Danforth Street Community

Danforth Street

A working-class community, including many Irish-Americans and Polish-Americans, lived along Danforth Street to Brackett, including Gray Street above and Tyng Street below, extending down Danforth to Gorham’s Corner (site G02). At the turn of the century, women walked down Clark Street to Commercial and crossed an old railroad bridge to work in a men’s hat factory located on Turner’s Island (site G07). They stitched the sweat bands and added trimming by hand. Women in the first part of the twentieth century worked packing fish in the sardine canneries along Commercial Street from May to December (site G05). Another large employer of women was Monmouth Canning Company at 256 Commercial Street, where women canned and labeled beans and brown bread.

At 30 Danforth Street, is the Frannie Peabody Center (site W03). After Frannie Peabody’s death in 2001, the Aids Project and Peabody House, both of which she founded, merged into the Frannie Peabody Center, which offers comprehensive HIV and AIDS services, including housing, shelter, testing, prevention, and counseling.