The Adams family making history again
John Adams died in 1826, but in many ways he has never been more alive.
Tourists are flocking to the Adams National Historical Park in Quincy in record number, spurred first by a runaway best-selling book on his life and now by the successful HBO miniseries based on that book.
An additional 80,000 visitors are expected at the Adams home this season, based on turnout so far - a big increase over last year's 222,525. The daily house tours are routinely selling out, and eight more rangers have been hired to help handle the crowds.
"After we saw the miniseries, we said we had to come here and see where it all happened," said Kathleen Adams Grant of Gettysburg, Pa.; she and her husband, Marc Pratt, visited last week.
"Definitely, the TV show is the reason we came," said Nicole Artz of New York. Added her husband, Jeffrey, "We weren't really thinking of Boston before the show."
On any given day, people such as Joe Wikoff of Honolulu are traveling hundreds - or thousands - of miles to visit. Like Wikoff, many have read David McCullough's 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, "John Adams." And many more, like his wife, Lynne, have seen at least parts of the recent HBO miniseries "John Adams." The show was just nominated for 23 Emmys, more than any other show in any category.
The visitor count jumped after the book came out in 2001, and took off again this year following the HBO series. "We . . . thought that if we got up this way, we'd stop here," said Joe Wikoff, who read the book soon after it was published.
The Adams site Visitor Center in downtown Quincy, where tours begin, has been bustling with regional and foreign accents as visitors crowd in. Kelly Flynn, a visitors' assistant at the center, is being kept hopping by constant phone calls requesting information about how to get to the site and its hours of operation.
The surge in interest in the second president of the United States, and the Adams family in general, has delighted city tourism officials, who have seen the crowd carry over to other city attractions. There has been a big increase in the number of people requesting brochures about the city, they say.
The only downside is that, because tours are being sold out daily, many people are being turned away from the Adams homes, especially on weekends.
Park officials say that if the trend continues through the season, which runs from April to November, the Adams homes will draw about 305,000 visitors this year. The numbers of local, national, and international visitors are all up, with international visits making up about 10 percent of the total.
"We're getting many people who may never have visited a national historic site before," said Caroline Keinath, deputy superintendent of the site.
Keinath said those who have not read the Adams biography have at least seen the HBO miniseries. They are in good company. According to HBO, the audience for the 12 telecasts in the first run averaged 4.7 million viewers and nearly 3.5 million homes.
The premiere telecasts of parts 1 and 2 of the miniseries ranked as HBO's most watched original film since "Something the Lord Made" In 2006.
"John Adams" has also proven popular on the cable channel's On Demand service, and the series has also just been released on DVD, said HBO's Angela Tarantino.
Keinath said park officials are limited in how many visitors they can accommodate. Each tour can include up to 10 visitors, and there is a limit to how many tours can be conducted at the same time. The National Park Service's Centennial Initiative provided Keinath with the additional positions that allowed her to hire the eight additional rangers.
Visitors begin their tour at the Visitor Center before being taken by trolley to family birthplaces and the mansion on Adams Street. The Adams site encompasses the birthplaces of John Adams and John Quincy Adams along with Peacefield, the home for four generations of the family.
The influx of thousands of new visitors to the city has been a welcome sight for Mark J. Carey, executive director of Discover Quincy, the public-private partnership that coordinates the city's marketing efforts and is funded by a combination of the city's hotel-motel tax, grants, and corporate and private donations.
Carey said his agency joins with other area tourist stops - Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod and the Islands, the South Coast of Massachusetts - to get the word out about what the city has to offer, and is part of a marketing effort called theculturalcoast.org. Downtown Quincy and Marina Bay are two areas that have benefited from the Adams influx.
And, responding to requests for information about the city, he has mailed out 10,000 brochures to addresses all around the Northeast - and 1,000 more in response to international requests.
Keinath said the recent media exposure has also played a role in the success of other endeavors, such as the play "Jefferson and Adams: A Revolutionary Dialogue" that attracted a huge crowd to the mansion's grounds on July 4. Carey said his group often collaborates with the Adams site for events such as the July 4 play, for which Discover Quincy provided the tent.
Kelly Cobble, curator of the Adams Historical Park, said the works of historian Paul C. Nagel also deserve credit for helping to revive interest in the Adams family. He wrote what many consider the definitive book on John Quincy Adams, one of John Adams's sons and the sixth US president, and also wrote books about John and Abigail Adams.
Keinath said the best part for her as a park official is that the interest in the Adams site might inspire people to visit other historic places.
And the trend is not expected to end soon.
"The DVD is already out and HBO is running the series again," Carey said. "Then it'll go on to free TV and someplace like Bravo."
Rich Fahey can be reached at faheywrite@yahoo.com.
