paul revere

Built around 1680, the Paul Revere House, owned by the legendary patriot from 1770-1800, is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston and also the only official Freedom Trail historic site that is a home.

Located in Boston’s North End neighborhood, on North Square Park, the Paul Revere House was designed by architect John Jeffs and built in approximately 1680. Paul Revere purchased the Elizabethan Tudor-style, two-story house in 1770, moving his family from their former residence in Clark’s Wharf. After Revere sold the house in 1800, it became a sailor and immigrant boarding house. By the twentieth century it became a tenement house with shops on the ground floor. Paul Revere’s great-grandson, John P. Reynolds, Jr. purchased the building in 1902, and sold it to the Paul Revere Memorial Association in 1905. The association renovated the building under the guidance of architect Joseph Chandler and opened it to the public in 1908. It is one of the oldest house museums in America, and is said to be the oldest standing residential building in downtown Boston.

To the south of the house is a brick-paved courtyard which features several small colonial garden plots, as well as a 900-pound bell and mortar created by Paul Revere and his sons. The garden contains a wide variety of plants grown in the Colonial Era for food, medicine, and fragrance purposes. The Paul Revere House, owned and operated by the Paul Revere Memorial Association, is one of eight sites within the Boston National Historical Park and one of seventeen stops along the Freedom Trail. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.