The Taunton High School Stylus May 1909

 I found a bunch of these antique high school publications from Taunton High School (Taunton, MA) at the Taunton Antiques Center recently.

    The ads are what first interested me but the headline drew me to the cute movie theater 'slice of life' story and reading more in the May 1909 issue I really liked reading about the politics of dancing for High Schoolers over 100 years ago.

    I bought these booklets to resell at The Upscale Resale Gallery in Stoughton, MA but I am going to read through more fo them to find what other hidden jem stories they contain!

        -Laura

 

   

   

   

Hub Gore Makers 9 Bedford Street Boston, MA

 I found this cool trade card at The Upscale Resale Gallery antiques shop in Stoughton, MA. 

 

   I never heard of the company so I looked it up and found another card with the address of 9 Bedford Street. 

   This is a cool link to Google Maps that shows what the building looks like today. 

Google Maps 9 Bedford Street

Charles Copeland artist Two Hot to Handle by Ed Lacy Pulp Erotic Novel

 

   I resell vintage items as part of Grrl Pickers (visit our page: grrlpickers.com) and while researching this paperback pulp novel to put up for sale in our Etsy shop, I found out that the cover artist was a local man, Charles Copeland.

 From wikipedia: " In 1888, Charles and Eda lived at 21 Pemberton Square in Boston, MA, while having a house built in Newton, MA. In Newton, he established himself as a full-time artist. His illustrations appear in Youth's Companion, a popular young people’s magazine of the time. In addition, Copeland illustrated many books." 

  At first glance, I thought maybe the artist was Frazetta but as exciting as that would be to have, I ma actually a bit more excited to have found out about a local artist that I never knew about before picking up this book. 

 

 

 

Arnold Arboretum cemetary/burial ground

I've started walking my dogs up Peters Hill and spotted some gravestones along the way. I can't wait to learn more about this fascinating little spot of Boston history!

Link to Harvard News story about arboretum burial ground

Bride in Glasses Antique Portrait Notman Photographic Company 3 Park Street 480 Boylston Street Boston, MA

There is a (possibly shorthand?) pencil mark on the back of this antique matted print but I can't make out anything that might identify who this lovely lady might be.


    Her dress and the quality of the photo (very crisp and clear in real life, the scan came out a little blurrier than it really is) as well as the fact that she kept her glasses on for the portrait makes me think she was a woman of significant means and possibly prominent in social circles as she did not seem to bend to presumed social rules/embarrassment of ladies wearing glasses in public and/or formal portraits.

I got er from Debbie at the Upscale Resale Gallery (386 Lindelof Ave, Stoughton, MA) and busted her out of the ugly broken frame she was in.

   With any vintage photos, I often wonder who the person or persons pictured are/were but this one is a little bit special. I have a feeling i would have liked her, whoever she is/was.

Brink's Robbery Patrolman Charles Joseph McIntyre

Found this last night in a box of items saved from my maternal grandmother's scrapbook. My Grand Father's (Charles McIntyre) official police department records do not contain any mention of the Brink's robbery (that I have noticed) but according to this article, he was scheduled to testify to something.

   Perhaps he was just a witness testifying to police procedure and not actually involved int he case but it could be fun to look up those court records and see what might be there. 

   I asked my Mother if she knew about this and she replied that no, she didn't, "But he didn't talk about those things at home."

   My grandmother passed away before I was born so I have no idea what her thoughts might have been but I am grateful that she (and my great aunt) saved a whole lot of this stuff in locations that were all over, pretty much ensuring that if someone, someday were to be interested, it would be found.

Filene's Photo Studio

 This is a portrait of my uncle Thomas McIntyre (who grew up in Roslindale) taken approx 1943.

  The neatest thing about this photo tho, in my opinion, is the Filene's photo studio mark on it's matting.

   Every department store from high end to low end has had their own photo studio but this is the first time I have ever seen a Filene's marking.

   

Boston Opera House Program Season 1916-1917

This program is in rough shape but is still a wonderful little snippet of history from The Boston Opera House:

 

(this item is currently valuable for sale on Etsy, the Grrl Pickers Etsy shop can be accessed at www.grrlpickersvintage.com)

The Alpine / Rumor located at 100 Warrenton Street, Boston

 

 

Vintage postcard from the 1940's featuring The Alpine restaurant which was located at 100 Warrenton Street in Boston, MA.

 

  This address is now occupied by a bar/nightclub called, Rumour.

 

   My guess is, that if a time machine were invented,  the clientele for both of these establishments would not have mingled well....

 

  : ) 

North Station Forest Hills Dudley Station vintage Boston transportation postcards

Filene's Restaurant

When I was a little girl I remember getting dressed up in my best dresses to go "Downtown" with my great aunt. I wasn't really a dresses and frills kind of girl but by great aunt was and in hindsight now, I think she was trying to provide for me the things that she never had growing up as desperately poor as she did. My great aunt (and her sister, my grandmother who passed away before I was born) were raised under what, at the time, would seem shockingly tragic circumstances. Their parents were Irish born and moved to the US and the Boston area sometime right about the turn of the century. (I have the exact dates somewhere but they are not necessary for this particular story) At some point their father (a trolley driver) deserted the family, moved back to Ireland and started a whole new family. I think that is the reason that although my great aunt was very proud to be Irish, she never would discuss with any detail or clarity and details regarding her heritage. But I digress... Auntie Kay surely was living out her own childhood fantasies of proper young ladies raised in Boston when she dressed me up and took me to nice restaurants all over town. We had lunch at the Ritz, and we also dined at the very pleasant Filene's restaurant located int he flagship original Boston store. Decades later I worked for Filene's as a sales clerk and later a department manager. In various jobs at various times I was all over that building and saw many wonderful old relics of it's past life. There was a great black and white checked floor on the mezzanine left over from that floor's days as a hair dressing salon and a lovely wrought iron spiral stair case leading down from the Godiva candy stockroom, I have no idea where the stair case originally led to and from but it sure was a neat relic and one that I regret most not photographing when I had the opportunity to do so. Oh but I am rambling on again... I have memories of the Filene's Restaurant as being decorated in green and white in the mid 1970's and I also recall it being sun lit although I don't recall looking out any windows. I have heard from different sources that the restaurant was located on the 4th and or the 8th floor of the store at 500 Washington Street and it may well have been located on different floors at different time periods. The store was over 100 years old by the time I started working there... Close inspection of this card appears to me to be the 8th floor of the building. I remember the columns that dotted the large room and the bright high windows that was the employee cafeteria and restaurant when I was there. Employees could purchase inexpensive meals like burgers and fries or grilled cheese on their breaks while working. It was quite convenient if not quite as glamorous as it was when it was a restaurant open to the public. Anyhoo... I ran across this old postcard online recently and it reminded me of those lunches with Auntie Kay. I would have loved to have been able to tell her about conversations I had with employees that used to work in the restaurant during their long and very storied careers at Filene's but I have the feeling that even if I could have told her about these women, she might only have been disappointed (and not delighted like I was) to find her niece making friends with waitresses instead of executive Secretaries. When it comes down to it, whether we had overly polished manners or not (in my case, certainly not) we all apparently enjoyed our meals in the same place at different times...

Vintage Post Cards Nantasket and Revere Beach

It's awfully cold out there tonight, a good evening for hunkering down with some hot cocoa and thoughts of summer...

Vintage Boston Post Card

Stay safe Harvard Community, Stay Safe Boston...

I saw my father pretty often on weekends and school vacations but it was very rare for him to show up anywhere in the comings and goings of my day to day life. With the possible exception of when I got in trouble for something really bad, that was kind of how I knew I was really in trouble, if it was something so bad that my mother got over her aversion for speaking to my father and actually called him, then I knew I was really in trouble. So it was a bit of a surprise to see him on the sidewalk outside Pierce School one afternoon in Brookline when the grammar school was vacated for what seemed to be a routine fire drill. The drill in and of itself was a little odd as were usually informed on days when there would be a drill and this one appeared to come as a surprise to the teachers as well as the pupils. I didn’t think too much about that at the time, I was just happy to be outside and out of class. The school could have burnt to the ground and I would have been thrilled at the time but that’s another story. I was pleasantly surprised to see my Dad and his presence was not completely out of place (he was dating a school employee at the time) but I was a bit perplexed as I had never seen him at the school before and a fire drill really didn’t seem to be an important enough reason to stop by. I had assumed he was just in the neighborhood and saw me out on the sidewalk but that was not the case. Standing on the sidewalk he very seriously and very quietly told me it wasn’t a real fire drill, someone had called in a bomb threat to the school. (later determined to be a hoax) I’m not sure how old I was at the time of that incident but I was most likely somewhere between the 6th and 8th grades, maybe somewhere between 11 and 13 years old. At the time it would have probably seemed improper to share such potentially frightening information with a young kid but these days kids even younger than I was at the time are quite familiar with active shooter drills in their schools. Bomb drills are probably just as common place as fire drills were back in my day. Whenever one of these scary incidents show up happening real time on my news feeds I can’t help but wonder, is this rash of threats really new or is it our age of lightning fast information sharing that makes it seem like there are more threatening incidents at educational facilities now more than ever before? Were the threats always there and we just didn’t know or talk about them (certainly not with children) or are we really actually living in more violent times? As we all wait minute by minute today to hear the latest about today’s reports of violence at Harvard University, I can’t help but wonder…

My Irish Wife

I found this on The Library of Congress web site and I find it amusing that so many years later "the queen of France" (or at least a recent prime Minister's wife, Carla Bruni) is known to be a beauty of international reknown). Looking up around downtown Boston one can see many markers listing company names imbedded in the stone at about the second story on a lot of buildings. I am endlessly surprised at how many of those companies that built those buildings were music publishers.

   This was a company I hadn't seen on a building or heard of before so I thought it worth sharing. At some point I'll travel down Hanover Street and see if the original building is still there...