CultureNOW - The Paul Revere House: John Jeffs and Peter Vanderwarker

The Paul Revere House
Historic Buildings: Museum

Architect
John Jeffs

Photographer
Peter Vanderwarker

Dates

Constructed, 1680
Renovation, ca. 1850
Restored, 1908
Founded, 1908

Landmark Designations

National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark

There are no podcasts available.

Description

read more

ABOUT THE BUILDING
Built about 1680 this is downtown Boston's oldest standing building. The house was home to Paul Revere from 1770 to 1800. The restored dwelling maintains its late 17th century appearance as ninety percent of the structure is original.

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
Some buildings get modernized. Others get antiqued. Antiquing has been the fate of the Paul Revere House in Boston's North End, as evidenced by these two photographs from 1903 and 1985. The change took place between 1905 and 1908, when the Revere House, threatened with demolition, was saved by a group of private citizens who formed the Paul Revere Memorial Association and acquired the house. This group then restored the house to an approximation of its conjectured appearance as originally built in 1680. The restoration included the removal of the house's third story, although, oddly enough, records show the third story was in place at the time Paul Revere bought the house in 1770, when it was almost a century old.

Today, the Revere House is called the oldest surviving building in Boston, which raises interesting philosophical questions in view of the fact that very little remains of the physical substance of the original house. Nevertheless, the house gives a very good sense of what a dwelling in early Colonial Boston would have been like, with its gloomy interior rooms clustered for warmth around the great chimney and its exterior clapboard skin tightly buttoned against the weather.

Paul Revere, the celebrated patriot and metal smith, lived and worked here from 1770 until the 1790s. He sold the house in 1800. During the next century it served as a tenement, candy factory, and grocery store. In the 1903 photo it appears to be mostly a
cigar factory. The group in front of it is presumably on a school or camp outing. In the new photo, first -, second-, and third-graders are enjoying morning recess from St. John's Parochial School, across North Square from the house, along with their teacher, the school principal, and two members of the Revere House Association. The man on the right is Frank Del Gaudio, who was born in 1904, just about the time of the old photo. He has lived in North Square all his life and runs the gift shop that is visible behind him.

The Revere House is now undergoing further restorations, intended to improve its authenticity while adding more exhibits. The work will be completed in 1986.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Listen, my Children", Boston Globe, 22 December 1985

map not available at this time.

Location

19 North Square
Boston, MA 02113
United States

Nearby Items

Pierce-Hichborn House		202 feet
North End Library Mosaics		538 feet
North End at North and Lewis Streets		599 feet
North End		662 feet
The Old North Church (Christ Church)		897 feet
Hanover Street at Clark Street		907 feet
Salem Street at Stillman Street		934 feet