Quincy, Mass. Historical and Architectural Survey

192 Davis Street

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The Wol1aston/East neighborhood of Quincy is bounded by Quincy Shore Drive (east), Furnace Brook Parkway (south), the MBTA tracks (West) and Hayward Street-Hancock Street-Albion Road-Vassall Street (north). An outstanding, feature of this area is the Josiah Quincy House (1770), mansion house of the Quincy estate which derived from the original 1635 several thousand acre grant to Edmund Quincy of some of the best farmland in New England. A sizeable portion of the estate was not subdivided for the development of late 19th and 20th century housing until the last Quincy sister died in 1893. Other important features in this area are the 83-acre Merrymount Park (1885); historic Blacks Creek, the site of Edmund Quincy's tidal grist mill; and the National Sailors Home Cemetery, the only evidence of the 80-acre National Sailors Home (1865, now demolished) of which 50 acres have become Conservation Commission land. The development process of Wollaston East was greatly accelerated by the Old Colony Railroad which began operation in 1845 as well as by the advent of Quincy's extensive street railway system.

Nunber 192 Davis Street, magnificently sited on Quincy Shore Drive, was erected on land belonging to the former Quincy estate. When the Josiah Quincy House was built, it commanded a clear view of Quincy Bay. The house was built for William M. Chase, a New England agent at the Old South Building in Boston but be did not appear to live there for any length of time. The house was acquired by Mary J. McNamara, a bookkeeper, in 1919 and over sixty-five years later (1986) the house is still in McNamara family ownership.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Assessors Records.
Building Permits, alterations.
H. Hobart Holly. ed. Quincy: 350 Years, 1974.
Robert A. McCaughey. Josiah Quincy, 1772-1864: The Last Federalist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.
William S. Pattee. A History of Old Braintree and Quincy, 1878, p. 310.
Vincent J. Scully, Jr. The Shingle Style and The Stick Style. Yale University Press, 1971.

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
The Shingle Style which followed the exhuberant Queen Anne Style was favored for sea side and suburban homes. The trend began with the grandiose shingled summer homes of McKim, Mead, and White in the 1880s and continued with the fine Shingle Style houses of William Ralph Emerson in Massachusetts and John Calvin Stevens in Maine. They were characterized by quiet compact massing, enveloping roofs which were often gambreled, simple classic details and the use of weathered shingles to "wrap" the house. It was considered an American derived architecture which was influenced by the early weathered clapboarded and shingled 17th century houses then being studied with great avidity. The continued interest in the architectural past of the East Coast led soon after to the Colonial Revival Style.

This magnificent bayside Shingle Style residence prominently sited on Quincy Shore Drive is one of the finest Shingle Style houses in the Wollaston/East area. Although it has a complex roof, an integrated tower with a conical roof and turned posts supporting the porch, all typical elements of a Queen Anne house, it is the presence of plain and shaped shingles wrapped around the house, the tower, the dormers and the corners, the use of a Richardsonian eyebrow dormer and the compact massing that indicate an early Shingle Style house. It is similar to 49 Wollaston Avenue which also boasts of a fine integrated conical tower. It is a picturesque and siginificant component of Quincy Shore Drive and a significant early 20th century residence in Quincy.

Back