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Josiah Quincy has been called the "Great Mayor.” To him the city is indebted for Quincy Market and many of the early improvements. He was the son of Josiah Quincy, Jr. and Abigail Phillips, and was born February 4, 1772, in a house on Washington Street, not far from Milk Street.It is said that his mother, a woman of great strength of character and original hygienic and social ideas, had her son, when he was but three years old, taken from bed every morning, winter and summer, into a cellar kitchen where he was dipped three times into a tub of water as cold as when it came from the pump.He entered Phillips Academy at Andover when he was six, and entered Harvard when he was only fifteen. Upon graduating, the highest honor, the English oration, was given to him. He was admitted to the bar in 1793, and early became interested in public affairs, joining the Federalist party, to which he clung as long as it existed.So brilliantly did Quincy deliver a Fourth of July oration in 1798, that he attracted much favorable attention, and though he was only twenty-eight, he was selected in 1800 by the Federalists to be their candidate for Congress. Though defeated that year, he was, in the spring of 1804, elected to the state Senate and to the Congress in the following November, serving three terms before he voluntarily retired.While in Congress there was scarcely a question upon which he did not speak brilliantly and exhaustively. His attacks upon Jefferson and his administration were most bitter and sarcastic. After his withdrawal from Congress in 1813, he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, and served there until 1820, when he was elected to the House and became its speaker.In 1822, he was made a judge of the Municipal Court, and in the same year when the city government was formed, he was asked to be a candidate for mayor, running against Harrison Gray Otis. The first ballot resulted in no choice, and the two candidates withdrew and John Phillips was elected mayor. The next year Mr. Quincy was chosen mayor, and he at once laid a masterful hand on the tiller of affairs, He made himself chairman of all committees, improved the sanitary conditions of the city, and organized a system of street cleaning and collection of garbage.In spite of determined opposition he personally secured the options, bought land, and built Quincy Market. The cornerstone was laid by him, April 22, 1825, and he opened the market in 1827. The site was made by filling in the land around the town dock in the area of Faneuil Hall and the reclamation of about 125,000 square feet of land and flats. On this “made” land was erected the granite market house now known as Quincy Market. The total cost of the land and the market house was $1,100,000. The increased real estate values as well as the additional property secured by the city, more than paid for the whole improvement. The Fire Department was reorganized by Mr. Quincy, and he built, in South Boston, the House of Industry and the House of Correction. During his second administration Mayor Quincy had the honor of entertaining General Lafayette, who was then a guest of the city.After being five times reelected, he was finally defeated, and retired from local politics. In 1829 he became president of Harvard, and resigned in 1845, at the age of seventy-three. He was a prolific writer on historic subjects. Among his works are “History of Harvard University,” “A History of the Boston Athenaeum,” a “Municipal History of the Town and City of Boston,” and numerous historical monographs and biographies. Despite his great age he threw himself ardently into the antislavery controversy and the campaign to elect Lincoln. He died on July 1, 1864, at the age of ninety-two.Taken from "Boston's 45 Mayors from John Phillips to Kevin H. White," City Record, Boston, 1979.