Dorchester Explained: Boston’s Largest Neighborhood and Its Many Villages
Founded in 1630 and annexed in 1870, Dorchester is really a collection of villages, from Savin Hill to Lower Mills. Here is a guide to its history.
Ask someone from Dorchester where they live and you may hear Savin Hill, Fields Corner, Ashmont, Neponset or Lower Mills before you hear the word Dorchester. Boston’s largest neighborhood has always been a patchwork of smaller places, each with its own main street and personality.
A Puritan town
Dorchester was founded in 1630 by English Puritans who arrived on the ship Mary and John, a few weeks before Boston was settled. It began as a large town that stretched well beyond today’s boundaries. Over time, parts of it became separate towns, and in 1804 its northern peninsula, known as Dorchester Neck, was annexed to Boston and became South Boston.
The James Blake House, built around 1661, is considered the oldest surviving house in Boston. It still stands in Dorchester, in Richardson Park near Edward Everett Square.
America’s chocolate town
At Lower Mills, on the Neponset River, water power drove mills from the colonial era onward. In the 1760s, a chocolate mill began operating there, and the business later became Walter Baker and Company. Baker’s chocolate was made in Dorchester for well over a century. The old brick mill buildings have since been converted to apartments, but the name and the history remain part of the neighborhood’s identity.
Streetcar suburb
Dorchester was annexed to Boston in 1870. As streetcar and rail lines expanded, farmland gave way to houses. The neighborhood became famous for its triple-deckers, wooden three-family homes with stacked porches. They let working families own a building, live on one floor and rent the other two. Thousands still stand.
Successive generations of Irish, Jewish, Italian, Black, Caribbean, Vietnamese, Cape Verdean and Latin American families have made Dorchester home. Fields Corner, for example, became a center of Boston’s Vietnamese community, while Bowdoin-Geneva and other areas have strong Cape Verdean roots.
Landmarks worth knowing
- Columbia Point, home to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and the University of Massachusetts Boston.
- Franklin Park, the largest park in the Emerald Necklace, which Dorchester shares with Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.
- Pope John Paul II Park along the Neponset River, built on a former landfill and drive-in site.
- Dorchester North Burying Ground, dating to the 1630s.
- The Ashmont–Mattapan trolley, which runs historic streetcars along the neighborhood’s southern edge.
Getting to know it
Because Dorchester is so large, the best approach is to explore one village at a time. Take the Red Line to a stop such as Savin Hill, Fields Corner or Ashmont and walk the nearby commercial strip. In winter, the triple-decker porches, church steeples and corner bakeries give a clear picture of a neighborhood built by working families who wanted a foothold in the city.
The Dorchester Historical Society is a good resource for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the history of a particular street or village.
