Old North Church

Situated right in the middle of North End [1], the Old North Church was one of the most recognizable landmarks in colonial Boston [2]. So it was the perfect vantage point if, say, one wanted to hang a lantern to warn that the British were on the march.

As a pre-teen, Paul Revere was a bell ringer in the Old North Church. Thus, on the night of April 18, 1773, he was able to convince the church’s sexton to climb into the belfry and hold two lanterns up for under a minute, a signal to the patriots that the British were moving by sea across to Charlestown [3], thence to march on to Concord [4] and Lexington [5].

The sexton, Robert Newman, was the unsung hero in the story—arrested by the British the following morning, he was held in prison until freed by General George Washington in an exchange. Inside the Old North Church, reproductions of colonial flags hang from the ceiling, and every half hour a guide tells Revere’s story from the pulpit.

Between Old North and Hanover Street is the Paul Revere Mall, with a huge bronze statue of Revere upon his horse by local master sculptor Cyrus Dallin, usually lorded over by wizened Italian women feeding the pigeons. Look for the plaques along the wall that honor other patriots who grew up in the North End [1] and reach back into history to tell the stories of some of the original Puritan settlers of the neighborhood, including theologians Cotton and Increase Mather, governor John Winthrop, and Ann Pollard, the first White woman to disembark onto Boston [2] soil.