Paul Revere House

Street View of the Paul Revere House

The Paul Revere House is at address 19 North Square in the city of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. It was built in 1680 and is the product derived from the colonial house of the American freedom fighter Paul Revere. Today, a non-profit Museum of the Paul Revere Memorial Association is housed in it, which can be visited for a small fee. The house is part of Boston's Freedom Trail.

History

The three-story house was built around 1680 on the site where previously the rectory of the Second Church of Boston had stood where Increase Mather and Cotton Mather had lived. This was destroyed during the great fire in 1676. The first owner of the new building was the wealthy businessman Robert Howard. The L-shaped townhouse offering spacious rooms and has been enhanced by exterior features such as an overhanging first floor and casement windows on.

As was typical of early wooden structures in the just settled Massachusetts Bay, was the main part of the three-story residential building of four structural Travées that were delineated by heavy support beams and cross beams. The largest room in the ground floor of this part of the building was dominated by a fireplace as well as the adjacent passage to the foyer. Although in some Boston houses the kitchen was housed in a separate part of the building from the era, the two-story annex is Paul Revere House nevertheless a typical feature behind. Since the house was relatively close to the neighboring buildings, its double casement windows were installed instead of the usual placement in a gable on the entire rear view of the building.

In the mid-18th century, two major renovations were carried out on the house. First, the street facing roof line was substantially increased in order to bring the house with the Georgian architectural style consistent, which was very common at that time. This measure was undone by the restorers 1907/1908, but without re- add a gable, which led to the widespread misconception that the attic had been removed as part of these measures. The second renovation measure dealt with the addition of a two storey cultivation within the angle between the two parts of the building dating from the 17th century. While the aforementioned restoration of this extension was completely removed.

The silversmith and printer Paul Revere (1735-1818) owned the house from 1770 to 1800, but has probably lived with his family for a time in the 1780s and 1790s elsewhere. One is convinced that during this period, the rear fireplace and the kitchen have been added (around 1790), today's visitors can see in the very first room when they enter the house. Revere was made famous by the spread of a colored copper engraving The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th, 1770 after a design by the engraver Henry Pelham's ( 1748/49-1806 ), showing the so-called Boston Massacre; in the British historiography of the same event called "Incident on King Street." Revere was also a member of the Sons of Liberty and participated in the Boston Tea Party (1773 ).

After Revere sold the house, it was converted into an apartment building. At the same time, the ground floor has been converted for business use. Among other things found there in different periods, a candy store, a cigar factory, a bank and a grocery store. 1902 bought John P. Reynolds Jr., the great grandson of Paul Revere, the house, to prevent demolition. Under the direction of the architect and curator Joseph Chandler, the building was then completely restored. In April 1908, the house opened its doors to the public as one of the first historic tenement house museums in the United States.

The Paul Revere House today

Apart from the extensive restoration work, which in its putative state in 1700 around offset the house back, 90 % of the building in the original from 1680 are preserved, including two doors, three window frames, as well as parts of the soil, the foundations and inner walls. The stained glass windows, however, are more recent. The heavy ceiling beams, large fireplaces and the lack of inboard hallways are typical of houses of the colonial period. The two rooms upstairs contain several pieces of furniture, of which one is convinced that they were a long time in the possession of the Revere family.

In the immediate neighborhood is located on the other side of the patio, the Pierce - Hichborn House, which was built around 1711 as an early Georgian house and is also operated by the Paul Revere Memorial Association as a nonprofit museum.