“This,” said he, “is what the Philadelphia girl called the State Street Meeting House.”
He had brought them in in a Norfolk horse car, so that they saw the building from the southern side. The lion on one side and the unicorn on the other dance on their hind legs at the top, with the roof to part them. Nathan was careful to show John and the rest that as they looked up on the beasts they stood themselves on the very ground of the “Boston Massacre” of March 5, 1770. The English troops were in a little semi-circle on the north side of the street. Attuchs, the mulatto, and the rest of the mob who stoned the troops and snowballed them were in the street, or on the southern side. There were then no sidewalks.
The lower part of the “Old State House” is now used for public offices. But the upper chambers are restored to much the condition in which they were when Sam Adams defied the Governor there, and when Otis made his plea in the “Writs of Assistants cases.”
“Then and there,” said John Adams, afterward, “American independence was born.”
The “Bostonian Society” occupies these halls, simply that they may be open to all visitors, and here the party found many curious mementoes of Revolutionary and of older days, and were able to prepare themselves for their later excursions.
Before the “Town House” was built this spot was occupied as the market place, being the earliest in the town. The first town house was erected between 1657 and 1659, of wood. It was destroyed in the great fire of 1711. In the following year, 1712, a brick edifice was erected on the same spot. This the fire of 1747 consumed, and with it many valuable records were lost. The present Old State House was erected the following year, 1748, but it has undergone many interior changes, the exterior, however, presenting nearly the same appearance as when first erected. From 1750 to 1830 Faneuil Hall was used as a town house, and the first city government was organized there. In 1830 the city government removed to the Old State House, which was on September 17 dedicated as City Hall. But the City Hall has since been removed to School Street.
Leaving the old State House they passed down State Street, where they had a chance to see the merchants who were “on ’change,” and to look in at the Merchants’ Exchange, and by a short street leading north, came into the square between Faneuil Hall, “the cradle of liberty,” as Boston people like to call it, and Faneuil Hall Market.
Peter Faneuil, a rich merchant of Huguenot origin, told the town that he would build a market house on this spot if they would accept the gift for that purpose, and maintain it forever. “The town,” by which is meant the town meeting, looked a gift-horse in the mouth, and made some difficulty. At the end of a stormy meeting, his proposal was accepted by a majority of only seven votes in a vote of seven hundred and twenty-seven.
Mr. Faneuil set to work at once on the building, which, by the original plan, was to be but one-story high. But he added another story for the town hall, which has made his name famous to all New Englanders. The original hall accommodated only 1,000 persons, being but half the size of that now standing. He died, himself, just as the building was completed, on the third of March, 1743; and it was first opened to public use on the fourteenth of March of that year. The whole interior was destroyed by fire in January, 1763, and rebuilt by the town and state. In 1806 it was enlarged to its present size.
Nathan made them look at the grass-hopper which is the weather-cock which is selected in memory of the Athenian cicada. The Athenian people selected this as their emblem because they believed they sprang from the ground, and they supposed the grass-hoppers did.