Paul Revere House

The silversmith's home, oldest building in downtown Boston

Address 19 North Square, Boston
Website www.paulreverehouse.org

The oldest building in downtown Boston, built around 1680 — a century before Revere bought it. The squat clapboard house in North Square survived three centuries of fire, expansion, and the wholesale rebuilding of the surrounding North End, and was saved in 1908 by Revere's great-grandson, who turned it into one of the first historic house museums in the United States.

Inside the rooms are furnished as they were when the silversmith, his second wife Rachel, and their many children lived here. Examples of Revere's own silverwork and engraving are on display, along with the small bell from his foundry, which once hung in a Massachusetts church. The whole visit takes 20 to 30 minutes — small, dim, and atmospheric in a way that the bigger Freedom Trail stops can't quite match.

The neighbouring Pierce/Hichborn House, a 1711 brick Georgian belonging to Revere's cousin, is sometimes open as part of the same ticket.

things to do north end sight historic house
A story
Revere bought the house in 1770. On the night of 18 April 1775, after Joseph Warren told him the British were on the move, he slipped out a back window — there were sentries in the front — and rowed across the Charles to start the ride that Longfellow would make famous.

Other places in North End