World’s End comprises four coastal drumlins—spoon-shaped hills formed by glaciers—extending into Hingham Harbor. John Brewer built a mansion here in 1856 and, over the next 30 years, acquired most of the peninsula’s 400-plus acres as well as Sarah and Langley Islands. In 1890, Brewer asked famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to design a 163-home residential subdivision. The drives were cut, but the development never came to fruition, nor did later proposals for the United Nations Headquarters in the 1940s or a nuclear power plant in the 1960s.