What a fantastic house for a bargain price. Plenty of room for one to make gradual aesthetic improvements while living there very comfortably. I would not hesitate to buy this house and chip away at making it my own without feeling pressed for time or money to do so.

While Quincy is a familiar town-name to many OHD followers, I wonder how many people have BEEN there. Let me give you my impressions from a 2020 visit! The town’s primary historic district around Maine Street (not a typo; the east-west streets in this area are state names, and this grandest street of the bunch carries the cleverest name of the bunch) is most impressive in terms of size (I would estimate 50 blocks), architectural quality and diversity, state of preservation, and obvious pride of ownership. Seriously one of the more beautiful and well-maintained historic districts in the Midwest. A significant storm passed through several years ago, with the tree canopy sadly taking a big hit; the “before” and “after” can be experienced via Google Streetview’s archive, but the neighborhood still has a wonderfully verdant look and feel in person. Other residential sections of town, like where the posted house is located, are more hit-or-miss but still boast many outstanding individual structures. Downtown Quincy has a small footprint, an inconsistent built environment, and fewer amenities than I wish that it did, but it is functional and not unattractive. The local park system boasts a couple of biggish green spaces that include some very nice blufftop views of the Mississippi; a large historic parklike cemetery is adjacent to one of these parks and could function as a sort of extension for walking enthusiasts.

Quincy’s topography beyond the very close-to-river bluff line is flat and unexciting, and much of its commercial development is more suburban in location and aesthetic. In my estimation, these qualities together make Quincy appear on the surface to be inferior to regional old-house meccas Burlington and Dubuque, Iowa, both of which have much lovelier hilly topography and denser downtowns. All three river towns developed at a similar pace in the nineteenth century, however, so there is less of a difference in quantity of historic architecture among them. Both Dubuque and Burlington, which I visited on the same trip, have more of a quintessential “old town” vibe than does Quincy, but neither boasts a historic district or an overall inventory of historic residential architecture anywhere near as large and cohesive as Quincy’s. Any of these communities would be wonderful places for an old-house lover to live, but Quincy strikes me as the most under-the-radar of the bunch and priced accordingly. Well worth a visit, and well worth considering for relocation, especially for retirees or others not dependent on the smallish local economy (although it offers any and every useful and enjoyable amenity for comfortable day-to-day living, certainly moreso than Burlington and not much less so than Dubuque).