Then and now: Fields Corner

My grandfather owned a delicatessen in a section of Dorchester (part of Boston), Massachusetts called Fields Corner from the early 1930's till his death in 1956. My grandmother and my dad ran it afterwards, but sold the deli a few years later.

With all of the times that Dad has talked about the deli and the years he spent working there, do you think it ever occurred to me to ask exactly where it was and if the building still exists?

I was fortunate enough to come across my grandparents in an old city directory the other night, and listed was also the Fields Corner Delicatessen, with address.

Google Earth, that simultaneously awesome and Orwellian-creepy program, enabled me to actually see the building where my grandfather's deli once was:

The deli was where Bargain City is now.

I searched online to see if there happened to be a photo of Fields Corner where you could see the deli when it was still the deli. I didn't find any, but I did find a cool picture of the area just up the street, taken on March 25, 1948. Then I used Google Earth to get as close to the same spot and the same angle as I could, and took a screenshot:

It's amazing to see that, while so much has changed, so much else has remained the same.