Boston's Old Corner Bookstore - The House Where Stories Changed America

To pedestrians passing the corner of Washington and School streets in Boston, it might seem just like another old brick structure, but for more than three centuries the Old Corner Bookstore has quietly witnessed the changing story of America.

The building was erected in 1718 by apothecary Thomas Crease, after an earlier house on the site was destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1711.  For generations medicines were measured and mixed behind its windows, while families lived upstairs. 

Then, in the early 19th century, the building took on a remarkable new life.

Bookseller Timothy Carter opened a bookstore there and soon afterward, the publishing firm of Ticknor and Fields made it it’s headquarters. 

The little corner shop became the literary heart of the nation. 

Imagine if you will on a crisp autumn afternoon in the 1850s as a young clerk carefully unwraps a handwritten manuscript as another package of freshly printed books is tied with string. The front door opens and a familiar visitor steps inside. Before long the room rooms echo with conversations about poetry. history, freedom and the future of the United States.

These were no ordinary customers.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Oliver Holmes Sr. and Louisa May Alcott all had connections to the publishers who worked within these walls. Even Charles Dickens visited during his American tours. Their books would shape American literature for generations. 

The Old Corner Bookstore survived when much of downtown Boston changed around it. It escaped destruction during the Great Boston Fire of 1872 and in the 1960’s was saved from demolition by preservationists who recognized its importance.

Their efforts insured that one of Boston’s oldest commercial buildings would remain standing along today’s Freedom Trail. 

The Old Corner Bookstore reminds us that history is not only made in grand halls and battlefields. Sometimes it is written page by page in a quiet corner where authors, publishers and readers gather to change the world.