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, April 2012