Grove Hall Car House

No. 10083 Scan of an illustration of the Grove Hall car house from History of the West End Street Railway. Boston: Louis P. Hager, 1892. The facility faced Blue Hill Avenue at Grove Hall (intersection of Blue Hill Avenue, Geneva and Washington Street). In the map Blue Hill Avenue is at the top.

Before the cars were electrified, the street railways were pulled by horses that were stabled in the brick building with the Mansard roofline. This picture was taken after electrification ? note the electric lines overhead. The street railways allowed people to live farther and farther from the city center, encouraging explosive growth in development in Dorchester and Roxbury in the last quarter of the 19th century.

History of the West End Street Railway. (Boston: Louis P. Hager, 1892) 25-30

The first horse railroad in the Boston area was a line of about a mile and a half from Harvard College to the Fitchburg Railroad at Union Square, Somerville. This was not a chartered business, simply the enterprise of one man.

The first street railway corporation to receive a charter from the Massachusetts Legislature was the Dorchester and Roxbury in 1852, whose incorporators were William D. Swan, Charles C. Holbrook and William Hendry. By a special act passed May 30, 1857, they were empowered ?to construct, maintain and use a railway or railways, with convenient single of double tracks, from a point on Meeting House Hill in the town of Dorchester, upon and over Hancock and Stoughton Streets, so called, in said town of Dorchester, to the line separating said town from the city of Roxbury; and also from a point near the Town House in said Dorchester, upon and over Washington Street, so called in said town, to the line separating said town from the city of Roxbury, and at said line to connect with the Metropolitan Railroad Company,? etc. The duration of this corporation was extended by the Legislature, but on October 1, 1864, its property and franchise passed into the hands of the Metropolitan Railroad Company.

Other street railway companies followed: Metropolitan Railroad-1853, Cambridge Railroad-1853, Union Railway-1855, Middlesex Railroad-1854, Broadway Railroad-1854 becoming South Boston Railroad, Boston and Chelsea Railroad-1854.

The Dorchester Railway Company succeeded the Dorchester Avenue Railway Company in January, 1858, by decree of the supreme judicial court, the company failing to meet the provisions of its charter, which was granted in 1854. Its incorporators were Cheever Newhall, Edward King and John J. May, the first location granted being ?from a point near the Lower Mills, so called, in the town of Dorchester, upon and over the way or street heretofore known by the name of the Dorchester Turnpike or Turnpike Street, to the line of the city of Boston, and thence upon and over such streets in South Boston as the Board of Aldermen of the city of Boston may determine, upon an d over the North Free bridge (Federal Street bridge), and upon and over Sea and Broad Streets in the direction of State Street.? All subsequent location were granted the Dorchester Railway as successors of the Dorchester Avenue Railway Company. It is related of the latter organization that it was equipped at one period of its brief existence with double-deck cars, and that after passing through a series of discouraging annoyances by its competitors, met its death by an accident to four of its passengers, who purposely tumbled from the tope of the car on which they were riding and then sued the company for damages. Judgment was rendered against the corporation, and this with other unfortunate circumstances caused its collapse. As stated elsewhere, the property and franchise of the Dorchester Railway Company passed into the hands of the Metropolitan Railroad Company, October 1, 1863.

Henry L. Pierce, Asaph Churchill and Edward H. R. Ruggles were the incorporators of the Dorchester Extension Railway, which received its charter February 18, 1859. Its line was located from a point near the Lower Mills in Dorchester, and connected with the (then) terminus of the Dorchester Railway at Centre Street in that town. This road was purchased by the Metropolitan Railroad Company in October, 1863, and the several locations thereafter were granted the latter corporation. Many other companies followed.