Quincy’s Presidents Church goes under cover

— News about Quincy from Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

Not particularly effective as a disguise
Image via an Amazon novelties vendor

Quincy’s Presidents Church goes undercover.

While out and about on the ever-increasingly mean as well as recently soggy streets of Quincy, a Quincy Quarry reporter just happened to notice that the United First Parish Church of Quincy, better known as the Church of the Presidents, has all but been blocked from view to passersby care of the over the top as well as overly tall landscaping of Kim Jong Koch Plaza. 

That and so make it all but impossible for what few commuters are still left to scurry to the Quincy Center MBTA station to catch a train to be able to check the time on the church’s clock tower, a clock which has benefitted from local tax dollars to effect repairs on this historic clock.

Way better view of the President Church after the fall leaf fall
Image via Google Maps

At least so points out Quincy Quarry News landscape design advisor Frederick Law Olmstead V. 

Olmstead finds Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s over the top mash-up cribs aspects of the plaza between Fanuel Hall and Boston’s City Hall, Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall, the royal gardens at Versailles, banal old school bronze statues, the Dancing Waters at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, and who only knows what all else overdone.

Wicked way overdone.

That and even more so yet overdone.

Charlie and his Mini-me wannabe at a photo op
An old YouTube still image screenshot

“Cinco” Olmstead specifically suspects that vertically challenged Mayor Koch’s obsession with things tall is at the core of the problem. 

On top of Mayor Koch’s blind rush to both overplant and plant tall in time for the public dedication of the plaza almost three years ago, Olmstead suspects that Koch’s personal lack of much in the way of a personal horizon further resulted in a (yet another local, ed.) koched-up over the top Edifice Complex.

Specifically, notes Cinco, in the spent madly rush to see the upwards of $35 million and still counting as well as unfinished Kim Jong Koch Plaza look at least mostly complete when it was formally dedicated several years ago.

That and while also expensively pursuing the intertwined goal to endeavor to make the plaza look as if it has long been part of one-time but now former Quincy Square, Mayor Koch’s woeful lack of vision concurrently failed to envision how the plaza looks from without.

Quincy City Hall annexes
An iconic Quincy Quarry file photo

For example, on top of failing to go with the simple and practical grace of a New England town common, Mayor Koch appears to have insisted upon planting way too many more plantings than were needed.

Further, rather than going with less tall and instead more spreading as well as dramatic early spring flowerings trees such as cherry trees, Mayor Koch went with tall trees of no particular charm other than that they are tall and have thus all but walled of the Church of the Presidents from ready view.

That and fountains.

Lots and lots and lots of fountains.

Smile!  You are on not so candid camera!
A Shutterstock image

Further troubling, the overall over-the-top design gives rise to security problems for passers-through.

The reason for concern: Kim Jong Koch Plaza is rife with cover for muggers and worse to hide even if the plaza has a very expensive video security system as such video is mostly only good for identifying a perp at trial after the fact. 

If, that is, the view of the video surveillance system is not blocked by the excess vegetation.

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