The Division 16 Police Station on Boylston Street, just west of Hereford Street, around 1914. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.
The buildings in 2015:
When the first photo was taken, this police station on Boylston Street consisted of the larger building in the background and the small one-story building in the center. The larger building is attached to the Ladder 15/Engine 33 Firehouse, and it was completed in the mid-1880s. At some point in the early 20th century, the police station added the small building to the left of it, and the two buildings were used by the Boston Police Department until 1976.
Today, neither building has seen drastic changes in appearance. They narrowly survived the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike, which was completed in 1965 and runs directly under the spot where the photo was taken. From 1976 to 2007, the larger building was the Institute of Contemporary Art, and it is now owned by the Boston Architectural College. The smaller building has since been converted into a restaurant, and as of 2015 it is Dillon’s Restaurant and Bar, which is named after a police captain who was stationed here from 1920 to 1950.
It was known to me as Station 15. There were horses kept in back of the station somewhere. I was born on Queensberry street and went to the Martin Milmore school on Peterborough street. Every school day was a policeman known as “Benny the cop” who rode a horse over and was our street crossing guard on the corner of Jersey and Peterborough. We could bring the horse (don’t remember his name) a carrot or lump of sugar and feed it to him ourselves. Certainly was the little things in life back in the day. Thank you for sharing a fond memory.
Benny the policeman could have been John Thomas Dolan (my grandfather) who lived in Brighton.
That Station 15 was where he worked until being gunned down while working the Sacco Vanzetti case. I was told he was caretaker of the horses and I saw blue ribbons!