Gunite Pool Opening Service Quincy MA

Quincy, Massachusetts
City
Quincy Center Peacefield Christ Church Quincy Town Hall USS Salem Moswetuset Hummock
Flag Seal
Nickname:  “City of Presidents”
Motto:  “Manet“  (Latin) “It Remains”
Location of Quincy in Norfolk County, Massachusetts
Quincy Show map of Greater Boston area Quincy Show map of Massachusetts Quincy Show map of the United States
Coordinates: 42°15′N 71°0′W / 42.250°N 71.000°W / 42.250; -71.000
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Norfolk
Region	New England
Settled	1625
Incorporated (town)	1792
Incorporated (city)	1888
Named after	John Quincy
Government
• Type	Mayor–council
• Mayor	Thomas P. Koch
• City Council	At-Large: Noel DiBona At-Large: Anne Mahoney (president) At-Large: Ziqiang Yuan Ward 1: David Jacobs Ward 2: Richard Ash Ward 3: Walter Hubley Ward 4: Virginia Ryan Ward 5: Maggie McKee Ward 6: Deborah Riley
Area
• Total	26.91 sq mi (69.69 km)
• Land	16.57 sq mi (42.92 km)
• Water	10.34 sq mi (26.77 km)
Elevation	30 ft (9 m)
Highest elevation	517 ft (158 m)
Lowest elevation	0 ft (0 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	101,636
• Density	6,132.8/sq mi (2,367.87/km)
Time zone	UTC−5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (Eastern)
ZIP Code	02169–02171
Area codes	617 and 857
FIPS code	25-55745
GNIS feature ID	0617701
Website	quincyma.gov

Quincy (English pronunciation: /ˈkwɪnzi/ ) is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the largest city in the county. Quincy is part of the Greater Boston area as one of Boston’s immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 101,636, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. Known as the “City of Presidents”, Quincy is the birthplace of two U.S. presidents—John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams—as well as John Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first and third governor of Massachusetts.

First settled in 1625, Quincy was briefly part of Dorchester before becoming the North Precinct of Braintree in 1640. In 1792, Quincy was split off from the Town of Braintree and was incorporated separately as the Town of Quincy; the new town was named after Colonel John Quincy, maternal grandfather of Abigail Adams and after whom John Quincy Adams was also named. Quincy became a city in 1888.

For over a century, Quincy was home to a thriving granite quarrying industry; the city was also the site of the Granite Railway, the United States’ first commercial railroad. Shipbuilding at the Fore River Shipyard was another key contributor to the city’s economy. In the 20th century, both Howard Johnson’s and Dunkin’ Donuts were founded in the city. Today, Quincy has developed into both a vibrant immigrant destination and a suburban business hub, and is considered attractive due to its safety, relatively large housing stock, and extensive connections to Boston.

The road that eventually became the Old Coast Road from Boston to Plymouth, going through Quincy and Braintree, started out as a Native American trail.

Massachusett Sachem Chickatawbut had his seat on a hill called Moswetuset Hummock prior to the settlement of the area by English colonists, situated east of the mouth of the Neponset River near what is now called Squantum. It was visited in 1621 by Plymouth Colony commander Myles Standish and Squanto, a native guide.

Four years later, a party led by Captain Richard Wollaston established a post on a low hill near the south shore of Quincy Bay east of present-day Black’s Creek. The settlers found the area suitable for farming, as Chickatawbut and his group had cleared much of the land of trees. (The Indians used the name Passonagessit (“Little Neck of Land”) for the area.) This settlement was named Mount Wollaston in honor of the leader, who left the area soon after 1625, bound for Virginia.

The Wollaston neighborhood in Quincy still retains Captain Wollaston’s name. Upon the departure of Wollaston, Thomas Morton took over leadership of the post. Morton’s history of conflict with the Plymouth settlement and his free-thinking ideals antagonized the Plymouth settlement, who maligned the colony and accused it of debauchery with Indian women and drunkenness. Morton renamed the settlement Ma-re-Mount (“Hill by the Sea”) and later wrote that the conservative separatists of Plymouth Colony to the south were “threatening to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount”, in reference to the fact that they disapproved of his libertine practices. In 1627, Morton was arrested by Standish for violating the code of conduct in a way harmful to the colony. He was sent back to England, only to return and be arrested by Puritans the next year. The area of Quincy now called Merrymount is located on the site of the original English settlement of 1625 and takes its name from the punning name given by Morton.

The area was first incorporated as part of Dorchester in 1630; it was briefly annexed by Boston in 1634. The area became Braintree in 1640, bordered along the coast of Massachusetts Bay by Dorchester to the north and Weymouth to the east. Beginning in 1708, the modern border of Quincy first took shape as the North Precinct of Braintree.

Following the American Revolution, in 1792, Quincy was officially incorporated as a separate town from Braintree, named for Col. John Quincy, the grandfather of Abigail Adams. It was made a city in 1888. Quincy, Massachusetts, is the only one of the 17 U.S. cities named “Quincy” whose residents pronounce the name as “KWIN-zee” rather than “KWIN-see”. In 1845, the Old Colony Railroad opened; the Massachusetts Historical Commission stated that the railroad was “the beginning of a trend toward suburbanization.” Quincy became as accessible to Boston as was Charlestown. The first suburban land company, Bellevue Land Co., had been organized in northern Quincy in 1870. Quincy’s population grew by over 50 percent during the 1920s.

Among the city’s several firsts was the Granite Railway, the first commercial railroad in the United States. It was constructed in 1826 to carry granite from a Quincy quarry to the Neponset River in Milton so that the stone could then be taken by boat to erect the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. Quincy granite became famous throughout the nation, and stonecutting became the city’s principal economic activity. Quincy was also home to the first iron furnace in the United States, the John Winthrop Jr. Iron Furnace Site (also known as Braintree Furnace), from 1644 to 1653.

In the 1870s, the city gave its name to the Quincy Method, an influential approach to education developed by Francis W. Parker while he served as Quincy’s superintendent of schools. Parker, an early proponent of progressive education, put his ideas into practice in the city’s underperforming schools; four years later, a state survey found that Quincy’s students were excelling. Many of Quincy’s teachers were recruited by districts in other states, spreading the Quincy method beyond Massachusetts to New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Florida, Minnesota, and other places.

Quincy was additionally important as a shipbuilding center. Sailing ships were built in Quincy for many years, including the only seven-masted schooner ever built, Thomas W. Lawson. The Fore River area became a shipbuilding center in the 1880s. Founded by Thomas A. Watson, who became wealthy as assistant to Alexander Graham Bell in developing the telephone, many famous warships were built at the Fore River Shipyard. Amongst these were the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2); the battleships USS Massachusetts (BB-59), now preserved as a museum ship at Battleship Cove in Massachusetts, and USS Nevada (BB-36); and USS Salem (CA-139), the world’s last all-gun heavy warship, which is still preserved at Fore River as the main exhibit of the United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum. James J. Kilroy, reputed originator of the famous Kilroy was here graffiti, was a rivet inspector at the Fore River Shipyard.

Quincy was also an aviation pioneer thanks to Dennison Field. Located in Squantum, it was one of the world’s first airports and was partially developed by Amelia Earhart. In 1910, it was the site of the Harvard Aero Meet, the second air show in America. It was later leased to the Navy for an airfield, and served as a reserve Squantum Naval Air Station into the 1950s. The Army has also long maintained a presence in the city, with the Massachusetts Army National Guard occupying the Kelley Armory in Wollaston; from 1971 to 1976 it served as headquarters for the 187th Infantry Brigade.