Must-see
Old North Church
Two lanterns in its steeple on April 18, 1775, warned that the British were on the move
The story
Before you is the Old North Church, formally Christ Church. It was built in 1723 for a Church of England congregation, and it is the oldest standing church building in Boston. On the evening of the eighteenth of April 1775, Robert Newman and John Pulling slipped inside. They climbed to the very top of the steeple, then the tallest structure in Boston, and briefly hung two lanterns by the windows. It was a signal: British troops were crossing the Charles River and heading for Lexington and Concord. At dawn the next day, the first shots of the War of Independence were fired at Lexington. Inside you can still see the tall box pews. Wealthy members bought them: a pew became the family’s property, to be decorated and handed down. Servants, children, and Black and Indigenous people, free and enslaved, sat in the gallery. The north gallery was the coldest, and the altar can hardly be seen from there. As a teenager, Paul Revere was one of the church’s first bell ringers. The first steeple was blown down by a hurricane in 1804, the second by Hurricane Carol in 1954, and both times it was rebuilt. Beneath the church is a crypt where about eleven hundred people were laid to rest.
Visiting
193 Salem Street, North End. There is an entrance fee: the ticket covers the sanctuary, the crypt and an audio guide; the bell-ringing chamber tour is a separate ticket. Hours at oldnorth.com. The sanctuary is wheelchair accessible: to avoid the steps in the courtyard, take Unity Street, Tileston Street and Salem Street.
Photos
Sources
- National Park Service — Old North Church
- Old North Church & Historic Site
- Wikipedia (EN) — Old North Church
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