Innovate New Welcome Center Offers Innovative and Interactive Ways for Visitors to Discover Quincy

Photo courtesy of Discover Quincy

The City of Quincy is opening its newly designed Welcome Center this week, part of a concerted effort by city leaders, tourism officials, historians and businesses to prepare for the 400th anniversary of the city's founding in 2025.  The innovative and interactive Welcome Center is a key component of the city's celebration, and has been specifically designed to offer an engaging and informative experience for visitors who will come to Quincy from across the nation and around the world. 

 

Photo courtesy of BITA

Conveniently located in the heart of the city at 1259 Hancock Street, the Welcome Center looks out onto  Hancock Adams Common.  It is just steps from Quincy City Hall, the Adams National Park Service Visitor Center and the MBTA Quincy Center  train line, and it is surrounded by dozens of small businesses, restaurants and historic sites.

Mayor Thomas P. Koch says the new Welcome Center is part of the Legible City initiative, whose "goal over the past year and a half is to continue to make places of interest in the City discoverable, explore formats to engage visitors and citizens in public history, and help the City learn more about citizen interests in regards to public spaces.” 

Photo courtesy of BITA

The Welcome Center achieves all that and more.  When visitors walk through the door, they are standing on a  walkable map of the entire City, covering 900 square feet, complete with street names, parks and open space, the 39 mile coastline and historic sites such as the Adams National Historical Park and the  Thomas Crane Public Library.

Quincy Tourism Director Dagny Ashley says, “Stepping into the new Welcome Center lets you quite literally explore the entire City of Quincy and its most prominent places of interest," adding that the new Center is now "accessible and engaging for a wide range and diversity of visitors, both local and from afar. We want them to feel welcome to the City, help them get oriented and learn more about a city with a 400-year history.”

Photo courtesy of © Kristian Kloeckl, Information in Action

A series of digital screens arranged in the Center present information about the city’s past and present. The screens are positioned along the Center’s window front to allows passersby to take a peek from the outside and discover something new about the City.

Photo courtesy of © Kristian Kloeckl, Information in Action

To greet and engage its youngest visitors, the Welcome Center hosts a wooden train landscape sporting miniature Quincy Center, Quincy Adams, and North Quincy train stations. Children can drive the trains through the Blue Hills or along Wollaston Beach. Much attention has been given to details throughout the space. The aluminum chairs used in the center are the kind developed in 1944 and used on Navy Ships during World War II - ships such as the ones constructed at historic Fore River Shipyard. Stools around the video screen are shaped to resemble the rocky landscape of the Quincy Granite Quarries. 

Photo courtesy of  Discover Quincy, Presidents Trail 

The map covering the floor is positioned according to its real-world orientation, helping visitors head right out to nearby sights.  It depicts the City’s PresidentsTrail, a 2.7-mile long urban walking trail that connects many of the City’s places of interest reachable byfoot from the Welcome Center. A back-lit photo wall at the entrance introduces visitors to the City’s many sights and works together with matching place labels on the walkable floor map to form an outright treasure-hunt for young visitors that can quiz their local knowledge on a printed map in the Center space. The redesign was supported by a Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism grant. 

Read about Quincy events this summer and fall leading up to the Quincy 400 celebration in 2025. 

To learn more about visiting the City of Quincy any time of year, check out Discover Quincy.