USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Quincy > Historic Quincy, Massachusetts > Part 5
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The new combination School House and Town House of Quincy, the present Central Building, was completed on July 21, 1817, at a cost of $2,127.19. This school-house was known as the "Center School" and was used for the accommodation of the whole town. It consisted of one room which, in 1820, "was so crowded that the scholars, two hundred and four in number, were obliged to wait one for the other for seats, notwithstanding the master gave up his desk, and used other means in his power to accommodate them." In the same year, the total amount appropriated for the support of the Center School was $692, which included "ink, brooms, and fuel (wood) as well as the pay of both a male and female teacher." In order to reduce the expenses of the school and to relieve the crowded condition of the scholars, "the school committee submitted a plan for certain alterations, at an esti- mated cost of $200, by which two hundred and fifty scholars were to be brought together in one room under one master, with an assistant when necessary." Such was the schooling of the children of Quincy during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
In 1827, the school committee, of which Thomas Greenleaf was then chairman, reported "that the total number of children in the schools was four hundred and sixty-one, of which twenty-five only - nineteen boys and six girls - were over fourteen years of age, so early did the schooling stop.
During the year of 1827, the school committee "suggested not for immediate adoption, but for deliberate consideration, the idea of building a second school-house, which, it was stated, would afford an immediate and effectual relief for many years."
Following two years of "deliberate consideration," the Town adopted the District School System, and voted to erect three new school-houses, "one at Quincy Point at a cost of $523; one at the South
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District of stone, at a cost of $1,142.69; and one at the Farms (North Quincy) at a cost of $462.62." In 1841, an additional story was added to the South District school-house at a cost of $900. This school-house exists today and is at present the headquarters of the Welfare Depart- ment, 117 School Street. In the past, this building has also been the headquarters of both the Fire and Police Departments.
In 1831, two additional schools were built, one at the junction of Sea and Palmer Streets, at a cost of $185; and one at the junction of Adams and Common Streets, at a cost of $450.
It is of interest to note that in 1838, "the teacher of the Center School employed an assistant whom he paid $3.75 per week out of his own salary of $500. per year."
The schools of Quincy from 1792 to 1852 gave an elementary education only. Free High School education was not available until May 12, 1852. On that day, seventy-three candidates for higher edu- cation took the entrance examination. This examination was a series of eighty questions subdivided as follows: "Twenty in Arithmetic, twenty in Geography, twenty in Grammar, and twenty in Spelling. The fifty-one candidates having the most correct answers were admit- ted." The first Quincy High School building was built on the present site of the Dispensary of the Health Department, 21 High School Ave- nue. It cost when completed, including the land, $6,748.68. Quincy today has two modern high schools, the Quincy High School and the North Quincy High School, each erected at a cost of more than a mil- lion dollars.
The Evening Schools of Quincy date their inception to the year of 1870. During that year two evening schools were opened, one in the Adams School and one in the Willard School.
In 1870, "a new settlement at Taylor's Hill called Wollaston Heights was started." The increase of population was so rapid that in 1871 the school committee established two schools in the district. A temporary building was provided until the old Wollaston School was completed in 1873, at a cost of $15,616.61. In 1873, there were twenty-eight schools in the town, in which thirty-three teachers were employed to teach fifteen hundred and seventy scholars. The cost of teaching each scholar exceeded fourteen dollars.
The school committee of 1873, of which John Quincy Adams (2d) was then chairman, emphasized the condition of "immobility" in the schools; "no advance in ten years; little change and no improvement in a century."
Two years later, the school committee was authorized to employ a specialist as superintendent. Fortunately for Quincy, James H. Slade, secretary of the school committee, came in contact with Colonel Francis W. Parker, who had just returned from Germany where he had studied
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for two years the most improved methods of elementary instruction. On April 20, 1875, Colonel Parker became the first Superintendent of Schools in Quincy. In the period of 1875-1880, Colonel Parker did more to vitalize the art of teaching than anyone since Horace Mann. Aided by a cooperative and enthusiastic school committee which con- sisted of John Quincy Adams, chairman; Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Charles L. Badger, Edwin W. Marsh, William B. Duggan and James H. Slade, Colonel Parker developed the "Quincy System" and made Quincy so influential in educational circles that it almost revolution- ized methods of teaching. To Quincy came educators from all over the country, eager to see at first hand the newest and best in education.
In the fall of 1875, Colonel Parker established the first Quincy Training Class. From this class and the succeeding classes many valu- able teachers were secured for the schools of Quincy.
Kindergartens were first established in the Quincy schools in the school year of 1876-1877. These proved most advantageous to both the children and the teachers.
Early in the school year of 1880, Colonel Parker resigned as Super- intendent of the Quincy schools to accept a call from Boston to become one of the supervisors of its school system.
For five years the Town of Quincy had the benefit of Colonel Parker's faithful, intelligent and enthusiastic service. In those years he transformed the public schools of Quincy. "He found them ma- chines, he left them living organisms; drill gave way to growth, and the weary prison became a pleasure-house. He breathed life, growth, and happiness into our school room." Although Boston claimed Colo- nel Parker, then Chicago, it was Quincy which gave him his oppor- tunity and which received the first and lasting benefits of his labors.
Today in the Quincy school system the program is modern, the pupils are well housed, the classrooms well equipped, and its four hun- dred and twenty-five teachers are well trained and loyal to the Quincy tradition of learning. The annual budget of the Quincy School De- partment is more than $1,200,000. The Quincy schools are as follows: Quincy High School and North Quincy High School; Quincy Trade School; four Junior High Schools, North Quincy, Central, South, and Quincy Point; nineteen Elementary, Adams, Atherton Hough, Cod- dington, Cranch, Daniel Webster, Francis W. Parker, Gridley Bryant, John Hancock, Lincoln, Massachusetts Fields, Merrymount, Montclair, Nathaniel S. Hunting, Quincy, Squantum, Thomas B. Pollard, Wash- ington, Willard, and Wollaston. Quincy's handicapped children are instructed either in a class to which they are transported or in their homes by special teachers. The whole number of pupils enrolled in the Quincy Public Schools as of December 15, 1944, was 11,355.
Education has always been a prime interest among the people of Old Braintree and Quincy. Part of the estate of William Coddington from 1640, provided funds for many years for maintaining public
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schools. In 1669, Old Braintree contributed eighty-seven pounds, fourteen shillings, and six pence ($292.43), towards the young and struggling Harvard College. This gift represented about fifty-five cents to an inhabitant or sixty per cent of one annual tax levy. In 1822, President John Adams executed three "Deeds of Gift." Two of these gifts became, in 1827, the Adams Temple and School Fund. The third became the forerunner of a public library system. The income from the Adams Temple and School Fund for years maintained the Adams Academy, a school for boys which was completed in 1871, at a cost of $28,867.99, on the site of the birthplace of john Hancock. The school was discontinued in 1906. Now this income is devoted to the purchase of books for the libraries of the High and Junior High Schools. Presi- dent Adams' far-sighted gift thus makes possible today an outstanding school library system.
In 1823, Doctor Ebenezer Woodward, a young man who was to become the town's leading physician, arrived in Quincy. Among his patients was President John Adams. Inspired by the example of the President, Doctor Woodward, in his will of 1869, established a trust fund for the purpose of founding a school for Quincy-born girls. It is noted that the Adams and Woodward gifts coincide in the desire to encourage higher education. This school, which bears Doctor Wood- ward's name, was opened in 1894. In 1944, the fiftieth anniversary of the school was appropriately celebrated under the auspices of its active Alumnae Association.
Another academy from which the students of Old Braintree ben- efit is Thayer Academy, situated in what is now South Braintree and endowed in 1872 by Brigadier General Sylvanus Thayer, a native of the town.
Saint John's School was established in 1909. Today there are three Catholic parochial schools in Quincy: Saint John's, Saint Jo- seph's, and Saint Mary's, having a total enrollment as of December 31, 1944, of 1,158 pupils.
Eastern Nazarene College, Quincy's only college, was founded in 1918 at North Scituate, Rhode Island. In the following year the campus, buildings and equipment of the Quincy Mansion School, a private school for girls, founded by Doctor and Mrs. Horace Mann Willard in 1896, were purchased, and the college was moved to its present advantageous location in Wollaston Park, a residential section of Quincy. The campus of Eastern Nazarene College consists of about thirteen acres of land within a few blocks of Wollaston Beach on Quincy Bay. In addition to its original buildings, the college has erected four modern buildings and a central heating plant.
The college enrollment numbered three hundred and seventy- seven, as of December 31, 1944.
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Thomas Crane Public Library
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Eastern Nazarene College Administration Building
CHAPTER XIV
PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY
THE earliest records are suggestive of the prevailing ideas of pub- lic health and safety. They reveal that in 1792 it was voted "to have hospitals in the town for the purpose or benefit of those who chuse to have the smallpox. Each hospital was obliged to erect a smoke-house, and no person was allowed to leave until they had been thoroughly smoked, and had a certificate from the doctor certifying the person cleansed."
As a result of the untiring efforts of Doctor John A. Gordon, the moving spirit, and Doctors John H. Gilbert, Joseph M. Sheahan, John F. Welch, Wellington Record, Samuel M. Donovan, William L. Faxon, Roderick McLennan and the benevolent initiative of William B. Rice, donor of the site and building, the City Hospital of Quincy, a private cottage hospital, was dedicated for service on June 17, 1890.
Shortly after its completion, the hospital was called upon to meet an emergency as sudden and unexpected as it was terrible, the accident on the Old Colony Railroad, in the rear of the Adams Academy, August 19, 1890, in which many persons lost their lives. Then, and for nearly thirty years, the hospital was equipped and maintained by the generosity and devotion of individual citizens of Quincy. On March 1, 1919, the hospital became a city institution by the name of the Quincy City Hospital, with the original corporation continuing as trustees of the endowment funds.
From two buildings with twenty-five beds, the hospital has grown to the present plant of twelve buildings with three hundred and forty beds and sixty bassinets.
The Quincy City Hospital is a General Hospital approved by the American College of Surgeons, and by the Council on Medical Edu- cation and Hospitals of the American Medical Association, for train- ing internes. Its fine school of nursing is approved by the Board of Registration in Nursing of Massachusetts and the State Board of Nurse Examiners of New York.
With its excellent administrative, medical, and surgical staffs, the Quincy City Hospital is considered one of the outstanding institutions of its kind in New England.
The Department of Health, for the protection of the present and future citizens of Quincy, operates the following clinics: Tuberculosis, twice weekly; Infantile Paralysis, weekly; Venereal, weekly; Orthope- dic, monthly; Pre-School Dental, twice weekly; School Dental, daily; Well Baby, six times weekly; Undernourished Children, weekly; Child Guidance and Welfare, twice weekly; Diphtheria Immunization, an-
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Quincy City Hospital Administration Building
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nually. The Health Commissioner's staff for this vital work consists of five physicians, a dentist, and four nurses.
Basically a high level of public health in any city rests upon a broad program of health education. Quincy, through lectures spon- sored by the Department of Health and the Quincy City Hospital, is attempting to carry on such a program. These lectures are reaching large audiences and thus Quincy with an educated citizenry is assured of continued high standards of public health.
Recreational facilities make for physical and mental health. Quincy's abundance of natural beauty is shared by its forty-four parks and playgrounds. Within the limits of the city, there are two thou- sand, six hundred and fourteen acres of the Blue Hill Reservation and three miles of the Quincy Shore Boulevard with its bathing beaches under the control of the Metropolitan District Commission.
The generosity of the Adams and Faxon families has provided the city with many acres of land for park and playground activities. Merry Mount Park (91.75 acres) was presented to the town by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in 1885. In the same year, Henry Hardwick Faxon deeded to the town twenty-eight acres in the South Common at present known as Faxon Park. In 1935, his son, Henry Munroe Faxon, added twenty- six acres to this park. Munroe Field (11.11 acres), Faxon Field (28.73 acres), and the Faxon Tennis Courts are gifts of this public-spirited family. For sixteen years Henry M. Faxon has personally financed the supervision and maintenance of these courts. "Trophy Day" at the Faxon Tennis Courts is a gala day in sports of Quincy.
Kendall Park, located at 106 Atlantic Street, North Quincy, was presented to the city in 1938 by Doctor Walter G. Kendall. This park is one of Quincy's greatest curiosities. It is a "Kettle-Hole," almost a perfect circle, one hundred and fifty feet in diameter and fifty feet deep. Apparently it was formed by the movement of the glacier during the Ice Age of America.
Quincy's twenty-two playgrounds are well supervised and made especially inviting to children. The seasonal attendance at these play- grounds averages nearly one hundred and sixty-nine thousand.
The Municipal Stadium, which includes Pfaffmann Oval, pro- vides excellent facilities for football and track. Throughout the city, a bowling green, baseball diamonds, football, soccer, softball and hockey fields, tennis courts, horseshoe pitching courts, skating ponds, and hockey rinks are maintained by the Park Department.
The first action for the protection of property from fire in Old Braintree was ordered on February 1, 1644, when seven townsmen assembled in Town Meeting ordered: - "that every householder in this town shall by the first day of March next ensuing shall have a ladder of his to stand up against his chimney to secure them and the
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town from fire or else shall be lyable to pay what penalty the town's men shall impose on them." Early in 1792, an organization called the "Quincy Fire Society" was formed among the inhabitants for the mutual protection of each other's property in case of fire. The first act to establish a Fire Department in Quincy, was passed by the Legis- lature, April 8, 1853. Accepted at the Town Meeting, March 6, 1854.
The present Quincy Fire Department was established under the first ordinance of the city. Passed February 25, 1889. Approved March 4, 1889. The force of the department at that time consisted of a chief engineer, six assistant engineers, one from each of the wards of the city, five permanent men and sixty-three call members. The equip- ment of the department consisted of one steam engine, one hook and ladder truck, three hose wagons, two four-wheel horse carriages, one hose pung, two chemical engines, two hose jumpers, one supply wagon, and one wagon for fire alarm service, and seven horses. The hose car- riage in Wards One, Four, and Five, were arranged to be hauled by horses or by hand, as there were no permanent men in those districts.
The Quincy Fire Department of today consists of a chief, three deputy-chiefs, twelve captains, eleven lieutenants, a master mechanic, and one hundred and eight privates. The department operates with fourteen companies from seven stations located throughout the city. The equipment of the department consists of the following pieces: one chief's car, one deputy chief's car, one war officer's car, each equipped with two-way radio communication; two one thousand gal- lon and six seven hundred and fifty gallon pumpers; five ladder trucks, two of which are equipped with aerial ladders of sixty-five and one hundred feet, respectively; two hose wagons; eight trailer pumps of five hundred gallons each; one special service truck, equipped with two-way radio communication; one supply truck; and one fire preven- tion car. At headquarters, a tower sixty-three feet in height, consisting of six stories, is maintained for drill purposes.
The Quincy Police Department was established in 1892, with a manager and eight patrolmen. The present department consists of a chief, four captains, eight lieutenants, eight sergeants, one radio super- visor, one hundred and six permanent patrolmen, and twenty-four reserve patrolmen. The department is equipped with two patrols, two ambulances, ten prowl cars equipped with two-way radio commu- nication, five motorcycles, one police motor boat equipped with two-way radio communication, and four row boats. The department maintains a two-way police radio communicative system, station WQRP, the first in New England and the eleventh in the United States. The department is also equipped with a Teletypewriter Sys- tem which is connected direct with the Headquarters of the State Police of Massachusetts, through which messages are relayed to all police departments in the United States maintaining Teletypewriter Systems.
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This presents an interesting contrast to the department of 1889, which consisted of the Deputy Manager of the Police Force, twenty- one special police officers, ten constables, with headquarters and a few cells in the basement of City Hall.
The Fire Alarm, Police Signal, Traffic, and Air Raid Communi- cation systems of the city are maintained by the Fire and Police Signal Department consisting of a superintendent and four men.
From the foregoing account it is clear that Quincy is provided with all the essential services for the protection of public health and safèty.
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CHAPTER XV
SHIPBUILDING
Quincy's Largest Industry
QUINCY has more than twenty-seven miles of water front. It has deep water channels and mean low tide averaging from twenty-four to thirty feet in depth, sufficient to permit the largest of ships to make Quincy a port of call.
For centuries the banks of the Fore River and Town River have rung to the hammers of ship builders. Old Braintree's first ship, the ketch, Unity, was built at "Ship Cove" in 1696. The next date of importance in the history of shipbuilding in Quincy was September 21, 1789, when the one hundred and sixteen foot Massachusetts, the larg- est merchant ship which at that time had been built on the continent of North America, dipped gracefully into her mother element from the shores of Germantown. Here, in the earliest days, were constructed fishing and whaling boats for the local industries, as well as other small craft. Here in the days of the famous clipper ships, were launched and fitted some of its finest specimens. The last clipper ship built in Quincy was the Red Cloud, which was launched on Novem- ber 24, 1877, from the yard of Deacon George Thomas, located at Granite Wharf in the "Point," now the site of the Procter and Gamble Manufacturing Company.
Quincy's largest shipyard, the Bethlehem Steel Company, Ship- building Division, Quincy Yard (known as the Fore River Yard until February 12, 1944), whose ships have carried Quincy's fame around the world, is the outgrowth of a little machine shop built at East Brain- tree in 1884, by Thomas A. Watson, who had assisted (1874-1881) Alexander Graham Bell in the development of the telephone. In this shop, which Watson erected for his own pleasure, he worked in metals in the manufacture of rotary steam engines. When these engines proved a total failure, he turned to the manufacture of marine engines of sizes suitable for yachts and tug boats. In connection with this work Watson employed Frank O. Wellington, a capable young machinist who had worked with the Atlantic Corporation of East Boston, now the Atlantic Yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Shipbuilding Division. This venture proved so successful that Watson made Wel- lington a partner in the business, which they called the Fore River Engine Company.
On February 15, 1898, the battleship Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor by an exterior mine, with the loss of two hundred and sixty-seven lives. Immediately the Congress of the United States authorized the construction of sixteen torpedo boat destroyers and ten torpedo boats. In September of 1898, the Fore River started on its career of naval construction by building the torpedo boat destroyers,
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the Lawrence and the MacDonough. During the building of the de- stroyers a contract for the 3,100-ton cruiser Des Moines (16.7 kts.) was undertaken.
In 1900, the plant moved northward into Quincy to obtain addi- tional area, and water of sufficient depth at the building ways to pro- vide for the increased naval construction. On February 1, 1901, the name was changed to the Fore River Ship and Engine Company. Un- der this name the company first constructed hulls as well as engines, coast defense guns, printing presses, shoe machinery, refrigerating, and electrical equipment. Soon many high-grade vessels were built, one of which was the City of Quincy, a passenger steamer which ran between Quincy and Boston.
At the turn of the century, contracts were taken for building the battleships Rhode Island and New Jersey, fifteen thousand ton vessels each, considered huge ships in their day. These contracts made neces- sary another change in policy - the incorporation of the company under the laws of New Jersey, February 12, 1901. Three years later the property and business of the Fore River Ship and Engine Company was sold to the Fore River Shipbuilding Company, under which name the business was conducted until 1913. At that time the company was purchased by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and reorganized as the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation, with Joseph W. Powell as president.
In 1916, when the great naval expansion program got underway, the Fore River received orders for eight submarines and eight de- stroyers. Speed in construction, which has always been an outstand- ing feature of the Fore River, placed the eight destroyers in the war zone within twelve months of the receipt of the contract.
During World War I, the Fore River Plant of the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, Limited (formed by the Bethlehem inter- ests in the latter part of 1917) and its affiliate, the Victory Plant at Squantum, under the able leadership of the late S. Wiley Wakeman and Harry E. D. Gould, created shipbuilding history by turning out for the Navy more destroyers than all the other yards in the United States combined. At the Victory Plant thirty-five destroyers were built in twenty-seven months and five days, just a little more than half the time it took to turn out the single destroyer, McDonough. One of these destroyers, the U.S.S. Reid, was built in world's record time, forty-five and one-half working days from keel laying to delivery.
In the period preceding World War II, the Bethlehem Steel Com- pany, Shipbuilding Division, Fore River Yard (organized as such No- vember, 1938), now known as the Quincy Yard, was an important · factor in the building program of the Navy and the Merchant Marine. Since the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the chief naval base of the United States in the Far East by Japan, and the declaration of war on Japan, Germany and Italy by the United States, the government has been engaged in building the greatest Navy ever known to history.
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