2. John Adams
John Adams was born October 30, 1735, a few miles south of Boston in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. The family’s New England saltbox home was the most common style of house in the region. Constructed in 1681, the house is the second oldest presidential birthplace in the United States and is predated in terms of construction by only John Quincy Adams’ birth home which lies just twenty-five yards away from the birth home of the older Adams. John Adams’ father worked as a farmer during the summer months and a shoemaker in the winter. Between the likely routine of childhood chores, John Adams spent his time playing marbles, swimming, wrestling, skating, and shooting.
-Andrew J. Leiter
Original homes are the most exciting to photograph. As a photographer, I have long been attracted to the way that light and shadow can illuminate texture to reveal age, history, and character. The immediate sense of history that one feels at these sites is a primary facet that I want to convey in this project -- original hand-cut nails in the birth house that may have been driven by John Adams' father, or perhaps by John himself! Sharing the same physical space once occupied by these iconic figures in American history, especially their childhood stomping grounds, makes them feel more human, more relatable, and somehow their eventual accomplishments more human. This site is unique in that there are two birthplaces only a few dozen yards apart--family hoses that once stood far out in the country away from the bustling city of Boston but are now surrounded by the suburbs.
-Matthew Albritton