Furnace Brook Parkway
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Furnace Brook Parkway
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| Location | Quincy, Massachusetts |
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| Coordinates | 42°14′58″N 71°1′46″W / 42.24944°N 71.02944°W |
| Built | 1904 |
| Architect |
Charles Eliot Olmsted Brothers |
| MPS | Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston MPS |
| NRHP Reference # | 04000248 |
| Added to NRHP | March 18, 2004 |
Furnace Brook Parkway is a historic parkway in Quincy, Massachusetts. Part of the Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston, it serves as a connector between the Blue Hills Reservation and Quincy Shore Reservation at Quincy Bay. First conceived in the late nineteenth century, the state parkway is owned and maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) and travels through land formerly owned by the families of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, passing several historic sites. It ends in the Merrymount neighborhood, where Quincy was first settled by Europeans in 1625 by Captain Richard Wollaston. The road was started in 1904, completed in 1916 and added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 2004.
Furnace Brook Parkway approximately bisects central Quincy on a southwest–northeast line, following closely the courses of Furnace Brook and Blacks Creek, the estuary into which the brook flows, crossing them several times. For the majority of its length it is two lanes undivided, with the exception of directional lanes at a traffic circle (called a "rotary" in New England) where it meets Interstate 93.
The parkway takes its name from the course of the stream it follows, Furnace Brook, which begins on the eastern slopes of the Blue Hills and meanders for about four miles from southwest to northeast through the middle of Quincy, ending where it meets the Atlantic estuary known as Blacks Creek near Quincy Bay. The brook was named in the seventeenth century for its proximity to the Winthrop Iron Furnace, also known as Braintree Furnace, the first iron blast furnace established in what would become the United States. The furnace and forge operation was started in 1644 by John Winthrop the Younger in the North Precinct of Braintree, which became the separate town of Quincy in 1792.
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