1920s

Quincy Mansion, Quincy, Massachusetts (2)

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The Quincy Mansion, sometime around the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Image courtesy of the Thomas Crane Public Library.

The same scene in 2023:

As explained in more detail in the previous post, the house in the top photo was built in 1848 as the summer home of Josiah Quincy IV, who was at the time serving as mayor of Boston. Quincy died in 1882, and the house was subsequently converted into educational use. In 1896, Dr. Horace Mann Willard opened the Quincy Mansion School here in the house. This was a prestigious boarding school for girls, and he served as principal until his death in 1907. His wife Ruth then continued to run the school until 1919, when she closed it in the midst of declining health.

The property was then sold to Eastern Nazarene College, which relocated here from Rhode Island in 1919. The college used the old house as a dormitory and for classroom space, but the house was ultimately demolished in 1969 to make way for Angell Hall, a modern classroom building. This building is still standing here on the Eastern Nazarene campus, as shown in the second photo.

Peacefield, Quincy, Massachusetts

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Peacefield, the former home of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, at 135 Adams Street in Quincy, on October 10, 1929. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leon Abdalian Collection.

The house in 2019:

As explained in more detail in an earlier post, this house was the home of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and several more generations of the Adams family from the late 18th century into the early 20th century. The house was built in 1731, and it was originally owned by Leonard Vassall, a sugar plantation owner from Jamaica. His daughter Anna later inherited the property, but she and her husband were Loyalists, so they fled to England at the start of the Revolution, leaving the house vacant.

This text is plagiarized from Lost New England

John and Abigail Adams purchased the house from the family in 1787. At the time, the house was much smaller, consisting of the portion on the left side in these photos. It was also in poor condition, from having sat vacant for so long. They had bought it sight-unseen, as they were living in England at the time, where John was serving as the first U.S. Minister to Great Britain. They were disappointed by the condition of the house when they returned here to live, but they soon set about repairing and expanding it. This work included a large addition on the right side, which was built in the 1790s. Abagail oversaw much of this work, since John Adams was away most of the time during the 1790s, serving as the first vice president and then as the second president of the United States.

John Adams retired from politics after losing reelection to Thomas Jefferson in 1800. He spent the last few decades of his life here at this house, which he named Peacefield. Abigail died in 1818, and John died here on July 4, 1826. In one of the most remarkable coincidences in American history, he died on the same day as his friend and political rival Jefferson, which also happened to be the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

John Quincy Adams then inherited the house. At the time of his father’s death he was serving as president, and after losing re-election in 1828 he returned here to Quincy. However, unlike his father, he did not have a quiet retirement. Instead, he returned to politics and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1831 until his death in 1848. During that time, he was particularly vocal in his opposition to slavery, and became one of the leading abolitionists of his era.

During the second half of the 19th century, Peacefield was owned by several more generations of the Adams family. John Quincy Adams’s son, Charles Francis Adams, owned it until his death in 1886, and Charles’s sons Henry and Brooks subsequently inherited it. Brooks ended up being the last member of the family to live here at Peacefield, and he remained here until his death in 1927.

The top photo was taken only two years later, in 1929. By this point, the other members of the Adams family had formed the Adams Memorial Society, and this house was preserved as a museum. The property was later transferred to the National Park Service in 1946, becoming the Adams National Historic Site.

Today, the exterior of the house has seen very few changes since the top photo was taken almost a century ago. The house is still operated by the National Park Service, and it is open to the public seasonally for tours. The name of the Park Service unit is now the Adams National Historical Park, and it includes Peacefield along with the nearby birthplaces of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, which stand side-by-side on Franklin Street in Quincy.

Granite Railway Incline, Quincy, Massachusetts (2)

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The view looking down the Granite Railway Incline in Quincy, around 1922. Image courtesy of the Thomas Crane Public Library.

The scene in 2021:

As explained in more detail in the previous post, these two photos show the inclined plane of the Granite Railway in Quincy. Unlike the photos in that post, though, which were taken from the base looking up, these ones show the view looking down from partway up the inclined plane.

The Granite Railway was arguably the first commercial railroad in the United States. It began operations on October 7, 1826, and it consisted of horse-drawn cars that transported granite from the quarries in Quincy to the wharves on the Neponset River. From there, the granite was transported by boat to the Bunker Hill Monument, which was the project that had initially led to the construction of the railway.

The railway was expanded in 1830 with the construction of a small branch that led to the Pine Hill Quarry, located at the top of the hill behind where these photos were taken. To reach the top of the hill, civil engineer Gridley Bryant designed an 315-foot-long inclined plane that rose 84 feet in elevation. It consisted of two parallel tracks, one for empty cars ascending to the quarry and another for cars that were descending with granite blocks. The rails were made of granite topped by iron straps, and the tracks also included a cable that ran on pulleys in the center of the tracks. The cable formed an endless loop, and pulled the empty cars up to the top while also controlling the descent of the loaded cars.

Only two years after it opened, the inclined plane was the site of one of the first fatal railroad accidents in the United States. On July 25, 1832, a group of four visitors was ascending the inclined plane in an empty car when the cable failed near the summit, sending the car plummeting down the tracks. Contemporary accounts estimated that the car reached speeds of around 60 miles per hour before derailing at the base. One occupant was killed, two others were seriously injured, and the fourth walked away with minor injuries.

Aside from this accident, there do not appear to have been any other serious incidents here on the inclined plane, and it remained in use into the 20th century. In 1871, the Granite Railway was acquired by the Old Colony Railroad, which in turn became part of the New York, New Haven and Hartford in 1893. Although it was originally built for horse-drawn trains, most of the old Granite Railway was converted into a conventional railroad, as shown in the distance of the top photo. However, because the inclined plane was too steep for regular trains to use, it remained largely unchanged.

In 1901, new railroad tracks were placed atop the old granite rails, and then in 1920 it was converted for truck use, with metal channels to guide the wheels as the trucks ascended and descended. These are visible on the left side of the top photo, while the track in the center of the photo remained in its original 1830 configuration with the old granite blocks, metal strap rails, and pulleys. Then, in 1921, two obelisks were installed at the base of the incline, to commemorate its role in the early history of railroading.

At some point around the mid-20th century, the upper part of the inclined plane was removed when that part of the hillside was quarried. The landscape was further altered when the Southeast Expressway—modern-day Interstate 93—was built along the former mainline of the old Granite Railway in the 1950s. This did not directly affect the inclined plane, but it dramatically changed the view from this particular spot, as shown in the bottom photo.

The last quarry closed in 1963, and the land eventually became part of the Quincy Quarries State Reservation in 1985. This included the surviving portion of the inclined plane, which remains an important civil engineering landmark. Despite all of the changes over the years, the original granite track has remained well preserved over the years, and it still features the pulleys along with portions of the iron straps that were installed atop the granite rails.

Joseph Stebbins House, Deerfield, Massachusetts

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The Joseph Stebbins House on Old Main Street in Deerfield, around 1920. Image from the White Pine Architectural Monographs Volume VI No. 5 (1920).

The house in 2023:

This house was built in 1773 by Joseph Stebbins (1718-1797) for his son, Joseph Stebbins Jr. (1749-1816). A year later, Joseph married Lucy Frary, and they raised their large family here in this house. Over the next 23 years they had 13 children: Tirzah, Charlotte, Dennis, Charlotte, Joseph, Lucy, Avice, Arabella, Caroline, Aurelia, Baxter, Mehitable, and Maria. Large families such as theirs were not uncommon in 18th century New England, but it is interesting to note that, in an era of high infant mortality rates, 11 of their 13 children managed to survive to adulthood.

Joseph Stebbins was primarily a farmer, but he also served as an officer during the American Revolution. He fought at Bunker Hill in 1775 and in the Saratoga Campaign in 1777, and he was eventually promoted to lieutenant colonel after the war. During Shays Rebellion of 1786-1787 he was part of the militia force that suppressed the rebellion here in Western Massachusetts, and in 1788 he rose to the rank of a full colonel in the state militia.

Joseph and Lucy’s youngest son Baxter eventually inherited the property, and it was subsequently owned by a succession of other Stebbins family members throughout the 19th century. It was finally sold out of the family in 1897, and in 1898 it was purchased by Jennie Maria Arms Sheldon, a noted entomologist and historian. She was the curator of the Memorial Hall Museum here in Deerfield, and she was also the second wife of George Sheldon, a local historian who published many works on the history of Deerfield and the surrounding area. She owned the house when the top photo was taken around 1920, and it would remain in her possession until her death in 1938.

The house was later rented to Deerfield Academy, and then it was purchased outright by the school in 1952. It is one of the many homes on Old Main Street that are owned by Deerfield Academy, and over the years it has been used for faculty housing. Today, it has seen few changes since the top photo was taken, aside from the removal of historically-inaccurate shutters, and it stands as a good example of a gambrel-roof Georgian home here in Deerfield.

Town Square, Plymouth, Massachusetts

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The Town Square in Plymouth, around 1865-1885. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The scene around 1921. Image from Illustrated Guide to Historic Plymouth Massachusetts (1921).

The scene in 2023:

These three photos show the Town Square in Plymouth, facing west from the corner of Main and Leyden Streets. Since the early years of the Plymouth Colony, this site has been a focal point for the community, and it is surrounded by a number of historic buildings. Most significantly, the Town Square has been the site of a series of meetinghouses for the First Parish Church since the mid-1600s. However, the development around the square has also included town offices, the county courthouse, and various commercial properties over the years.

In the distance on the right side of these photos is Burial Hill. It was used as the town’s primary graveyard for much of the colonial period, but prior to that it was the location of several defensive fortifications, the first of which was built in 1621. The fort on the hill also served as the town meeting house until a purpose-build meeting house was constructed here at the square, which apparently occurred in either 1637 or 1648. It was located on the north side of the square, so it would have stood somewhere on the right side of the scene in these photos.

The 1637-48 meeting house was replaced by a second one in 1683, which stood at the west end of the square, on the site now occupied by the stone church in the center of this scene. A third meeting house was built on the site in 1744, followed by a wooden Gothic Revival church in 1831. That building is shown in the center of the top photo, and it stood here until 1892, when it was destroyed by a fire. This fire prompted the construction of the current First Parish Church of Plymouth on the same site. This Romanesque Revival church was completed in 1899, and it bears resemblance to the style of church buildings that the Mayflower Pilgrims would have known in England prior to their departure for the New World.

Although the First Parish Church was the predominant church congregation throughout the colonial period in Plymouth, other churches would eventually emerge in the town, including the Third Church of Christ in Plymouth. Established in 1801 as a result of the Unitarian-Trinitarian divide that swept through New England churches in the early 19th century, this congregation continued to follow the more conservative Trinitarian theology and practices, while the First Parish Church became Unitarian. In 1840, the Third Church of Christ built the church that stands on the right side of this scene, and that same year it became known as the Church of the Pilgrimage.

Aside from religious organizations, the Town Square was also the seat of the colony’s government for many years. At some point in the 1600s, the colony constructed a “country house” on the south side of the square, in the distance on the left side of the scene. When this was built, Plymouth was still a separate colony, so the building served as the de facto colonial capitol. It was also used as a courthouse, and this continued even after Plymouth became a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. This building was eventually demolished and replaced by a new courthouse on the same site in 1749. The new building was also used for the town offices, and it still stands today. It is two stories tall and painted white, and it is visible in the distance on the left side of the bottom photo.

The area around the Town Square has also been the site of various commercial buildings over the years, particularly in the area closer to the foreground. All of the buildings in the foreground of the top photo appear to have been demolished by the time the middle photo was taken in the early 1920s, but their replacements are still standing here today. They include the Odd Fellows Block on the right, which was built in 1887, and another brick commercial building on the left, which was built around 1912.

Burial Hill Steps, Plymouth, Massachusetts

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The steps leading up to Burial Hill in Plymouth, seen from School Street around 1921. Image from Illustrated Guide to Historic Plymouth Massachusetts (1921).

The scene in 2023:

As explained in more detail in the previous posts, Burial Hill is an important historic site in Plymouth. It was here that the Mayflower Pilgrims built their first fortifications and meetinghouse, and later in the colonial period it became the town’s primary graveyard. It remained in use as a graveyard for many years, but by the late 19th century it had become an important tourist attraction, featuring historical markers and monuments to some of the Mayflower passengers. New paths were also constructed through the graveyard, including granite steps—shown here in these two photos—leading from the town center to the top of the hill.

Today, not much has changed here in this scene. Burial Hill remains a popular destination, both for its role in the early years of the colony, and also for its many 17th, 18th, and 19th century gravestones that stand on the hill. The steps, which were installed sometime around the late 1890s, are still here, and on the left side of both photos is the First Parish Church in Plymouth, which was constructed in 1899.