Photos and captions excerpted from Historic Photos of Boston by Timothy Orwig (Turner Publishing, 2007).
Photo by Thomas E. Marr - Boston Public Library, Print Department; courtesy Turner Publishing.
Paul Revere's House, on North Square in the North End (shown here in 1909), is the oldest surviving building in downtown Boston. Built about 1680, it was already ninety years old when Paul Revere moved in (1770). On the night of April 18, 1775, Revere left this house and rode to Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were coming to arrest them, a ride later immortalized by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.