Boston & New England
Massachusetts, USA · Boston · the Freedom Trail · Salem · Cape Cod
19 places pinned — click any one for its story.
The place
Boston is where America began — the powder keg of the Revolution, and still the most walkable window onto the founding. Teddy and I spent early June 2023 tracing it: the Freedom Trail's red line from the gold-domed State House down through the burying grounds, meeting houses, and Revere's own doorway to Old Ironsides across the harbor.
We pushed out from the city too — north to Salem and its witch-trial ghosts and the House of the Seven Gables, south to Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrim story, out to the tip of Cape Cod at Provincetown, and across the Charles to Harvard Yard. Four hundred years of American history in a single stretch of coast.
Places I visited
History & facts for each spot — with a “then & now” archival photo where one exists. Every one has its own page; open it for the full write-up and all the photos.
The gold-domed 1798 capitol on Beacon Hill, designed by Charles Bulfinch — the head of the Freedom Trail. Its dome was once wood, then copper rolled by Paul Revere, and finally gilded in 23-karat gold.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: The Boston troops as reviewed on President Adam's birthday ... also a view of the New State House &C. & C (NYPL Hades-118333-54279) — Wikimedia Commons
The 1660 graveyard on Tremont Street where Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and the victims of the Boston Massacre are buried — a whole founding generation under the slate stones.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Entrance to Granary, Boston, Mass (NYPL b12647398-69535) — Wikimedia Commons
The stone Georgian church of 1754, built around an earlier 1686 Anglican chapel — its bell was cast by Paul Revere, the largest he ever made.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: King's chapel, by John B. Heywood — Wikimedia Commons
The 1729 brick meeting house where 5,000 colonists gathered in December 1773 and, when talks failed, touched off the Boston Tea Party.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Old South Church, Boston Mass (NYPL b12647398-62018) — Wikimedia Commons
The 1713 brick seat of colonial government — the Declaration of Independence was first read to Bostonians from its balcony in 1776, above the very street where the Boston Massacre happened.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Old State House decorated with flags (NYPL b11981587-G90F361 041ZB) — Wikimedia Commons
A ring of cobblestones below the Old State House balcony marks where British soldiers fired into a crowd on March 5, 1770, killing five — an incident the patriots turned into a rallying cry.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Old State House decorated with flags (NYPL b11981587-G90F361 041ZB) — Wikimedia Commons
The 1742 market and meeting hall given to Boston by merchant Peter Faneuil — the 'Cradle of Liberty' where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty rallied against the Crown, beside the granite Quincy Market of 1826.
Full history & photos →Read more on Wikipedia →Archival photo: Quincy Market Boston 1904 — Wikimedia Commons
The oldest building in downtown Boston, built around 1680 — the home Paul Revere set out from on his midnight ride of April 18, 1775. A rare survival of 17th-century wooden Boston.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Paul Revere's chamber, Paul Revere House, Boston, Mass (NYPL b12647398-69913) — Wikimedia Commons
Boston's oldest church, built in 1723 — from its steeple the two lanterns were hung ('one if by land, two if by sea') to signal the British advance and launch Paul Revere's ride.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Christ Church, Old North, Boston, Mass (NYPL b12647398-69910) — Wikimedia Commons
'Old Ironsides,' launched in 1797 — the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world, undefeated in the War of 1812 when British cannonballs seemed to bounce off her live-oak hull. Berthed at the historic Navy Yard.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Constitutionasbarracksship — Wikimedia Commons
The 221-foot granite obelisk in Charlestown marking the June 1775 battle — a costly British victory that proved the colonial militia could stand against the Empire's regulars.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Bunker Hill Monument (19th c. stereoview) — Wikimedia Commons
The 1847 Custom House with its 1915 clock tower — for decades Boston's only skyscraper — rising over the financial district and the harbor the whole city was built on.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Custom House Tower, c.1915 — Wikimedia Commons
Founded in 1636 in Cambridge, the oldest university in the United States — Harvard Yard's brick halls, the Widener Library, and centuries of American leadership educated across the river.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Bird's eye view of Harvard College, and Old Cambridge (NYPL Hades-118968-55119) — Wikimedia Commons
The river dividing Boston from Cambridge, lined with the sailboats of the Community Boating fleet and the Esplanade — the classic view of the Back Bay and downtown skyline.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Distribution Department, supply pipe lines, Section 1, Charles River, cofferdam, looking northerly, Weston, Mass., Sep. 15, 1902 - DPLA - 2b457cd3de8d375547641aba4e9f3fa0 — Wikimedia Commons
15Salem
The old seaport north of Boston, infamous for the 1692 witch trials that hanged nineteen people — now a town of witch museums, the House of the Seven Gables, and one of America's great maritime-history sites.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Street railway buildings in Salem, circa 1900 — Wikimedia Commons
The 1668 Turner-Ingersoll mansion in Salem, the oldest surviving wooden mansion in New England — immortalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose cousin lived there, in his 1851 novel.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: The House of the Seven Gables (vintage postcard) — Wikimedia Commons
The dark-gabled 1675 home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, one of the magistrates of the witch trials — the only structure still standing in Salem with direct ties to 1692.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: The Witch House, Salem, 1856 — Wikimedia Commons
18Plymouth
Where the Pilgrims of the Mayflower landed in 1620 and founded the first permanent English settlement in New England. Plymouth Rock sits under a granite portico on the waterfront, and the recreated Plimoth Patuxet village tells the story.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Burial hill, Plymouth, Mass. (from Leyden Street), by Kilburn Brothers — Wikimedia Commons
The tip of Cape Cod, where the Mayflower actually first anchored in 1620 before Plymouth. The 252-foot granite Pilgrim Monument of 1910 — the tallest all-granite structure in the U.S. — commemorates that first landfall above the artists' town.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: The Pilgrim Monument over Provincetown — Wikimedia Commons