A small brick building dwarfed by the financial-district towers around it, the Old State House is the oldest surviving public building in Boston, built in 1713. It served as the seat of colonial Massachusetts government, the chamber where John Adams argued cases, and the spot where the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud to the people of Boston in 1776.
Inside, the small museum run by Revolutionary Spaces covers the run-up to the Revolution: the Stamp Act protests, the Boston Massacre, the tea ships in the harbor. The most evocative room is the council chamber itself, with portraits of British governors who once held court here. A circle of cobblestones in the traffic island outside marks the site of the Boston Massacre.
The building survived attempts at demolition in the 1880s only because Chicago offered to buy and re-erect it as a tourist draw. Boston, embarrassed, paid for the restoration instead.