Anthony Mitchell Sammarco - South Boston

The horse-drawn streetcars that served South Boston ran along Dorchester Avenue from Boston. The horses would pull the streetcars along rails; passengers were shaded by canvas awnings in the summer and warmed by straw-strewn floors in the winter.

The Phoenix Glass Works was located on Second Street at the corner of B Street. Founded by Thomas Cains, blown flint glass was produced in the early nineteenth century by these workers, who are shown here posing in front of the glass factory.

Thomas Cains, an Englishman, settled in South Boston and produced a flint glass that was compared in quality to that of the Boston and Sandwich and the New England Glass Companies. A prosperous manufacturer, he was a leading citizen of South Boston.

The Suffolk Glass Works, depicted in 1849 in Gleasons Pictoral and Drawing Room Companion , was one of four glass manufacturers in South Boston; the other three were the Phoenix, the South Boston, and the American Flint Glass Works. The skilled work force, which included glass blowers and molders to produce the flint glass, settled largely in the area west of D Street.

Algers Iron Foundry was located on Dorchester Avenue at the corner of Alger Street. In his iron foundry, Cyrus Alger and his workers not only cast 25,000 one-pound cannons, but they supplied the United States with cannonballs during the War of 1812.

Cyrus Alger opened his foundry in South Boston in 1809. Through experimentation, he was able to purify cast iron so as to give it more than triple the strength of ordinary cast iron, and thereby sidestep his competitors.

The interior of Algers Iron Foundry had fairly primitive conditions for the production of cast iron. With open vats of molten iron, and the intense heat necessary for the operation, the foundry was as dangerous as it was profitable.

By the 1880s, horse-drawn streetcars had given way to those driven by conductors. The mode of locomotion changed, but as can be seen here, canvas awnings still shaded passengers from the sun during the summer.

Andrew Square is the junction of Dorchester Avenue and Dorchester, Southampton, and Preble Streets. Named for Governor John Albion Andrew, the area was originally known as Washington Village and was annexed to Boston from Dorchester in 1855. The horse-drawn cart on the far right would water, by a sprinkling system, the streets at the turn of the century to keep the dust down.

Preble Street, which connects Dorchester Avenue to Old Colony Avenue, was named for William Henry Preble, a lawyer in Boston and an active member of the community.

Streetcars, and later buses, connected the Andrew Square Station on the Red Line of the MBTA with points throughout South Boston, Dorchester, and Roxbury. This streetcar is leaving from the rear of Andrew Square Station and is headed east toward City Point.

The Three Tower Bridges cross the Fort Point Channel, connecting the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad with the Boston terminal. This six-track rolling lift bridge indicates the large number of railroad lines that passed through South Boston to the main terminus at South Station.

This three-decker was built on West Broadway next to the Saints Peter and Paul Church. Originally the shop of Albert C. Haley, a noted painter and decorator in South Boston, it had apartments on the second and third floors. Today, it has been remodeled as law offices.