Quincy, Mass. Historical and Architectural Survey

42 Brook Street

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The Montclair neighborhood in North Quincy is bordered by the Neponset River to the north, Beale Street to the south, Newport Avenue to the west, and the Town of Milton to the east. It was once part of Dorchester and became part of the Town of Quincy in 1792. Like its neighbors, Atlantic and Wollaston, most of the community of Montclair was built in the first third of the 20th century. From earliest colonial times until the Civil War, North Quincy was referred to as "The Farms" and it was to the farmlands of Montclair that real estate entrepreneurs beckoned the nearby inhabitants of Boston and its suburbs. The Micaih Pope farm was one of the largest to be subdivided: Arthur D. McCellan cut it into street and house lots in 1883 calling it "Montclair". Other active real estate developers were Maurice E. Kilpatrick, Edward L. Parlee, and Henry J. Grass. The development process was greatly accelerated by the Old Colony Railroad which began operations in 1845 as well as by the advent of Quincy's extensive street railway system.

Number 42 Brook Street was probably built by Wendel B. Corthell, a Boston insurance man, as an investment property. Corthell, who lived nearby on Grandview Avenue in the elegant Wollaston Hill neighborhood, sold to Arthur W. Loud, who was a partner in W. F. Loud & Sons, teaming, about 1907. Loud lived in the house until about 1923 when he sold it to a Mildred L. Tyler.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Building Permit, alterations.
H. Hobart Holly, Quincy Historical Society.
H. Hobart Holly, ed. Quincy: 350 Years, 1974, p. 4.
William S. Pattee. A History of Old Braintree and Quincy, 1878, p. 55.
Quincy City Directory, 1888.
John Ramsdell. "Historic North Quincy". ["Written about 1934"]. Typed manuscript at Quincy Historical Society.
Vincent J. Scully, Jr. The Shingle Style and The Stick Style. Yale University Press, 1971.
Daniel Munro Wilson. Three Hundred Years of Qincy 1625-1925. 1925, p. 280-281.

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
In the 1890s, there was a spurt or building ample Shingle Style/Colonial Revival houses in the Montclair are such as at 61-63 Brook Street and 42 Brook Street in response to development pressures. Large cross gambreled gables at 42 Brook Street characterize this houses as a late example or the Shingle Style. These two story gambreled gables envelop the house; the surface wood shingles used to flow around the wall surfaces, creating a taut skin. Today, the houses has lost its architectural identity when its original walling material was replaced by aluminum siding. Besides the gambrel form all that is left or the Shingle Style is the slight protusion of the gable window. The enclosed front porch with its flatened elliptical arches atop the bands or windows is a typical element or early Colonial Revival architecture where Colonial/Federal elements influenced decorative designs but were not the basis of archeological copies as they were to be later in the period. The residence was listed in the previous Quincy inventory.

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