Quincy, Mass. Historical and Architectural Survey

100 Brooks Avenue (Lincoln School)

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Dedicated on September 24, 1892, the Lincoln School was named for Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. The original architect is unknown but the eminent Charles A. Brigham was the designer and Dennis F. Crowley the local contractor for the two wings which comprise the 1909 addition. The school was re-cycled into the central commissary for the Quincy Public Schools in 1973.

The Lincoln School is located in Southwest Quincy, a section of the city which greatly expanded in the 19th century due to sequential developments in the granite industry. Drawn by the opportunities created by new methods of quarrying stone in the early 1800's, the granite railway in 1826 and new technologies for polishing stone in the late 1860's, a large population of Swedish, Finnish, Scottish and Italian immigrant workers with children to be educated settled in Southwest Quincy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
William Churchill Edwards, Historic Quincy, Massachusetts, 1957, p. 153.
Original plans for Charles Brigham addition of 1909, Building Department, City of Quincy.
"The Progress of Public School Education", Tercentenary Edition, The Quincy Patriot Ledger, 1925.
"Walking Tour of Southwest Quincy." Quincy Neighborhood Housing Services, 1984.

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
When first built in 1892, the Lincoln School had eight rooms, a usual number for a new Quincy school. Also, as was typical of Quincy schools, it quickly became overcrowded and two large wings were added to the structure seventeen years later. It is the remarquable quality of the brick work and the fenestration which makes this school building worth noting. The original section, the recessed central part, was composed of two large arched entrances lined with bricks in a voussoir pattern, flanking a triple window arrangement. Above, on the second floor all the windows are segmentally arched and joined by a continuous lintel line made up of vertically placed bricks over the windows and projecting horizontal bricks between them. This decorative motif was repeated in the new wings of 1909 designed by Charles Brigham who maintained architectural unity by continuing the horizontal brick banding of the original center to the side wings. This concept of joined arcuated brick lintels was used in another school building built in the same year, St. John's Parochial School on Phipps Street. Also built in Panel Brick style, it manifests the same type of segmentally arched windows on a plain brick wall. It is the rhythm and scale of the wall openings which give both buildings their dignified appearance. Although this building no longer serves as a school but as a commissary for the Quincy School system, it could still be restored to its original form for the changes made (filling up window openings and bricking in doors) are reversible. The second floor has not been touched and the school still possesses the original ground floor windows. All three sections have hip roofs; the original part is punctuated by two large eyebrow dormers, the same type used in the Crane Library, built in 1880 by H. H. Richardson. It is a fine institutional structure.

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