Dorchester Avenue (Boston)

Dorchester Avenue (sometimes called Dot Ave) is a street in Boston, Massachusetts, running from downtown south via South Boston and Dorchester to the border with Milton, where it ends. Built as a turnpike, the Dorchester Turnpike, it is mostly straight.

The Boston South Bridge over Fort Point Channel, on the site of today's West Fourth Street Bridge, opened on October 1, 1805 as the first bridge connecting downtown to South Boston. Until it was sold to the city of Boston on April 19, 1832, it was a toll bridge.

The Dorchester Turnpike Corporation (sometimes called the South Boston Turnpike) was created by the state legislature on March 4, 1805, to build a turnpike from the east end of the Boston South Bridge (Nook Point) to Milton Bridge over the Neponset River, on the other side of which the Blue Hill Turnpike later continued.

Construction cost more than expected, and thus high tolls were charged, so many travelers took the old longer route through Roxbury. Despite that, the Dorchester Turnpike was one of the most profitable turnpikes, with earnings steadily climbing to a peak in 1838. When the parallel Old Colony Railroad opened in 1844, earnings quickly fell.

The North Free Bridge, on the site of today's Dorchester Avenue Bridge, opened in 1826, providing a more direct route form the north end of the turnpike to Dewey Square downtown.[1]

On April 22, 1854, the turnpike became a free public road, named Dorchester Avenue. The name was changed to Federal Street in 1856, as it provided a continuation of that street from downtown Boston (via the North Free Bridge), but it became Dorchester Avenue again in 1870.

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