The Old State House, also known as the Old Provincial State House,[4] is a historic building in Boston, Massachusetts. Built in 1713, replacing the city's First Town House, it was the seat of the Massachusetts General Court until 1798. It is the oldest extant public building in Boston and one of the oldest public buildings in the United States.[5] At 65 feet (20 meters), it was also the tallest building in Boston from the time of its construction until 1745, when it was surpassed by the Old North Church in the city's North End.
The Massachusetts Town House: seat of colony government 1713–1776
On this map of 1775, today's Old State House is marked as "E - Town Hall" at the intersection of Cornhill and King Street.
Today's brick structure replaced the wooden Town House of 1658 which was designed and built by Thomas Joy and which burned in the fire of 1711.[6] Its successor was built in 1712–1713 (with its cornerstone laid in May 1712 by Samuel Sewall),[7] and possibly designed by Robert Twelves. Some historians credit Thomas Dawes with being the architect, but he was of a later generation. Dawes's contributions probably came in about 1772, after a four-year period of the General Assembly having to meet in Cambridge due to British use of the building as a military barracks, which resulted in considerable damage.[8][9][10] A notable feature is the pair of figures depicting lion and unicorn rampants, symbols of the British monarchy, on the eastern parapet.[11] A royal coat of arms was removed from Council Chambers during the Revolution by Loyalists fleeing Boston;[12] it has been at Trinity Anglican Church in Saint John, New Brunswick, since 1791.[13] The coat of arms is now in the nave, having survived the Trinity fire of 1877.[14]
The building housed a Merchants Exchange on the first floor and warehouses in the basement. The eastern side of the second floor contained the Council Chamber of the Royal Governor, while the western end housed chambers for the Courts of Suffolk County and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The central portion contained the chambers for the Massachusetts General Court. This chamber is notable for including public galleries, the first example of such being included in a chamber for elected officials.[15]
The interior was rebuilt in 1748, after a fire the previous year; the exterior brick walls survived the fire.[16] The interior was rebuilt according to the 1713 plan, but the exterior was altered: the gambrel roof was replaced by a gable roof, the polygonal cupola was replaced by a central tower in three tiers and the parapet on the eastern end was adorned the lion and unicorn figures.[17]National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers have also studied the effects of the Cape Ann earthquake of 1755 on the building's foundation and walls, given the age of the structure.[18] Between 1750 and 1830, significant modifications were mostly confined to the building's interior.[17]
In 1755, Spencer Phips, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, signed a Proclamation at the Old State House calling on all settlers to hunt and murder Penobscot men and women in exchange for pay and land. The Proclamation was one of more than 100 government-issued scalp bounties issued in the United States between 1675 and 1885. In 2021, Penobscot Nation leaders and their children visited the Old State House to read the Proclamation aloud.[19]
In 1761, James Otis argued against the Writs of Assistance in the Royal Council Chamber. He lost the case, but he influenced public opinion in a way that contributed to the American Revolution. John Adams later wrote of that speech, "Then and there ... the child independence was born."[20]
This engraving by Paul Revere, portraying the Boston Massacre, shows the Old State House sitting prominently behind the action.
On March 5, 1770, the Boston Massacre occurred in the vicinity of the State House. A cobblestone memorial (a stop on the Freedom Trail) is inlaid into the concrete in front of the building's eastern end, between Devonshire Street and State Street. Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson stood on the building's balcony (above today's memorial) to speak to the people, ordering the crowd to return to their homes.[21]
The Massachusetts State House: seat of state government 1776–1798
Triumphal arch, built in 1789 in preparation for Washington's visit to the city.
On July 18, 1776, Colonel Thomas Crafts read the Declaration of Independence from the balcony to jubilant crowds. At one o'clock, he rose in the Council Chamber and read it to the members.[22] Sheriff William Greenleaf attempted to read it from the balcony, but he could only muster a whisper. Crafts then stood next to the sheriff and read it from the balcony in a stentorian tone. For most people, it was a festive occasion, as about two-thirds of Boston residents supported independence. The lion and the unicorn on top of the building were removed and burned in a bonfire on King Street.[23] They were replaced by scrolls, close copies of the ones at the western end. Replicas of the lion and unicorn were put in place in 1921,[11] the same year another fire struck the building. It mostly burned the northern side of the third floor and the roof timbers above. An automatic fire-alarm system was installed.[24]
An illustration from 1743 shows steps leading up to a set of double doors on the building's eastern elevation.[25] In 1773, renovations involved the "taking down the East End and rebuilding."[26] More work was done in 1788, including the "cutting and fitting new stone steps and erecting a new iron balustrade."[27] The steps, platform and doors in the eastern elevation were removed sometime around 1817.[28][29]
After the American Revolution, the building served as the seat of the Massachusetts state government until 1798, when it moved to the Massachusetts State House, another Bulfinch design. Around the same time, and for around a decade, the Old State House was used as a departure point for horse-drawn carriages to outlying towns.[31]
Boston hall
A c.1815 engraving by Abel Bowen of the western end of the building shows two central windows on the first floor, each flanked on the outside by a door. This level was occupied for 22 years by William Barry's hat store. He was forced out in 1829, leading to his petitioning for damages caused by the early start date of building alterations.[28]
Between 1820 and 1829, the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts was using the entire second floor of the property, except the two rooms overlooking Cornhill (now part of Washington Street) at the western end. In 1825, the building's exterior was briefly painted white by the city.[28]
From 1830 to 1841, the building was Boston's city hall. The city's offices had been in the County Court House. In 1830, Isaiah Rogers altered the building's interior in a Greek Revival style, most notably adding the spiral staircase, leading up from and down to the rotunda, which remains today. The staircase design is believed to have been inspired by that of the 1747 structure in the Shirley–Eustis House in Roxbury.[32]
The building was damaged by fire again in 1832.[6]
City Hall shared the building with the Boston Post Office and several private businesses. On October 21, 1835, Mayor Theodore Lyman Jr. gave temporary refuge to William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the abolitionist paper The Liberator, who was being chased by a violent mob. Garrison was kept safe in the Old State House until being driven to the Leverett Street Jail, where he was protected overnight but charged with inciting a riot.[22] In 1841, City Hall moved to an earlier version of Suffolk County Courthouse on School Street.[33]
The tower, which is centered along the roofline, replaced a cupola lost in the 1747 fire.
Period of commercial use 1841–1881
After City Hall's relocation, its former home was rented out for commercial use. This had been the case once before, in the interim between the State House period and the City Hall period. Occupants included tailors, clothing merchants, insurance agents and railroad-line offices. As many as fifty businesses used the building at once.[34] Clothiers Brown, Lawrence and Stickney altered the basement access panels in the eastern façade to accommodate their store. At the western end, Charles A. Smith's tailor shop filled the space from Washington Street to the rotunda for almost thirty years. By 1870, there had been fifty different occupants of the premises. Around a decade later, it was overrun by businesses, with the building's lower exterior adorned by advertising billboards.[35] The central staircase was also removed and a mansard roof, topped with dormer windows, was installed.[36]
A wide doorway with internal steps leading up to the first floor are in view in a c.1876 photograph of the eastern elevation. The portico above it was removed around four years later. The second-floor cantilevered balcony was not reintroduced; instead, the central balcony door was converted to a window.[37]
The Bostonian Society was formed in 1881 to preserve and steward the Old State House, in response to plans for the possible demolition of the building due to real estate potential. In 1881–1882, substantial renovations, funded by councilor William Henry Whitmore,[35] were undertaken by George A. Clough.[38] Whitmore had discovered Isaiah Rogers's 1830 plans for City Hall conversion in an archive in Cincinnati and mistakenly thought they were based on the 1748 plan. Rogers, though, had substantially altered the interior's configuration for the building's new use, but Whitmore convinced Clough to restore the building per the 1830 plans. In 1882, replicas of the lion and unicorn statues were placed atop the eastern side of the building, after the originals that had been burned in 1776.[39] The recessed steps on the eastern side were replaced by brick walls, as well as doors and windows.[40] On the western side, the building features a statue of a gilded eagle perched atop a small gilded globe, in recognition of the Old State House's connection to American history. To commemorate the building's time as the State Capitol, gilded scrolls are attached to the parapet.[11] Clough filled in the lower wall at the western end, adding windows such as those on the second floor above.[40]
The building's interior features four sections―Keayne Hall and Whitmore Hall on the first floor and Representatives Hall and the Council Chamber on the second floor―with a rotunda beneath the central tower.[32]
Since 1904, the State Street MBTA station has occupied part of the building's basement. The East Boston Tunnel opened in 1904, now called the Blue Line, and the Washington Street Tunnel opened in 1908, now part of the Orange Line.[41] As part of the subway's installation, the lower windows in the eastern elevation were replaced with three shorter versions.
In 1907, a restoration headed by Joseph Everett Chandler added recessed entrances in the center of the northern, southern and western elevations as part of the building's return to its original provincial style.[11][36]
The Boston Marine Museum occupied rooms borrowed from the Bostonian Society from 1909 to 1947.[42]
Queen Elizabeth II toured the Old State House with her husband, Prince Phillip, on July 11, 1976, as part of her Boston visit to celebrate the bicentenary of the United States. She appeared on the balcony and delivered an address:[43]
If Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and other patriots could have known that one day a British monarch would stand on the balcony of the Old State House, from which the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of Boston, and be greeted in such kind and generous words—well, I think they would have been extremely surprised! But perhaps they would also have been pleased to know that eventually we came together again as free peoples and friends to defend together the very ideals for which the American Revolution was fought.
Goody, Clancy and Associates, in cooperation with the Denver Service Center of the National Park Service, undertook a preservation program of the building in 1991. Their work included amending the truss rafter system, which was held in place by gravity, after it was discovered that it was unable to withstand substantial winds from the north or south.[36]
In January 2020, the Bostonian Society merged with the Old South Association in Boston to form Revolutionary Spaces, which continued to operate the museum.[44][45]
Recent preservation and restoration and future plans
The eastern and northern façades, 2013.
The Old State House frequently has preservation and restoration projects as a part of the ongoing effort to keep the building in good condition. In 2006, the museum underwent a restoration to repair water-damaged masonry. The damage had long been a problem, but it was aggravated in fall 2005 by Hurricane Wilma. The project was the subject of an episode of The History Channel's Save Our History.[46]
In 2008, the museum's tower was given a major restoration. During the project, the building's 1714 weathervane was re-gilded, which may have been done by Shem Drowne.[7] The windows were repaired and resealed, the balustrades were repaired, and the copper roofing and rotten wood siding were replaced. This was done to prevent structural damage and to protect the museum's collections and the 1831 clock by Simon Willard in the pediment below.[47] A sundial, the work of local architect George Sherwood in 1957, was installed on the eastern pediment to replicate one depicted in an 1800 illustration of the building (one was first mentioned in 1773 documents).[27] The sundial obscured the clock, however, and was not replaced when the clock was repaired and reinstalled in the early 1990s.[11]
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