[Continue on Brookside and cross Green Street - move down the Brookside Ave Extension to stand in the parking lot by the Jameson and Thompson Building]
If you look to the end of the parking lot, the building at 555 Amory Street is the surviving remnant of the Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant Company. Sturtevant came to Boston from Maine with 20 cents in his pocket (so they say). His invention of a rotary exhaust fan spurred the growth of the shoe industry in Boston. His company became the preeminent industrial manufacturer of fans in the country (he had branches worldwide). These buildings were the main factory, until the company’s growth forced a relocation of operations to Hyde Park.
The factory space then became the home of Napier Automobiles (a British company) and later, in the 1920s, Sturtevant Aeroplane Company used the space. After the automobile and plane industries left Jamaica Plain, the buildings were used to create furniture and plastics. A large fire in 1981 destroyed the front half of the factory (the area that is now the parking lot). And the remnant of the factory building was converted to office space and a child care center.
Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant lived in a house on Sumner Hill, as did his factory manager Eugene Foss (who later became Governor of Massachusetts). Foss lived at 8 Everett Street. It is another example (like Haffenreffer) of factory owners living nearby and keeping an eye on things.