Old Capitol (Boston)

Brief Information

The Old State House looks like a single building, but behind it lies a succession of roles: provincial government, the Massachusetts State House, city hall, shops, a restaurant, Masonic rooms, and a museum. It was built in 1713 on the site of Boston’s first wooden Town House, which had burned down in a fire. Another fire in 1747 burned out the interior and damaged the brick walls, but after restoration its exterior became close to what it is today.

The main contrast here is that political history is not separated from the ordinary urban fabric. The Boston Massacre took place by the building’s walls, the United States Declaration of Independence was read from its balcony, and later those same walls housed wine trade, wigmaking, and hatmaking. Today it is a museum and one of the stops on the Freedom Trail.

What to Notice First

It makes sense to compare three levels of the building: the facade, the balcony, and the basement level. The facade is important because of the lion and unicorn figures on the east side. In 1776, the British royal symbols were removed and burned, and when the historic appearance was restored in 1881, these figures were returned. This detail shows not just decoration, but a change of power that people later decided to make visible again.

The balcony helps the building read as a public stage: it was from there that the Declaration of Independence was read. The basement level adds another scale of time: since 1904, its eastern part has been occupied by State station of the Boston subway. The result is a rare adjacency: a place of eighteenth-century political gatherings, restored symbols of the Crown, and working urban infrastructure all in one structure.