The Old South Meeting House is a museum and historic church building at 310 Washington Street, on the corner with Milk Street, in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Built in 1729, the meeting house originally hosted the Congregational congregation of the Old South Church. It was the organizing point for the 1773 Boston Tea Party and later became a free speech symbol for its role as a pre–American Revolution meeting house. The building has served as a museum since 1877 and is operated by Revolutionary Spaces. One of the landmarks on Boston's Freedom Trail, the Old South Meeting House is designated a National Historic Landmark and a Boston Landmark. It is also part of the Boston National Historical Park.
The Old South Meeting House, designed by Robert Twelves and built by Joshua Blanchard, replaced the congregation's first building, the 1669 Cedar Meeting House. It hosted religious services alongside town meetings and speeches, functioning as an overflow space for town meetings too large for Faneuil Hall. In 1775, British troops occupied the interior and gutted it, turning the interior into a horse-riding facility. The interior was rebuilt in 1783, and the building was modified several times in the 19th century. The congregation used the Old South Meeting House until the Great Boston Fire of 1872 and moved to its Copley Square building in 1875.
The old building temporarily served as a post office after the 1872 fire and, following lengthy legal disputes, was sold for scrap in 1876. A group of citizens organized to buy the site and building in what was one of the area's first successful preservation movements. The Old South Association (OSA) took over the building, operating it as a museum. The building underwent additional renovations from the late 19th century onward, including an 1898–1914 overhaul designed by Bigelow and Wadsworth. The pews were reproduced in 1947, the exhibits were overhauled in 1987, and a basement was built during a 1990s renovation. Revolutionary Spaces took over operations in 2020.
The Old South Meeting House is one of the few remaining New England meeting houses with a Georgian exterior and a traditional meeting house–style interior. The building has a mostly rectangular plan with a brick facade. The main entrance is on Washington Street to the west, where there is a protruding tower with a steeple. The rest of the building is two stories high, with large windows and a combination hipped and gable roof. Inside is a square meeting hall with replica pews, a pulpit, and a balcony-level upper gallery. The meeting hall is arranged symmetrically around a secondary entrance on Milk Street, placing the main entrance through the side. Although the building has received mixed architectural reviews, commentators have described its history as highly significant.
Site The Old South Meeting House is a former church building at 310 Washington Street in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, at the northeast corner with Milk Street. The church sits at one end of Boston's former Newspaper Row. At the corner of Washington and Milk streets, the church has a courtyard measuring about . An entrance to the MBTA subway's State station adjoins the building. The Old South Meeting House is a stop on the Freedom Trail, a path connecting historic sites in Boston; sequentially, it is between the Old Corner Bookstore and the Old State House.
The site was gifted by Mary Norton, the widow of former First Church pastor John Norton. The current building's original tenant, the Old South Church congregation, received the land in three pieces between 1669 and 1677. It had formerly been part of the estate of John Winthrop, whose homestead occupied half of the block. The building occupies the former site of Winthrop's garden.
Church usage History The Old South Meeting House is the second building of the Old South Church congregation (now located at Copley Square). The congregation was founded in May 1669 by Congregationalist dissenters from the First Church. It was known as the Third Church to distinguish it from the First and Second Congregational churches in the city.
Context and development The congregation's first meeting house or church building, the Cedar Meeting House, was built in 1669 at the corner of Washington and Milk streets. This structure was also called the South Meeting House, since it was south of the North Meeting House. It was cited as measuring wide. The congregation's first pastor was Rev. Thomas Thacher, a physician who published the first medical pamphlet in Massachusetts. The congregation began accepting women members in 1674 and, under duress from Governor Edmund Andros, hosted Church of England services in the 1680s. Its members included future U.S. Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, who was baptized at the building in 1706. After the First Church's building was destroyed by the Great Boston Fire of 1711, the Third Church offered them the Cedar Meeting House. When the now-defunct New South Church was formed in 1717, the Third Church became known as the Old South Church. The congregation was known as the Old South Society.
A new meeting house was proposed under the combined ministries of Joseph Sewall (serving 1713–1769) and Thomas Prince (serving 1718–1758). By then, the existing meeting house could no longer accommodate the congregation and, as workers later found, was seriously deteriorated. The congregation decided on a new building in 1727, voting 41–20 to demolish the Cedar Meeting House. A building committee was appointed the next year to construct a brick structure. The old building was demolished during March 2–3, 1729; work on the new building started on March 31, and the floors were laid by April 24. Services were temporarily hosted at the First Church. The new church opened in April 1730, with the first recorded service taking place on April 26 of that year. It was built by Joshua Blanchard (who later worked on Faneuil Hall) and designed by Robert Twelves. The church was then at the southern end of the town of Boston; commercial development to the south had yet to be built, and the land to the west and east was mostly residential.
Mid-18th century: Pre-Revolutionary era As built, the Old South Meeting House had a mostly rectangular plan, with a protruding tower on Washington Street. Although the meeting hall faced south toward Milk Street, congregants entered through this tower, effectively forcing them to enter through the sides. It had a large capacity for the era, being able to accommodate 5,000 people. The meeting hall's main level was surrounded by two tiers of galleries. The meeting hall originally had box pews, like other New England meeting houses; the design allowed the pews to retain heat during the winter. The pews bore the names of their owners, who were assigned different seating locations based on their demographics and social standing, The pews faced a "tub" pulpit with a sounding board above it. The seats closest to the pulpit were reserved for elderly members, while deacons and church elders sat beneath the pulpit, above the main level of seats. Two balconies contained seating for lower-class residents and teenagers, along with African American members. The congregation had at least 122 enslaved members, including Phillis Wheatley, who later became the first published African-American poet.
The building hosted services on Sundays and speeches on Saturdays. The meeting hall lacked a clock in its early years; although an hourglass was used for timekeeping, ministers sometimes gave speeches for several hours straight. One of its first events took place in 1730, when residents gathered to hear notable speakers for the centenary of Boston's founding. A bell, donated by the estate of deceased seaman Timothy Cunningham, was installed in 1731 and was regularly rung for meetings and civic events, as well as at 5 a.m., 11 a.m., and 9 p.m. daily. In the building's early years, Prince maintained a collection of documents in the church's steeple; the collection was later donated to the Boston Public Library. The church's first organ was installed in 1745, and the earliest records of repairs to the building date from 1765. A clock was added to the tower by 1770, having been installed because of the bell's presence. The clockmaker, Gawen Brown, donated it to the congregation, and the Boston government paid Brown for the clock in 1774. The congregation moved to install footstoves in the early 1770s, reversing a decision made by previous pastors, who had refused to install footstoves in the belief that they were dangerous.
The Old South Meeting House frequently hosted town meetings as well. The events were frequently raucous, to the disdain of Britons in Boston, and many of them directly influenced the American Revolution. Starting in 1768, it was used as an overflow space for events that could not fit in Faneuil Hall, Boston's town hall. The very first such event was a speech James Otis Jr. gave on June 21, where he denounced the British Parliament's attempts to tax the colonies and the use of writs of assistance by Boston customs officials. After the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, local residents gathered at the church, successfully demanding that troops be relocated to Boston Harbor. Until the Revolutionary War, lectures were hosted at Old South on the anniversary of the massacre, with James Lovell, Benjamin Church, John Hancock, and Joseph Warren giving the orations. On December 16, 1773, a crowd of 5,000 to 7,000 people met at Old South to hear Massachusetts House of Representatives clerk Samuel Adams speak against the Tea Act. After the meeting, a group raided three tea ships in what became known as the Boston Tea Party. At the Boston Massacre's fifth anniversary in 1775, Warren gave a speech to a crowd that included Hancock and Adams; when a group of British officers came in, Adams gave them front-row seats.
Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary era
In 1775, the building was occupied by British troops as retaliation for its role in the Patriot movement. Major-general John Burgoyne ordered his troops to remove the building's decorations. They gutted the interior (except for the eastern portion of the meeting hall's gallery), filled it with dirt, and used the interior to practice horse riding. The pews and pulpit were removed and burned; only four sets of pews survived. Soldiers also looted several items from the building, including William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation (1620), a Pilgrim manuscript stored in the church's tower.
The British evacuated Boston in 1776, after which the plan for rebuilding the interior of the church was drawn by Thomas Dawes.Eckley, Joseph. "Obituary: Sketch of the Character of the Late Hon. Thomas Dawes, Esq.," 1809, Boston Athenaeum Library, Tracts B438, B1213. The Continental Army commander-in-chief, George Washington, observing Old South's interior after the evacuation, commented that he "thought that the British, who had so much respect for their own churches, would have had more respect for those of others". The church lacked funds to renovate the building for seven years, and in the meantime, they met in King's Chapel. Following a renovation in 1783, the building was reopened on March 2 of that year. The building was largely returned to its original design, while a new pulpit and pews were installed. The steeple was fixed in 1798, and the church first developed stores on its land that year.
Early and mid-19th century