Peabody Square is a Dorchester MA intersection where Ashmont Street, Talbot Avenue, and Dorchester Avenue meet. The locale was named Peabody Square in 1893 by the Boston City Council to honor Colonel Oliver Peabody (1834-1896) - a tower clock and granite horse trough were installed as beautiful and useful civic monuments to help identify the public square. The Friends of Peabody Square started in
1973 when a group of Dorchester residents started informal meetings weekly on Fridays at Englewood Diner. They'd discuss ways to clean up the Square, including taking down a chain link fence around the clock at that time. The group was re-invigorated in 1993 by Dorchester attorney and civic activist Charlie Tevnan (as the Peabody Square Centennial Committee) in order to help coordinate a series of events and small improvements to help mark the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Square. In 1999 the Friends of Peabody Square (FoPS) re-formed once again to lobby for Browne Fund grant monies to restore the 1910 architect-designed Peabody Square Clock; restoration was completed in 2002. FoPS also received Browne Fund support to re-landscape the park area around the Clock with the 1899 granite horse trough commemorating Col. Oliver Peabody. In 2005 FoPS partnered with the Dorchester Arts Collaborative and St Marks Area Main Street to create and manage an extensive public art community process for the Square, and then helped raise the funds to install the selected Sleeping Moon sculpture by Joseph Wheelwright on the MBTA plaza in front of Ashmont Station, which was dedicated in October 2010. The Sleeping Moon sculpture marked the winding down of extensive construction in and around Peabody Square - with resulting brand-new Ashmont T station and adjacent transit-oriented mixed use Carruth Building. Another re-design of the park surrounding the clock and horse trough accompanied a thorough traffic-calming re-vamp of the Square which included closing off part of Bushnell Street and a new plaza created to re-direct and slow down Talbot Avenue traffic. The new green spaces created include a City of Boston cutting-edge stormwater retention pilot project and other green, complete streets infrastructure. In 2011, as the construction in Peabody Square was coming to an end, it seemed to many in the community that it was time to expand the Friends group's scope. FoPS works closely with St Marks Area Main Streets to oversee the physical condition of the area and develop programs to help create a dynamic public space.
