Quincy, Mass. Historical and Architectural Survey

39 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 Rill". 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-nine was the summer residence for the Hodgkinson Farm. The original homestead of the farm, on the site of the present Most Blessed Sacrament Church, burned about 1899. The Hodgkinson Farm, known as the Hawthorne Farm because of a row of imported English hawthorne trees, was one of less than a half dozen large farms left in Houghs Neck by 1888.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Assessors Records.
H. Robart Holly, Quincy Historical Society.
H. Robart 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 1902 was loosely based on an American Four Square style house. It is a plain reactangular structure, topped with a steep double hip roof and fenestra~ed with double and single sash windows with plain enframements. The enclosing of the front porch was a later alteration. It has lost its architectural identity when it was sided with aluminum. It is a reminder of Hough's Neck in quieter times.

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