1/31/2024 0 Comments City of quincyA once vibrant shopping scene then lost out to suburban malls, in a familiar tale of urban decline. Shipbuilding, mighty since the 1600s, died in 1985. The city was also home to giant granite quarries, but they fell quiet in 1963. “America should be grateful to Quincy,” Koch said – especially, or perhaps despite, the fact that it also produced Howard Johnson and his budget hotel chain. “The secret is out,” said Mayor Tom Koch, suggesting that like its one-term presidents, Quincy is under-appreciated and has taken its glories for granted, despite having 109 spots on the National Register of Historic Places. The first outlet opened there in 1950 and is still thriving, with a retro counter and lettering. Quincy also has a devastating secret weapon. The loudest dissent has come from Philadelphia, Costello said, where citizens called a recent radio phone-in to complain that with the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its stint as national capital among many highlights, it better deserves the “most patriotic” title. Shrewdly, only Quincy has drafted legislation. Photograph: AlamyĬostello said people in other Massachusetts history hotspots, such as Plymouth and Concord, where the revolutionary war began with “the shot heard around the world”, have protested. Surprisingly, there has been no detectable opposition from Boston, just 15 minutes away via mass transit, with its legendary harbor and meeting houses where the likes of John Adams’s cousin Sam Adams (of the eponymous beer) stirred revolt. Sean Costello, Ayers’s legislative aide, said word of Quincy’s ambitions had blown up the office phones with calls of support – and grousing. Most of its contents belonged to John Quincy Adams, who was adept in more than 10 languages, a master diplomat who resolved the War of 1812. Next door to that is another gem – the first presidential library. Over the 2016 holiday weekend, it is hosting a newly written opera about John and Abigail Adams. Also nearby is the elegant mansion that served as their “summer White House”, where John Adams died on 4 July 1826. Not far from the Church of the Presidents stand two wooden saltbox-style houses where were born the Harvard-educated John and John Quincy Adams – for nearly 200 years the only father-son presidents, until the advent of the Bushes. “The intellectual foundation of the American revolution is right here, in this tomb.”īefore Adams was George Washington’s vice-president and successor, he wrote the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the oldest written constitution in continuous effect in the world and a blueprint for the US national model.Īdams also wrote the Declaration of Independence with Thomas Jefferson and was its prime advocate in the fledgling Congress. “The American idea started here,” said Ayers, a Democrat. Maybe it’s a long shot, but Ayers says the effort has brought sleepy Quincy alive. If it passes, a resulting resolution will ask Congress to follow suit. John Hancock, he of the most flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence, was also born there.Īyers, the district’s representative in the Massachusetts legislature, the General Court, has filed a bill calling on the state to declare Quincy the most patriotic city in America. Quincy is the only city in America that has produced two presidents. All lie in the bowels of a church in downtown Quincy which is known as the Church of the Presidents. Next to Adams lies his wife, Abigail, and their son, America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams, with his wife, Louisa. John Hancock puts his signature to the Declaration of Independence, watched by fellow patriots Robert Morris, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Rush, Richard Henry Lee, Charles Carroll, John Witherspoon, John Adams and Edward Rutledge.
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