Dedham Tales

From a turn of the 20th century postcard. This intersection was known as Memorial Square.

May, 2010

Memorial Hall was dedicated on September 28, 1868, as a lasting monument to the bravery of the forty-seven “sons of Dedham” who perished in the Rebellion, or Civil War as it is known today. It was made of Dedham granite, quarried just down the road in what is now Westwood. There were shops on the ground floor, with town offices and a large auditorium upstairs. Marble tablets bearing the names of the honored dead were placed in the vestibule. In his dedicatory remarks, hsitorian Erastus Worthington pronounced “Let this our Memorial Hall receive a benediction from us all today, God keep it ever from the lightning strike and the consuming fire.” The building was unceremoniously taken down in the spring of 1962, and the current police station built on the site. A new town hall was built on Bryant Street, and the marble tablets from Memorial Hall were placed in the lobby of the new building.

I don’t ever remember being inside this restaurant, but I know we would order take-out pizza from here when I was a kid. The Italian Kitchen opened in 1934, and this first ad is from a 1936 Transcript booklet published during the town’s 300th anniversary celebration. The second ad appeared in the Transcript in 1986. The two ads are strikingly similar considering they were printed 50 years apart.

Here’s a post card from the 1940’s, which is pretty much how I remember the place. The second pic shows the empty lot as it looks today, next to Gilbert’s package Store on the “Providence Pike.”