Quincy Views

I truly love where I live—Quincy, my little town with its white wedding-cake houses and billowing pink and purple azalea gardens. When I take walks, I go crazy for the old brick garden walls and the leaded glass windows, the deep porches and silvery, rusty tin roofs. Streamers of Spanish moss festoon the trees, and the sandy, patchy lawns are polka-dotted with bulbs—rain lilies, surprise lilies, daffodils. . . .

The other day I took pictures as I walked—of the white houses and nearly black magnolias, the live oaks heavily robed in ferns. Of course, the pictures didn’t turn out as pretty as I’d hoped, as pretty as the dear old town really looks to my eye. But here are a few of them anyway:

Pat Monroe House (Quincy Garden Center)

Mr. Pat Monroe built this house in 1893. He served as president of the Quincy State Bank for fifty years and in his time was one of Quincy’s most prominent and respected citizens. The house stayed in the Monroe family until the 1970s, when it was donated to the City of Quincy. Today, the Quincy Garden Club leases it.

Stockton-Curry House

Probably the most interesting thing about this house, built in 1842, is the matching mini mansion at the southern corner of the front yard. The mini mansion, with its white columns and fancy front-door sidelights, served as the law office of Phillip Stockton, the second owner of the property.

Smallwood-White House

This house was built in 1843 and extensively remodeled in 1856 by Pleasants Woodson White, a Quincy lawyer and judge who lived to be ninety-nine years old. After Judge White died in 1921, the house was sold to the Centenary Methodist Church. Ever since, it’s been used as a parsonage.