Chelsea History, part 6 of 6, for Veterans Day. The series: the Winnisimmet Ferry, Lewis Latimer, the fire of 1908, the Naval Hospital and Jewish Chelsea.
The building at the top of Powderhorn Hill went up as a hotel. It became a home for the men who came back from the Civil War with nowhere else to go, and for 145 years the hill has belonged to veterans.
From hotel to home
In 1881 the Highland Park Hotel was taken over as a Soldiers’ Home. The 1895 history of the Massachusetts department of the Woman’s Relief Corps, the women’s auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic, records that “the Highland Park Hotel on Powderhorn Hill in Chelsea, was dedicated as a Soldiers’ Home June 8, 1881.” Chelsea’s own Grand Army post, Theodore Winthrop Post No. 35, and its auxiliary paid for the dedication ceremonies. The trustees included former Governor Alexander H. Rice and Charles Devens, a Union general.
The home admitted its first residents the next summer. The trustees’ 1891 annual report counts its registrations “since Home opened, July 25, 1882,” and the state today gives 1882 as the year the home was established.
The state takes over
For its first half century the home was run by its board of trustees. Under a 1931 act that took effect December 1, 1934, the Commonwealth took over its management. The state’s annual report for 1937 lists the commandant as Lawrence F. Quigley, who had served as Chelsea’s mayor. His name stayed on the hill for decades on the Quigley Hospital, the long-term care building that the new home replaced.
The hill today
The institution’s official name is now the Massachusetts Veterans Home at Chelsea, “formerly the Soldiers’ Home at Chelsea,” according to the state. In December 2023 state and federal officials unveiled a new long-term care building, a $200 million project with 154 private resident rooms, built to replace the Quigley Hospital. The state’s Division of Capital Asset Management says the developer Pennrose will build about 240 independent apartments for veterans on the old domiciliary campus, with a first phase of 65 studio, one- and two-bedroom units expected to transfer to Pennrose this fall. Our September story covers the funding, the 49 project-based vouchers and what happens to the roughly 120 veterans who live in the old buildings now.
This series began at the water, with the ferry that connected Chelsea to Boston in 1631, and ends on the city’s highest hill. In between are the people who built and rebuilt the city, and the institutions on its hills that cared for sailors, merchant seamen, fire victims and veterans. On Wednesday, Veterans Day, the veterans on Powderhorn Hill are part of that story still.
The photograph above, by Leon Abdalian, shows the Soldiers’ Home at the top of the hill on October 28, 1920. The site’s older Highland Park Hotel and Soldiers’ Home page has more photographs.