If you drive down Harvard Street toward Blue Hill Avenue, do yourself a favor and pump the brakes at the corner of Norwell Street, first for the sake of safety because people drive too fast there, but also to take a look at the great work that’s been done to improve the old Mt. Horeb Lodge #10 on the corner.
The Lodge was no horrible property before, but in the last year the membership has really improved the outside of the building, adding elegant trim and a snappy paint job to truly improve that busy site. In a neighborhood such as ours on the west side of Dorchester, it takes a lot to get it to where everyone would want it, but certainly the old theory about “one corner at a time” worked its magic here.
I caught up with Lodge President Joe Allen this week and he said he has been a member for a long time and it has been his goal to get the outside of the Lodge improved to uplift the neighborhood.
He certainly has done so.
“For me, I’m a general contractor and that’s my line of work,” he said. “If I’m a member of a place and it’s run down, it’s a bad reflection on me and the place and the community. Since I became a member, that was on my mind and I wanted to uplift it so it wasn’t an eyesore on the community. I wanted people to come by and say, ‘That building looks nice.’”
The Lodge has been the meeting place for the West of Washington (WOW) group since it started up several years ago, and it’s been a great meeting spot and gathering area. Like many places around Dorchester where organizations or groups are based, they can be in front of your face and also be unknown at the same time. I had to confess to Allen that, even being around for a while, I know little about the Lodge other than going to WOW meetings there and passing by frequently.
Allen said they are officially part of the Independent United Order of Mechanics, Friendly Society, of the Western Hemisphere. That group has a lot of representation in the Caribbean, but it traces its charter to an Act of the British Parliament in 1757. Allen said the membership also includes the women’s chapter, known as the Rose of Sharon Lodge #8, and a children’s section, which isn’t operating now at the Lodge. He also noted that members travel to meetings at the world headquarters in Brooklyn once a month.
Their beginnings in the neighborhood are pretty interesting too, Allen said. Their first president, the late Leslie Lynbert Sylvester, bought the Lodge building from the city for $1 back in the 1970s when no one wanted anything to do with real estate in Boston. He hosted parties in his basement and fundraisers to cobble together the money to fix up the building little by little.
“It goes back way beyond my time,” said Allen. “Some of the stuff is mind-boggling in how he got the building to what it is now.”
The United Order is a Christian-based organization that stresses God, family and the Lodge in that order. “No one is going to skip out on their family obligations because they say they have to come to the Lodge; family comes first,” Allen said.
I don’t know about anybody else, but it sounds to me like a good place to anchor down that side of the neighborhood.
A GREAT TOUR
Even though it was done on the computer, the Dorchester Historical Society hosted a dynamite virtual tour of Four Corners early this month. I was excited to see that Director Earl Taylor was going to focus on the neighborhood’s history, and quickly I learned something I already kind of knew: This side of Dorchester has some deep roots.
We were taken in particular by the story – unknown to us at the time – of the house up on the corner of School Street and Washington. It is the oldest house in the area, estimated to have been built in 1780 and once the home of famed sculptor Robert Ball Hughes. While it was moved back to make way for a modern one-story commercial building where the Society of Vulcans is now, it once sat grandly on the corner and was called ‘Sunnyside.’
I’ve always known the home was old. You can just tell these things if you know what to look for, but I had no idea it was so esteemed – with tales of the house hosting celebrities of the time like Charles Dickens. What a thing to think the guy that thought up Ebenezer Scrooge once spent the night up the street on the corner.
It seems that only about two-thirds of the home still exists since it was moved back, and that’s been the source of a low-level debate in our house for several years. I’ve held firm that it had to be the remains of an old home we found on the historical maps, while my wife disagreed and said it was more modern and was in no way part of the older home.
I’m not going to gloat or anything, but I will say for the record that I was at least two-thirds right.
WALK ON
I used to be the lone walker of a morning – aside from the dedicated earlier risers headed to the bus stop for work. Day in, day out, I walk, sometimes before the sun comes up. For years it was just me and one fella that I occasionally saw who was a relation to the guys that operated the market down the street. He walked in khaki trousers, a buttoned-up collared shirt, and tennis shoes. He often looked over at me from the other side of the street, raised his arms in victory formation, and yelled, “Exercise is good!”
I miss that old gent, but I don’t feel alone so much anymore.
I see more and more people out walking in the mornings, getting their exercise. Maybe they’re not as busy with work; maybe they unfortunately lost their jobs; maybe Covid re-focused them; or maybe they’re still working from home and don’t have to go anywhere.
So be it; people are taking care of themselves around here by walking in far greater numbers.
TOO MUCH SHOOTING
With all the talk of great community organizations, the grand past of the west side of Dorchester, and getting great exercise, one has to come back down to earth a little bit. There is simply too much gunplay and violence in the neighborhood. It’s bad this year; it was just as bad last year, but it has actually been that way for a good three or four years if anyone cares to know.
On the July 4th weekend down Spencer Street, it was reported that someone fired off 30 or more rounds on the street. I didn’t hear of anyone getting hit, but who in the world fires 30 rounds? I don’t think most guns hold 30 rounds without some sort of illicit device. That’s something one might expect as an act of war.
Can anyone do anything about that? Or perhaps the question is: Do they really want to do anything about it? I’m not even sure things like that happen in other neighborhoods. Maybe they do and I just don’t know it.
I know the taking of life, the indiscriminate firing of guns, and it leaves a sad pit in my stomach, especially because there’s little any of us around here can do about it. And so, you become captive to it.
