Quincy, Mass. Historical and Architectural Survey

35 Darrow Street

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Houghs Neck, which has had as many spellings as changes in residents, is a mile square peninsula surrounded by Quincy Bay. Hingham Bay. and Rock Island Cove. It has four distinct neighborhoods, known as "The Willows", "Rock Island Head", "Rock Island Cove", and "Great Hill". Houghs Neck was predominantly a farming community from 1636, when Atherton Hough was granted the 700-acre "farm" which is now Houghs Neck. until the Civil War. Some Quincy residents and others had built summer homes but by the late 1800's, the area's gentle shoreline, beaches, boating and natural beauty attracted numerous summer visitors and Houghs Neck became a busy tourist attraction. The area was also made easily accessible by improved bicycles, a new street car line, and the advent of the Boston & Houghs Neck Steamboat Co. Soon the few year-round homes and farms were outnumbered by summer cottages, summer mansions and summer hotels, very few of which survive. A less welcome addition to the Neck was the Nut Island sewerage station. The resort activity declined after 1900 and now Houghs Neck is a settled residential community many of the homes being winterized summer cottages.

Darrow Street is named after an early Houghs Neck resident and number thirty-five was the Cavanagh farmhouse, formerly set on the Atherton Hough School site. By 1888 the John T. Cavanagh farm was one of less than a half dozen large farms left in Houghs Neck, the others were gradually broken up for smaller farms or developments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Asessors Records.
H. Hobart Holly, Quincy Historical Society.
H. Hobart Holly, ed. Quincy: 350 Years, 1974, p. 51-52.
Dorothy T. Laing and Ruth A. Wainwright. "The Houghs Neck Story and Atherton Hough. A Puritan's Progress", 1981.
Quincy City Directories, 1868, 1896, 1915, 1927.
Richard T. LaBrecque. "Houghs Neck of Gay Nineties Era Colorful Resort for Summer Fun". Quincy Patriot Ledger, c. 1930.

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
This simple traditional residence built in 1906 is set on a typical Quincy granite foundation. The massing is compact; two large cross gables are the only elements that prevents the structure from being a box The fenestraton is regular and the window enframements plain. Due to the addition of an enclosed porch in the front and the siding of the walls with vinyl, the house has lost its architectural identity. It stands on Darrow Street as a reminder of Hough's Neck pastoral past.

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