When two tanks greeted motorists on the Expressway

In 1984, Lou Jones took an aerial photo of the two Boston Gas tanks on Commercial Point off the Expressway and Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester.

Boston Gas built the two tanks in 1971 - after paying Corita to paint one of them with her rainbow swash/Ho Chi Minh memorial. The company removed the Corita tank in 1992, but took care to reproduce the mural - the world's largest copyrighted artwork - on the remaining tank.

The two solid tanks replaced an even larger "gasholder" on the site - roughly six times as large as one of the new tanks. That holder, a holdover from the days when Boston was dotted with similar structures to store naphtha gas and gas generated from coal, was sort of a giant balloon inside a steel lattice - as gas was pumped in, the cover would rise into the sky, then slowly deflate as gas was pumped out.

In the 1880s, the Boston Gas Light Company built two gasholders on the site:

The pump at the bottom of one of the tanks:

Both photos from the Boston Gas Company Records held by Boston College.

Going even further back, Commercial Point was once, somewhat briefly, a residential area that included a pair of palatial homes. As the Dorchester Historical Society notes:

Soon after 1800 Joseph Newell and Ebenezer Niles, who thought Commercial Point would prosper in whale and cod fishing, built neighboring large, square, palatial houses on the south side of the point looking south toward Port Norfolk. They connected themselves as partners in business, built vessels and were actively engaged in commercial matters, but the panic resulting from the War of 1812 put a close to their business speculations and prospects.

Later, others would try to follow in Newell's and Niles's whaling footsteps on Commercial Point. In the 1830s:

A syndicate was formed for the prosecution of the whale and cod fisheries at Commercial Point. This syndicate was composed of Messrs. Nathaniel Thayer, a brother of John E. Thayer, the founder of the house of the well-known firm of Kidder, Peabody, & Co.; Mr. Elisha Preston, of Dorchester, who was the senior part of the firm of Preston & Thayer; Mr. Josiah Stickney, a well-known Boston merchant; and Mr. Charles O. Whitmore, of the firm of Lombard & Whitmore, whose residence was near the Point, and who acted as "ship's-husband" for the vessels composing the fleet. Their goal was to whale in the Pacific, Indian, and North Atlantic oceans. The ships bought by the company were the "Charles Carroll," of Nantucket; "Courier," "Herald," and bark "Lewis," plus they equipped twenty schooners, of which two - the "Belle" and "the Preston" - were built at the Point. They purchased not only the wharf, but quite a tract of land in its immediate vicinity, where they put flakes for the drying of their codfish. They also built some cooper-shops and a store for the supply of sailors' outfits and ship chandlery. The store was built from the material that came from the granary building which formerly occupied the site of the present Park Street Church in the city proper."

In the 1850s, one merchant began storing wood and coal on the point. And then:

In 1872 Dexter Josiah Cutter started a heating fuel company at Commercial Point, bringing in wood and coal on boats. The 1874 atlas shows that the Boston Gas Light Company occupied the outer portion of the Point, and John Preston had a chocolate factory and wharf at the southeastern corner. In the 1880s the Boston Gas Light Company owned nearly all of the Point and added two gas holders (coal gas tanks) along with coal shed, retort house, purifying house, condensing house, machine shop and other buildings. D.J. Cutter maintained its coal yard at this located location through at least the 1930s. Later they became a heating fuel delivery company located farther north on Freeport Street.

Top, cropped photo copyright Lou Jones. Used under this Creative Commons license.