the distillery redevelopment - Boston Redevelopment Authority

The Distillery Redevelopment | East Second Street | South Boston
order to extend the street was passed at the end of June, and on August 21, 1914,
the city received a license to do the necessary filling across the dock. The license
specified that the north side of the new street was to be finished with a seawall,
the south side was to be sloped, and the quadrilateral cut off at the end of the old
dock (Figure 5-6) was to be filled solid to the grade of the street (italics added). 15
The license does not specify, however, the kind of fill to be used. The extension
or East First Street and filling of the dock-the part of the present SSA parcel now
designated RTN-11965-was probably completed in 1914. Felton & Son then
acquired this newly made land in 1920 and 1921. 16
In the years since the dock was filled there have been more changes to the SSA
parcel. The gasholder at the corner of E. Second and Dorchester Streets was
evidently removed sometime between 1923 and 1930 (see above). Felton & Son
did not acquire this land and the adjoining lot at the western tip of the parcel until
1956, however. 17 (The present Neamco Office Products building at 510 East
Second Street was reportedly constructed about 1966 on the site of the former
gasholder. 18 ) In the 1930s there was a railroad track, shown on a 1947 Sanborn
atlas (Figure 5-8), on the site of the former dock in the north part of the parcel.
The track was used for hauling molasses to the distillery, 19 and railroad cars can
be seen on the north side of the Felton distillery in a photograph that appeared on
the front of a 1938 booklet about the Felton & Son distillery. 20 About 1960 Felton
& Son sold what is now the SSA parcel to Old Mr. Boston. 21 The latter continued
to operate a distillery on the site until they sold the property to Second Street
Associates in 1982. 22
15
License No. 98, Directors of the Port of Boston to the City of Boston, August 21, 1914, Division of
Wetlands and Waterways, [Massachusetts] Department of Environmental Protection, Boston, Mass.
16
S.D. 4224: 51, 4307: 109.
17
S.D. 7168: 381, 7200: 575.
18
ENSTRAT, Report on Project No. 049522-8.
19
Fred Gordon, personal communication.
20
West Peterson, The Romance of Rum: [History of New England's Famous Drink and Felton's Five
Generations of Quality ([Boston]: , 1938).
21
Fred Gordon, personal communication.
22 Ibid.
5.0 Historic Resources 5-9