Meeting House Hill

The church overlooks a small triangular park, originally called Dorchester Common, now named for the late pastor Reverend James K.

1775, Bristol, England; d. 1855, Boston) ran an academy for young ladies at the corner of Adams and East Streets.

They founded the school with the assistance of Saunders's cousin, the noted women's rights advocate and essayist Judith Sargent Murray.

[8] The girls were tutored in "Reading, Writing, English Grammar, Arithmetic, Plain Sewing, Embroidery, Tambour, French Language, Painting, and Geography, including the use of the Globes.

Local women's abolition groups met there,[12] and it served as a recruiting depot for the Union Army during the Civil War.

[18] The many triple-deckers in the area date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Boston's population was rapidly expanding.

[1] The firehouse at 7 Parish Street, housing Engine 17 and Ladder 7, was established circa 1870; the current structure was built in 1928.

[19] The City of Boston acquired the Capen family estate, "Mount Ida", in 1912, and converted part of it into an 11-acre public park.

The area is now home to residents of primarily African-American, Cape Verdean, Hispanic, West Indian,[11] and Vietnamese ancestry.

To celebrate their heritage, residents hold an annual Multicultural Festival each summer in Ronan Park.

The Impressionist painter Childe Hassam, who grew up on Olney Street, enthused about the area: "Dorchester was a most beautiful and pleasant place for a boy to grow up and go to school—from Meeting House Hill and Milton Hill looking out on Dorchester Bay and Boston Harbor with the white sails and the blue water of our clear and radiant North American weather.

I as a very young boy looked at this New England church and without knowing it appreciated partly its great beauty as it stood there then against one of our radiant North American clear blue skies.