Old South Meeting House
The Old South Meeting House (built 1729), in the Downtown
Crossing area of Boston, Massachusetts, gained fame as the organizing
point for the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. 5,000 colonists
gathered at the Meeting House, the largest building in Boston at the
time.
The church, with its 183 ft steeple, was completed in 1729. The
congregation was gathered in 1669 when it broke off from First Church
of Boston, a Congregationalist church founded by John Winthrop in
1630. The site was a gift of Mrs. Norton, widow of John Norton, pastor
of the First Church in Boston. The church's first pastor was Rev
Thomas Thatcher, a native of Salisbury, England. Thatcher was also a
physician and is known for publishing the first medical tract in
Massachusetts.
Old South Meeting House was almost destroyed in the Great Boston
Fire of 1872, saved by the timely arrival of a fire engine from
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but the fire caused the city's residential
districts to shift toward the Back Bay, away from the church. The
congregation then built a new church (the "New" Old South Church at
Copley Square) which remains its home to this day. Once a year, on the
Sunday before Thanksgiving, the Old South congregation returns to Old
South Meeting House for services in its ancestral home.
Today, the Old South Meeting House is open daily as a museum and
continues to provide a place for people to meet, discuss and act on
important issues of the day.
Photo 89, Apr 2012