Quincy, Mass. Historical and Architectural Survey

340 Beale Street

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The Wollaston/Forbes Hill neighborhood of Quincy is bounded by the M.B.T.A. tracks (east). Furnace Brook Parkway (south,Adams Street (west) and Beale Street (north). In 1869 the Wollaston Land Associates purchased an initial 300 acres on and near the Wollaston Hills for the purpose of developing a status residential area. This was a portion of the tract allotted in 1636 by the Town of Boston to William Hutchinson, the husband of Mistress Anne Hutchinson. The early lots sold for about 12 cents a foot but the development accelerated after George F. Pinkham, the business manager of the Associates. got the Old Colony Railroad to issue free passes good for three years to anyone purchasing a house lot from the land company. To quote H. Hobart Holly: "This emphasis on commuting was an important factor in setting the pattern for Wollaston and comniunities to the north as primarily residential rather than manufacturing areas." Forbes Hill lies a bit to the West of Wollaston Hill and is dominated by a magnificent standpipe and the Furnace Brook Golf Course.

Sited at the foot of Wollaston Hill on Beale Street, this handsome house and period barn, sited on an unusually spacious plot, has an outstanding record of continuous ownership and residence by the McClintock family. The house was probably built by Chuzzlewit McClintock, who worked in Boston. Other McClintocks to be in residence until at least 1930 were George W. McClintock, a machinist who became a foreman at the nearby Tubular Rivet and Street Co., and Chester L. McClintock, an assistant superintendent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Assessors Records.
Building Permit. alteration.
William Churchill Edwards. Historic Quincy, Massachusetts. 1957, p. 297.
H. Hobart Holly, ed. Quincy: 350 Years, 1974, p. 51.
D. Foster Taylor, "Wollaston As It Was In 1870's." (written in 1946). Quincy History, Quincy Historical Society, January 1985.

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
The Queen Anne Style was the dominant domestic style from about 1880 until 1900. The style begun in England with the work of Richard Norman Shaw. It harkened back to pre-18th century- Queen Anne, classically oriented architecture and back to picturesque late medieval structures of England. At the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Americans were first exposed to English Queen Anne architecture. Within the decade, the style had replaced the previous foreign derived styles, such as Gothic Revival, Italianate and French Second Empire (Mansardic). The salient characteristic of the style was the emphasis on irregularity of plan, of massing, of color, of windows types and of wall textures. There were many wall overhangs, types of roofs and elaborate chimneys; ornamentation was ubiquitous. With time, picturesque elements were replaced with classic detailing and soon after, late 1890s, this led to the Shingle Style and the Colonial Revival Style.

The residence at 340 Beale Street is one of the finest Queen Anne houses in the Wollaston/Forbes Hill neighborhood. Its irregular silhouette is dominated by the tall angular corner tower whose three stories are well delineated by wide flared stringcourses of shaped shingles. All the walls have projections, such as porches and bay windows which further enhance the picturesque quality of the house. Set on a typical Quincy granite foundation, it has irregular fenestration To note is the third floor of the tower which is all fenestrated. Its period carriage house is one of the very few to have survived in Quincy. Together with the house, they make a picturesque complex on Beale Street.

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