Dorchester Pottery Works
About this property
Dorchester Pottery Works is a historic site at 101-105 Victory Road in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a neighborhood of Boston. The Dorchester Pottery Works was founded in 1895 by George Henderson and made stoneware. The Dorchester Pottery Works closed in 1979. The building was designated as a Boston Landmark in 1980 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The Dorchester Pottery Works is located in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and abuts a sizable shopping center to one side and railroad tracks to the other. The residential neighborhood across the street is largely of frame, later Victorian, single family structures. The Dorchester Pottery Works is now represented by its sole surviving structure, a brick industrial building housing the company's monumental kiln. This kiln building has been vacant for several years and had been boarded up until its recent rehabilitation. The Works formerly included a frame industrial building that was attached to the kiln building, and the Henderson House, which was used as a residence and showroom by the proprietors of the business. Recently, both of these buildings were destroyed. The Dorchester Pottery Works kiln house is a two-story plus clerestory, five-by-five bay, flat roofed, red brick, industrial building with a red brick chimney approximately 60-feet in height angled into its east wa11. The building is squarish in plan, measures approximately 45 feet by 49 feet, and is about 25 feet high from grade level to roof parapet. Located near the center of a deep and irregularly shaped parcel including 21,730 square feet, the kiln house was formerly attached to the rear of, the now demolished two-story frame, clapboard, industrial building which was approximately 42 feet wide by 69 feet deep and which extended up to the Victory Road street line. Characterizing the exterior of the kiln building are its segmentally arched windows (the long first floor windows had been fitted with nine-over-nine sash which have been reconstructed after the earlier ones were totally vandalized), broad rectangular ground level entrances on the south and west sides, and concrete lintels and sills. Ornamentation is sparse and limited to the handling of the chimney with contrasting courses of yellow brick and the use of a plain brickwork cornice. Low parapet walls define the roof line on the north and south sides, and a brick roof extension on the north side allowed for the operation of an industrial pulley lift. The interior of the building is basically an open two-story space extended by a central three-by-four bay clerestory. The second floor functions primarily as a balcony level formed by an opening that is approximately 25 1/2 feet in diameter and edged with curved bolted steel. Steel columns located towards the corners of the building carry the load of the flattened arched tile roof vaults of the second floor and clerestory. The height of the interior measures approximately 14 feet from grade to the second floor and approximately 28 1/2 feet from grade to the roof of the clerestory. . .
Location
Categories
Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Dorchester Pottery Works listed on the National Register?
Dorchester Pottery Works was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 21, 1985.
What type of historic resource is Dorchester Pottery Works?
Dorchester Pottery Works is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Dorchester Pottery Works?
The period of significance for Dorchester Pottery Works is recorded as the industrial era.
Can I research the history near Dorchester Pottery Works?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Dorchester Pottery Works will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
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