Charlestown Jaunt, Part III

From Dave Brigham:

Welcome to the final installment in my three-part series on Boston's Charlestown neighborhood. In this post I'll cover a social club, an abandoned railroad, an old mill and some abandoned stuff within view of the Encore Boston Harbor casino, among other things.

The first two installments are "here" and here.

I really like the back alleys you find in many Boston neighborhoods.

I don't remember exactly where this little pass-through is. I imagine kids using it to ride bikes safely off the main roads, or criminals booking through here after knocking over a bank. So many practical uses.

Speaking of cool features of Boston, how about a pub that dates to 1780?

Named for a patriot who was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Warren Tavern has served George Washington, Paul Revere and other famous Americans over the centuries. The tavern has closed for short periods of times over the past 240 years, per Wikipedia, but is one of the oldest pubs in the Bay State.

While we're on the subject of booze, how about McCarthy Bros. Liquor Store....

Located in Hayes Square, the packy has been around since 1888. During the course of those 132 years, the company brewed its own beer, although it doesn't do that anymore. The fifth generation of the family now runs the joint, which is the longest running family business in Charlestown, per the store's web site.

If you're a member or know someone who is, you can also get your drink on at Abraham Lincoln Post 11 of Grand Army of the Republic.

This club has a long and slightly confusing history, so bear with me. Founded in 1867, this chapter of the GAR -- a national fraternal organization for Union veterans of the Civil War -- was situated in a few locations before moving to this one on Green Street in 1888, per the group's web site. "In 1920, the membership changed their charter, and called the new corporation the Abraham Lincoln Post 11/Veterans of the World War. This opened up the membership to any veteran who served in the Armed Forces during time of war," the web site indicates. " In 1932, with many of its Civil War members dead or dying, the charter was changed again, creating the Memorial Hall Corporation. The purpose of the corporation was and still is 'to hold the property at 14 Green Street for the use and occupation by persons who have served in the Armed Forces of the United States of America in time of war…………and to preserve the building as a sacred heirloom for the future defenders of America and as a Shrine of Peace dedicated by the people of Charlestown to her sons, the Defenders of our Country in its struggle for Liberty, Unity and Humanity.'"

The national organization of the Grand Army of the Republic was dissolved in 1956 after the death of its last member.

In the second post in this series I discussed some buildings in Sullivan Square, such as the former Schrafft's candy factory. Roughly a mile away, over the border in Everett, sits Encore Boston Harbor, the first casino in eastern Massachusetts (see my exhaustive review of this area from May 4, 2019, "Roll the Dice: Encore!"). Wynn Resorts, the company that operates the gambling and entertainment facility, has acquired a lot of property around the casino, with an eye toward developing hotels, restaurants, retail sites and office buildings. Below are a few sites in Charlestown that are currently vacant or close to it. Will these properties be redeveloped as the area around the casino glitzes up?

R. Wesley's Bistro has been closed for several years. I found a Charlestown Patch article from April 2012 that mentions how dusty the place is. There is a parking lot behind the building, and plenty of traffic to bring in customers to a new eatery. The casino might -- once business returns at least to semi-normal -- bring in more folks looking for a quick bite or drink. This building is in rough shape, though, so it might need to come down.

Just to the right of the former eatery's green awnings you can see the Encore Boston Harbor.

Also in the shadow of the Schrafft Center is a property hemmed in by Rutherford Avenue, Mishawum Street and Main Street.

At least part of the building is occupied by Louis W. Mian, Inc., an importer, distributor, fabricator and installer of all types of natural stone, per the company's web site. The company dates to 1948. Now, as for the empty lot in the foreground....I searched quite a bit online and think I found out what used to be here: James J. Duffy, Inc., a wholesale distributor to convenience stores (think Bazooka gum, Magnum Ecstasy condoms, Slim Jim, 5-Hour Energy, etc.). The company is located in Chelsea now, but I found an address for 500 Main Street, Charlestown, online, which matches the address for this lot.

I haven't been able to figure out what, if anything, might be in the works for this lot. I'm guessing eventually a condo building will rise here.

A stone's throw away I found this remnant of a railroad right-of-way.

I believe these tracks are a bit of what's left of a spur off the Boston & Main Railroad that led to Charlestown's waterfront. "Now used to receive shipments of new cars, Mystic Pier was once a substantial freight hub, with the industrial spur providing the industries on the pier with a rail connection to western clients," per this Boston Streetcars web page.

Across from the Louis W. Mian building referenced above is the ugly mess of Rutherford Avenue.

Dating to the 1960s, I believe, Rutherford Avenue is, as this November 2011 Boston Globe article says, a city street masquerading as a highway. A concrete wound slicing between Bunker Hill Community College and various industrial parks on the west side, and the quieter, residential areas on the east, Rutherford Avenue needs to be updated, something everyone agrees on. But for more than a decade, the City of Boston has been conducting studies and working with the community to try and figure out how to balance the need for traffic management, green space, bicycle and pedestrian access, signage, expansion of the Ryan Playground and many more issues. I have no idea when this will all come to fruition. Maybe once the casino opens again, things will pick up as development takes root across the border in Everett.

On the corner of Spice and Cambridge streets, directly across from the Sullivan Square subway and bus station, is the building below, which dates to 1895.

This property is known as the Julian D'Este Brass Finishing Company and Foundry, per MACRIS. Current tenants include Madison Floral and Be Movement Arts.

Let's wrap it up with some Charlestown-themed graffiti.

The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (known locally as the ZBH, or the Zakim or the Bunker Hill Bridge) spans the nebulous body of water that runs between Cambridge, Charlestown and the North Station area -- is it the Charles River? Millers River? Boston Harbor? Anyway, the bridge, which has become an iconic symbol of "new Boston," was named for both the late civil rights activist Lenny Zakim and the nearby site of a famous Revolutionary War battle.

The Walk of Fame

From Dave "Almost Famous" Brigham:

As regular readers of the blog and followers of the accompanying Instagram feed might recall, back in October, I was featured in a Boston Globe article about hunting for ghost signs. I walked through part of Boston's Fort Point neighborhood with the reporter, Nora McGreevy, and a Globe photographer, Jessica Rinaldi, who, I found out later, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. Below are some of the photos I took that day, along with others I shot on a follow-up trip to a different part of the neighborhood.

I chose this area because a) it was close to South Station, where I eat lunch most times my son and I travel into the city, and b) I knew there was at least one ghost sign along Congress Street. The first backside-worthy element we saw was something Nora spied.

Located on the side of the Boston Children's Museum building, the Atlas Stores sign was a new one for me, and something quite different than I've seen in Fort Point or anywhere else in Boston. I assume it's been restored somewhat, as it pops out much more than other signs that are carved or bolted to building facades. Built in the late 19th century as a warehouse, this building is just one of dozens in this neighborhood that give locals and tourists a taste of the way much of Boston once looked (see June 25, 2019, "Wool-d You Like to Join Me For a Walk?" for more examples). I like that the sign is still there, asserting its sense of history over the Yawkey Center sign.

We also spotted several medallions for the Boston Wharf Company, which developed the Fort Point Channel neighborhood between 1836 and 1882.

Nora was pretty good at spotting signs. As a history buff and the person who birthed the idea for the Globe article, that's to be expected. While I was looking at one sign (discussed below), she saw (with her much younger eyes) the fading one below.

The six-story Putnam & Company building dates to 1888. I'm not sure what the company's business was, but I'm guessing warehousing.

In the meantime, I found another Boston Wharf Company sign, on a building erected in 1891.

Finally we made it to the sign I knew was there (below). I'd shot the rear of this building at the corner of Congress and A streets a few years back, and noticed while doing a Google maps search in advance of meeting with Nora that this side of the building was covered with old advertisements as well.

The sign is for Berman & Sons, which was involved in the metal fabrication industry. The building, which houses Lucky's Lounge on the ground floor, will soon (or perhaps does by now; I shot these in July) feature high-end condos. From this spot, we couldn't help but see one of the larger ghost signs in the city, not far away on A Street.

I'd shot this sign from a slightly different angle for the above-linked article about a previous visit to Fort Point. There are at least two layers of signs here. What we could make out related to the Terkelsen Building and Terkelsen Machine Co., which, according to a Flickr photo I found online, manufactured "spiral washing machines."

We headed back past the Berman & Sons ghost sign, and I realized that, like a hipster food truck vendor, the Giuffre's Building was covered in more ink than I'd expected.

I can't make out the sign above the first floor windows. Notice the top two floors, which were added on for the condo project.

The last thing I shot while walking with Nora and Jessica was the set of doors below, which face onto Melcher Street.

Melcher Street is parallel to Necco Court, which I checked out in late 2017 or early 2018 (see April 22, 2018, "Fort Point Channel -- It's Electric!"). Necco Court is named for the former New England Confectionary Company, which was headquartered here many years ago.

About two weeks after I walked this area with the Globe reporter and photographer, I started at the intersection of West Broadway and A Street in South Boston and headed east, ending up at the Berman & Sons ghost sign building. Here's some of what I saw.

I know this isn't a ghost sign, but I like the effort to give it a classic, old-school look. Barlow's Restaurant, a tavern offering traditional comfort food options, opened in December 2009. I'm guessing there was another restaurant here prior, but I haven't found that out for sure. The building dates to 1895 (or possibly 1919, depending on which Internet source I believe. Sigh....) and was formerly....

....I'm not sure. Barlow's is located at 241 A Street, and is part of the Channel Center complex, which includes some former Boston Wharf Company warehouses that date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At first I thought this place was an old fire house, based on the medallion pictured above with an old water pumper and the letters "F.I. Co." After searching through an online database of former Boston fire stations and scanning digital maps for any evidence and coming up empty, I put the question to Facebook.

And Mark Zuckerberg's cash machine didn't let me down. Answers ranged from, speaking about the medallion, "That's pretty clearly a prototype of Johnny 5 from 'Short Circuit,'" to "Contact the Boston Fire Historical Society and ask them," to the eventual winner: "The image looks like an old firefighting hand pump car. And I am guessing F.I. Co. stands for Fire Insurance Company. So the medallion may be the logo of an old fire insurance company that was located in the Boston Wharf complex."

So perhaps this building was offices for the adjacent warehouse complex, or a warehouse itself. The same person who deduced that the medallion was for a fire insurance company, managed to find a photo of the same type of medallion on a different building, and passed along that it belonged to the Fireman's Insurance Co. of Baltimore. I then learned from Wikipedia that back in the day, insurance companies had their own fire brigades, and would install these plaques on the buildings of their insured clients.

I love how much I can learn while researching online and reaching out to friends....

In addition to restaurants, start-up companies, architect firms and other businesses, this area is home to dozens of artists who live and work at Midway Studios.

The building in the above photo is one of the few in this area that don't appear to have been remodeled anytime in the recent past. I'm not sure if this is an artist space, or simply vacant.

Below is one final mystery of this old industrial area.

This short stretch of old railroad tracks extends about 20 feet south from Barlow's Restaurant, stops at the edge of the short Mount Washington Way, then continues for another 20 feet on the other side, ending at the building you see above. A quick look at historic maps of this area shows tracks to the east, which are still there, but nothing along A Street. So perhaps when the old Boston Wharf buildings were redeveloped into the Channel Center, this small link to the past was added. Just a guess.