Quincy House Tour

1668mn

1668

1668 Maine Street is a house that truly shows how well citizens of Quincy have preserved their residential architecture. Built in 1834, this house is one of Quincy’s oldest and is built in the late federal style. The front facade is built up so as to give the allusion that the house has no gable roof. The cornice is very simple, yet clearly classical, in its origin.

The federal style was popular in America at the beginning of the nineteenth century especially in New England. The style refers to a conservative neoclassicism seen in middle class townhouses of London. Many of these ideas made their way to Boston and other cities in the east and thus a generation of new Americans were accustomed to seeing architecture such as this. In what was then the west (Illinois), an even more simplified wooden version was built when towns along the Mississippi were first being settled. The columns on the front portico are simplified to hexagons, probably to the availability of materials in Quincy during the 1830’s.

Another possibility that exists with this house is that it is built of post and beam timber frame construction rather than two-by-four balloon frame construction. Balloon frame construction was not invented until 1832 and was not popular outside the immediate area of Chicago until the end of the decade. Although not the most architecturally dominant house on the Maine Street corridor, this house represents the varied architectural history that one town can have on any given street.