A finely-drawn manuscript map of Boston’s South Shore, produced to promote a proposed public park in the Wollaston section of Quincy.

The map depicts coastal Massachusetts between the Charles River and Quincy. There is little topographical detail, other than the site of a “proposed public park,” bounded by the Neponset River to the north, the Old Colony and Newport RR to the east, present-day Furnace Brook Parkway to the south and I-93 to the west. Within the proposed park Forbes Hill and Wollaston Heights are shown by hachuring, while woodlands and meadows are indicated by tiny symbols. Per the title, the map emphasizes the area’s accessibility by highlighting major streets, are rail roads, horse-drawn rail roads, and the steamer service connecting Boston and Quincy.

The map also indicates nearby sites of interest, including the [President] Adams Mansion, the residence of Josiah Quincy, and stone quarries. It also shows but does not identify the “Granite Railway,” opened in 1826 to carry Quincy granite to a dock on the Neponset River, from whence it was shipped to Boston and elsewhere.

The map can be dated to no earlier than 1866 by the presence of the National Sailors Home, built that year on the old Josiah Quincy estate in Quincy. The present of the Old Colony & Newport Railroad provides a terminus ante quem of 1872, the year it merged with the Cape Cod Railroad and was renamed the Old Colony Railroad.

I have found no other documentary evidence for this proposed park, but the proposal apparently went nowhere. Much of the area was developed as housing by the Wollaston Land Associates, which as of 1875 owned roughly 190 acres in town assessed at $66,100 (see List of Taxable Polls and Estates in the Town of Quincy, for the Year 1875, p. 184). An 1870 Plan of Lands of Wollaston Land Associates at Wollaston Heights, Quincy shows roughly the southeast quadrant of the area of the proposed park laid out into streets and lots, and much of this layout and even some of the street names are still visible today.

In 1893 the Metropolitan Parks Commission purchased several thousand acres just to the west, which are known today as the Blue Hills Reservation. One wonders whether this earlier proposal for a public park in Quincy in some way laid the groundwork for that later development.