Boston Freedom Trail

8. Old Corner Bookstore

Boston, MA

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Before it was a bookstore, Thomas Crease owned the property and used it as an apothecary shop and home. The Old Corner Bookstore was built in 1712, after a 1711 fire burned the original. It is rumored that the original building was home to Puritan heretic Anne Hutchinson before she was excommunicated from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Timothy Harrington turned it into a bookstore in 1828. Harrington spent $7000 to transform the building's commercial space. He included an addition of small-paned windows on the ground floor. In 1832-1865, after renting the entire building, the publishing company, Ticknor and Fields, only used a small section for their purposes. The partners sublet the rest of the building to other commercial ventures. The Old Corner bookstore was a meeting place for many legendary writers including: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Ticknor and Fields published famous works of American literature, including The Scarlet Letter and Walden. In the 1960's, Historic Boston, Inc. bought the building for the sum of $100,000 to preserve the property. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Old Corner Bookstore is one of Boston's oldest surviving structures. Through the years, it has also been used as a jewelry store, an exhibition space, and a restaurant.