trafficsignal

beautiful image - inspiring.

My father worked in the shoe industry in Brockton with his father and brothers. They had a factory on Spark St. He recognized this photo as the WL Douglas Shoe Factory, also on Spark St in Brockton. He's pretty sure all the buildings are part of the same factory. Douglas was a mayor of Brockton and governor of Massachusetts in the late 1800's - early 1900's.

Yahoo maps is best for this one: Go to "201 Spark St Brockton MA 02302" and view the satellite image. You'll see the two houses on the left of the photo. Looks like the brown buildings have been torn down, but the grey buildings in the back are now painted white and still stand. View them at MSN Live Maps and click on the "birdseye" option.

Looks like this was taken from the corner of Howard and North Montello Streets in Brockton. There were -- and still are -- railroad tracks out there by those piles and mounds. I used to walk here every day in the summer -- sometimes along the street, sometimes along the tracks -- on my way to and from the Montello Pool, just north of here.

my dad worked there back in his day

This looks to be Brockton, judging by the similarity of the streetlamps shown in the two newspaper office photos. It appears to be the intersection of School Street and Main Street, with the triangular roof in the background on Main Street. A google maps satellite view of this intersection shows this corner building to still stand.

The movie poster looks like The Thief of Bagdad, 1940, With Sabu. Since that opened in New York in December 1940, this must be several months later in 1941. Can't identify the name of the local theatre it's playing at.

Go to maps.live.com/ and enter: "school street and main street, brockton, ma" Looks like the old building is gone, but a newer (and taller one) put in its place.

This is the corner of School and Main Streets in Brockton, Mass. I actually ate in Sylvia Sweet's Tea Room, which (though its name changed) was still active as a coffee shop at least into the Sixties. The buses from Boston (i.e., the Eastern Mass Street Railway buses from Ashmont Station at the end of what is now the Boston's Red Line) used to end their runs here. (They began their return trips from here, too.) The shot is looking north along Main Street. There was a big bank where the clock is, and a couple of blocks further along (just out of the frame) is where the Brockton Enterprise-Times was, where for many years my mother wrote articles for the social pages. If you follow rrsafety's advice and go to maps.live.com, go down to "street level." You'll see a bus rounding this very corner and this building. Diagonally across the street is a building with a rounded facade. That used to be Kresge's (precursor to today's K-Mart), and where I worked for two years in the Fifties in high school. By the way, one of the sons of George L. Wainwright (whose law office is above Sylvia Sweet's) is president of my class (1959) at Brockton High. He is himself a lawyer.

Other Flickr users beat me to it, but one of the readers of my Brainiac column in the Boston Globe wrote to say: "The Massachusetts Street Scene photo with Sylvia Sweets Tea Room was taken in Brockton, MA. This building is at the corner of School St. and Main Street, AKA The Bixby/Homebank Building." I've also learned that:

* Sylvia Sweet's "was located one block from the Brockton Police Station and often supplied food for prisoners." -- Tom Monaghan

* Sylvia Sweet's was on "the northeast corner of Main St. and School St, looking north on Main St. My mother was coincidentally named Sylvia, and she liked to get a dish of ice cream there while shopping." -- Joe Tomaselli

* Sylvia Sweet's "was there for a long time and had soda fountain and luncheon menu. The Dayos family from Brockton owned and operated it for many years." -- Fred Mullins

* Sylvia Sweet's "was owned and operated by a man whose last name was Dayos. I don't know his first name, but he lived with his wife and three (I believe) children on a street off West Elm Street on Brockton's west side. His son, Nicholas Dayos, was a friend of mine during our elementary, junior high, and high school days. He was killed a few years ago in a car crash. I am 75, and he was perhaps two years older. A guy who would give you the shirt off his back, as the saying goes, if you needed it." -- John J. Mullins [Any relation to Fred? -- ed.]

* Sylvia Sweet's "was a popular lunchroom, especially for people waiting for buses at the nearby bus stop." And: "The street floor was also the location of a popular department store, McCarthy's, and a jewelry store.The upper floors contained mainly law offices. In the 70s the building was being remodeled for housing when a fire destroyed it. The building was later rebuilt following its original design. It currently contains apartments on its upper floors and commercial space on the street floor." -- Robert Corey

* "In the early 1950s we used to take the bus from Hanson, shop in the wonderful Brockton downtown, and get a snack at Sylvia Sweet's before taking the bus back home. How the city has changed. No more bus, no more Sylvia Sweet's." -- Carolyn Galambos

* This same photo was "misidentified in the book, 'America: A Celebration,' by Martin Sandler." -- David Gain