shown on the web site of Oliver Street Capital, there is no indication of a redevelopment plan.
Next door, at the intersection of Garden, Vine and East Elm streets, is Samuel Holmes, Inc.
The company has supplied poultry to the food industry since 1911. It is right around the corner from Restaurant Depot, a warehouse-sized building that says, not surprisingly, that it is "where restaurants shop."
If one of those chickens were alive and able to cross the street, it would end up at the enVision Hotel Boston-Everett.
Opened in 2017, the hotel space was previously occupied by a Chair Fair furniture store, along with a printing company, a gym and probably other businesses. I've been unable to find out any deeper history on this building, which I'm guessing was once a factory or warehouse.
Directly across Vine Street is Woody's Tire Service, which has been in business since 1973.
From there, I headed south on Vine Street, where I came across a business that pleasantly surprised me both by its bright exterior color and by the goods it had displayed out front.
Alaadeen Wholesale Markets is a halal grocery store, offering spices, fresh fruit and vegetables and deli products. The business also appears to sell cooking vessels and other kitchen products, as well as home decorations.
Just up the street is the former site of American Gas Products.
The company's web site still lists this site, 24 Vine Street, as its address. But as you can see in the photo above, the site has been fenced off and appears to be vacant. The company's Facebook page hasn't been updated since April 2022. I'm guessing this site will be redeveloped before too long.
At the corner of 3rd and Boston streets is, you guessed it, another scrapyard!
M&S Metals, Inc. calls itself a consultant to the scrap metal industry on its very spartan web site. While the operation seems to still be in business, as you can see by the construction crane in the background of the above photo, change is afoot in this neighborhood.
Here, I need to apologize for being inattentive to detail. As I walked east-northeast along Boston Street, past Restaurant Depot on my left, I'm pretty sure I noticed construction under way on the massive lot encircled by East Elm, Boston and Vale streets. But when I checked Google Maps, I see that there is a construction business there, Nappy Crane Service, which has been in business since 1970. So now I'm wondering if the activity I saw on this property was just related to that business.
Google searches have turned up no project under development. There was another business here, Wood Waste of Boston, which appears to have closed. Current businesses along East Elm Street include an autobody shop and what appears to be a scrapyard (surprise, surprise).
If there isn't an apartment complex rising here now, there certainly is likely to be soon. Across Boston Street from the crane service yard is The Pioneer, another new apartment community, which replaced several businesses, including a dance complex and a Harley-Davidson dealer.
This area is known as the Commercial Triangle, but it is rapidly turning into Residential Alley. At the corner of Vale Street and Mill Road is a new development called simply, Mason. When I was exploring this neighborhood, the finishing touches were being put on this apartment building, including a sign on the exterior. Previously, there was a massive Adams Furniture building here, which was demolished several years ago. That business is now located on 2nd Street in Everett.
Next to Mason is another complex under development, to be known as The Maxwell. Other new residential developments in this neighborhood include Vero Apartments and V2 Apartments, which sit opposite each other on Vale Street, on the Chelsea side of the border.
These apartment buildings are all within walking distance of the Chelsea commuter rail stop, as well as the Market Basket and the Mystic Mall. In addition, they are about five miles from Revere Beach.
I continued south-southeast on Vale Street back into Chelsea, took a peek down Carter Street, and decided it was worth checking out. And boy was I right.
I believe I see the words "Metal" and "Works" on that ghost sign, located at the corner of Carter and 4th streets. The building is or was a warehouse for J.W. Lopes, a produce wholesaler. I question whether the business is still here, given the front of it.
Next door is another old industrial building that may or may not contain an active business.
Google Maps indicates this squat yellow building is home to American Nut and Bolt.
My last stop on this leg of the tour is another old warehouse, which sits across Carter Street from the former Atwood and McManus Box Company complex where I started my trip. Google Maps indicates this place is occupied by another fruit wholesaler, F&B Fruit and Produce.
This place has certainly seen better days, and the presence of a large red "X" on the building tells me that it has been condemned and will likely be torn down before too long. I walked past the blue pickup in front and noticed a couple cuddling in the front seat. I quickly got out of there, as I didn't want them to think I was some Peeping Tom weirdo with a camera.
That wraps up my brief tour of the Commercial Triangle area of Chelsea and Everett. Make sure to check back for my exploration of the heart of Chelsea along and near Broadway.
