The Norman B. Leventhal Walk to the Sea

The Walk to the Sea encompasses four centuries of Boston history, beginning at the State House on Beacon Hill overlooking Boston Common and passing among historic landmarks and skyscrapers across ground that centuries earlier had been an active harbor. Boston's history is tied to the sea, whose smells and sounds once pervaded the town, and the route from summit to sea spans one mile and descends a hundred feet. At the site of the Old State House, the wooden Town House of 1657 stood with its ground floor open to merchants until the Great Fire of 1711. Two years later, the first bricks were laid for new offices for the Massachusetts colonial government. The Old State House, the oldest public building in Boston, bears on its gables a gilded unicorn and lion, symbols of English dominion that were removed after the Revolution and later replaced by replicas. The building stood at Boston's most prominent intersection, where King, now State, Street led to Long Wharf and Washington Street, the only street connecting Boston to the mainland, crossed King Street. Settlement and commerce grew around the building, and colonial governors looked down to Long Wharf from its balcony as famous scenes of the American Revolution unfolded at its doorstep. In 1798, Charles Bulfinch's gold-domed State House opened atop Beacon Hill, beginning a proud new era for Boston, while the old colonial State House passed to other uses and in 1881 to the protection of The Bostonian Society.

Boston, Massachusetts · United States