Old Corner Bookstore

Old Corner Bookstore
The building in 2017
Location283 Washington Street
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Coordinates42°21′27″N 71°3′32″W / 42.35750°N 71.05889°W / 42.35750; -71.05889
Built1718[2][3]
NRHP reference No.73000322[1]
Added to NRHPApril 11, 1973

The Old Corner Bookstore is a historic commercial building located at 283 Washington Street at the corner of School Street in the historic core of Boston, Massachusetts. It was built in 1718 as a residence and apothecary shop, and first became a bookstore in 1828. The building is a designated site on Boston's Freedom Trail, Literary Trail, and Women's Heritage Trail.[4]

The Old Corner Bookstore was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and listed as a Boston Landmark in 2025. The building's current tenant as of 2017 is a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant.

History

The site, situated on what was then part of Cornhill, was formerly the home of Anne Hutchinson, who was expelled from Massachusetts in 1638 for heresy.[5] Thomas Crease purchased the home in 1708, though it burned down in the Great Boston Fire on October 2, 1711.[6] Crease constructed a new building on the site in 1718[3] as a residence and apothecary shop. For generations, various pharmacists used the site for the same purpose: the first floor was for commercial use and the upper floors were residential. In 1817, Dr. Samuel Clarke, father of future minister James Freeman Clarke, bought the building.[6]

The building's first use as a bookstore dates to 1828, when Timothy Harrington Carter leased the space, whose address had now changed to 135 Washington Street, from a man named George Brimmer. Carter spent $7,000 renovating the building's commercial space, including the addition of projecting, small-paned windows on the ground floor.[6] Two 3-story buildings were added beside the School Street elevation around the same time.[7][8]

From 1832 to 1865, it was home to Ticknor and Fields, a publishing company founded by William Ticknor, later renamed when he partnered with James T. Fields. For part of the 19th century, the firm was one of the most important publishing companies in the United States, and the Old Corner Bookstore became a meeting-place for such authors as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[9] Ticknor and Fields rented out the whole building, using only the corner for a retail space. Other sections of the building, particularly upstairs rooms and storefronts facing School Street, were in turn sublet to other businesses.[10] After the death of Ticknor, Fields wanted to focus on publishing rather than the retail store. On November 12, 1864, he sold the Old Corner Bookstore to E. P. Dutton; Ticknor and Fields moved to Tremont Street.[11] A succession of other publishing houses and booksellers followed Ticknor and Fields in the building.

In keeping with its literary past, in the 1890s the shop carried magazines such as: Arena, Argosy, Army and Navy Journal, Art, Art Amateur, The Atlantic, Black Cat, Bookman, Bradley His Book, Catholic World, The Century Magazine, The Chap-Book, The Church, The Churchman, Current Literature, Donahoe's Magazine, Every Month, Forum, Gunton's Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Harper's Round Table, Harper's Weekly, Home and Country, Judge, Ladies' Home Journal, Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, Leslie's Weekly, Life, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Munsey's Magazine, The Nation, North American Review, Outing, Pocket Magazine, Poet Lore, Public Opinion, Outlook, Puck, Puritan, Red Letter, Review of Reviews, Scientific American, Scribner's Magazine, Shoppell's, St. Nicholas Magazine, Town Talk, Truth, Vogue, What to Eat, Yale Review, and Youth's Companion.[12]

Preservation

The building was threatened with demolition and replacement by a parking garage in 1960 and was "rescued" through a purchase by Historic Boston, Inc. for the sum of $100,000.[13] Historic Boston is a not-for-profit preservation and real estate organization that rehabilitates historic and culturally significant properties in Boston's neighborhoods so that they are a usable part of the city's present and future.

The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[14] In May 2025, it became a Boston Landmark under the auspices of the Boston Landmarks Commission.[15]

Tenants

Historical

Tenants of 76 Cornhill

  • 1718: Thomas Crease[16]
  • 1789: Herman Brimmer, merchant,[17] John Jackson, broker[17] and Samuel Thayer and Minott Thayer, shopkeepers[18]
  • 1807: John West[19]
  • 1817: Dr. Samuel Clarke, apothecary[20][21]

Tenants of 135 Washington Street

Recent

In recent times, the Old Corner Bookstore's retail space was the original location of the Globe Corner Bookstore (a division of the Old Corner Bookstore, Inc.), which operated there for 16 years from 1982 to 1997 and specialized in travel books and maps. A Boston Globe company store operated in the building from 1998 through 2002, selling Boston Globe products and tourist memorabilia.

A national discount jewelry chain, Ultra Diamonds, occupied the retail space from 2005 until the company's bankruptcy in 2009. Then the space was briefly used as a showroom for crafts created by North Bennet Street School students and faculty. By 2017, the space housed a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant.[34] The Chipotle restaurant's presence was controversial, prompting several thousand people to sign a petition calling for its removal, but Historic Boston Inc. stated that Chipotle's lease payments helped pay for the organization's other programs.[35]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  2. ^ "Old Corner Bookstore" Archived May 4, 2017, at the Wayback Machine - The Freedom Trail Foundation
  3. ^ a b "Old Corner Bookstore" - Historic Boston Incorporated
  4. ^ Wilson, Susan. Boston Sites & Insights: An Essential Guide to Historic Landmarks in and Around Boston. Beacon Press, 2004: 173. ISBN 978-0-8070-7135-9
  5. ^ Old Corner Bookstore Building | Museum/Attraction Review | Boston | Frommers.com
  6. ^ a b c Wilson, Susan. Boston Sites & Insights: An Essential Guide to Historic Landmarks in and Around Boston. Beacon Press, 2004: 175. ISBN 978-0-8070-7135-9
  7. ^ Congress, United States. Reports and Documents. p. 138.
  8. ^ School Street, Boston — Lost New England
  9. ^ Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991: 281. ISBN 0-87745-332-2
  10. ^ Winship, Michael. American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 180. ISBN 0-521-45469-7
  11. ^ Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 279.
  12. ^ "On the News-Stands." Printers' Ink, v.18, no.13, March 31, 1897.
  13. ^ Old Corner Bookstore Buildings Archived 2007-08-06 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ "Old Corner Bookstore (U.S. National Park Service)". NPS.gov Homepage (U.S. National Park Service). January 8, 2025. Retrieved March 3, 2026.
  15. ^ Mesdjian, Sarah (May 21, 2025). "Panel makes historic Old Corner Bookstore and Cunningham House official landmarks in Boston". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved March 3, 2026.
  16. ^ Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff. "Old Corner Bookstore." A topographical and historical description of Boston], Part 1, 2nd ed. Boston: Printed by request of the City Council, 1871
  17. ^ a b Boston Directory. 1789
  18. ^ Boston Directory. 1789, 1807
  19. ^ Monthly Anthology, June 1807
  20. ^ Henry Jenks. Old School Street. New England Magazine, Nov. 1895
  21. ^ Boston Directory. 1823
  22. ^ Boston medical and surgical journal, May 19, 1829
  23. ^ a b c Shurtleff. 1871
  24. ^ Boston medical and surgical journal, March 17, 1829
  25. ^ North American Review, v.30, 1830
  26. ^ Scott. Waverley Novels, v.3. Boston: Parker, 1838
  27. ^ a b Boston Almanac. 1841
  28. ^ Freemasons Monthly Magazine. 1844
  29. ^ Boston Almanac. 1847
  30. ^ Boston Directory. 1849
  31. ^ a b Boston Directory. 1868
  32. ^ Boston Almanac. 1871
  33. ^ Boston medical and surgical journal. 1872
  34. ^ Annear, Steve (July 10, 2017). "This building on the Freedom Trail turns 300 next year". Boston.com. Retrieved March 3, 2026.
  35. ^ Levitz, Jennifer (November 30, 2018). "On Freedom Trail: Paul Revere's House, the Old North Church—and Burritos". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved March 15, 2026.

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