Boston Custom House
Encyclopedia
The Custom House in Boston, Massachusetts
, was established in the 17th century and stood near the waterfront
in several successive locations through the years. In 1849 the U.S. federal government constructed a neoclassical building on State Street
; it remains the "Custom House" known to Bostonians today. A tower
was added in 1915; the building joined the National Register of Historic Places
in 1973.
At the time of the Boston Massacre
in 1770, it was located on King Street, very near the Old State House. Paul Revere
's illustration of the massacre depicts the customhouse (along the right-most edge of the picture).
(1786–1820). In 1810 it moved into a new building on Custom House Street (between Broad St. and India St.). In the 1830s American author Nathaniel Hawthorne
worked there.
was authorized by U.S. President Andrew Jackson
. When it was completed in 1849, it cost about $1,076,000, in contemporary U.S. currency, including the site, foundations, etc.
Ammi Burnham Young
entered an 1837 competition to design the Boston Custom House, and won with his neoclassical
design. This building was a cruciform (cross-shaped) Greek Revival structure, combining a Greek
Doric
portico
with a Roman
dome
, resembled a four-faced Greek temple
topped with a dome. It had 36 fluted Doric column
s, each carved from a single piece of granite
from Quincy
, Massachusetts; each weighed 42 tons
(37 metric tons) and cost about $5,200. Only half these actually support the structure; the others are free-standing. They are 5 feet (1.5 m) and 4 inches (162 cm) in diameter and 32 feet (9.7 m) high. Inside, the rotunda
was capped with a skylight dome.
The entire structure sits on filled land and is supported by 3,000 wooden pile
s driven through fill to bedrock
. Before land reclamation was done in the mid 19th century, Boston's waterfront
extended right to this building. Ships moored at Long Wharf
almost touched the eastern face of the building. The Custom House was built at the end of the City docks, to facilitate inspection and registration of cargo. The federal government
used the building to collect maritime duties in the age of Boston clipper ships.
This description of the original Custom House appears in the 1850 Boston Almanac:
added the tower to the base.
moved to the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Federal Building
in the West End, the Custom House on State Street was declared "surplus property". On April 16, 1987, the city of Boston purchased the building from the General Services Administration
. The building remained unoccupied and inaccessible for 14 years. It was converted into an 84-room time share resort by Marriott Vacation Club International starting in 1997.
Since 2003, customs functions lie under the dominion of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection
, housed in Boston's O'Neill Federal Building.
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, was established in the 17th century and stood near the waterfront
Boston Harbor
Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeast.-History:...
in several successive locations through the years. In 1849 the U.S. federal government constructed a neoclassical building on State Street
State Street (Boston)
State Street is a major street in the financial district in Boston, Massachusetts and is one of the oldest streets in the city. The street is the site of some historic landmarks. The Faneuil Hall Marketplace can also be found nearby...
; it remains the "Custom House" known to Bostonians today. A tower
Custom House Tower
The Custom House Tower - now Marriott's Custom House Hotel - is a skyscraper in McKinley Square, in the Financial District neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Construction began in the mid-19th century; the tower was added in the 1910s...
was added in 1915; the building joined the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1973.
1674-1786
The Royal Commissioners of Customs administered customs in Boston during the colonial period. In the late 17th century, the customhouse was located at the waterfront, on the corner of Richmond St. and Ann St."At the time of the Boston Massacre
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, called the Boston Riot by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five civilian men. British troops had been stationed in Boston, capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, since 1768 in order to protect and support...
in 1770, it was located on King Street, very near the Old State House. Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
's illustration of the massacre depicts the customhouse (along the right-most edge of the picture).
1786-1849
After the revolution, the customhouse remained on State Street. Employees included Thomas MelvillThomas Melvill (American patriot)
Thomas Melvill or Thomas Melville of Boston, Massachusetts, was a merchant, member of the Sons of Liberty, participant in the Boston Tea Party, a major in the American Revolution, a longtime fireman in the Boston Fire Department, state legislator, and paternal grandfather of writer Herman...
(1786–1820). In 1810 it moved into a new building on Custom House Street (between Broad St. and India St.). In the 1830s American author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
worked there.
1849-1913
A new site on State Street was purchased by the federal government on September 13, 1837. Construction of a custom houseCustom House
A custom house or customs house was a building housing the offices for the government officials who processed the paperwork for the import and export of goods into and out of a country. Customs officials also collected customs duty on imported goods....
was authorized by U.S. President Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
. When it was completed in 1849, it cost about $1,076,000, in contemporary U.S. currency, including the site, foundations, etc.
Ammi Burnham Young
Ammi B. Young
Ammi Burnham Young was an important 19th century American architect whose commissions transitioned from the Greek Revival to the Neo-Renaissance styles. His Second Vermont State House brought him fame and success, which eventually led him to become the first Supervising Architect of the U.S....
entered an 1837 competition to design the Boston Custom House, and won with his neoclassical
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
design. This building was a cruciform (cross-shaped) Greek Revival structure, combining a Greek
Architecture of Ancient Greece
The architecture of Ancient Greece is the architecture produced by the Greek-speaking people whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland and Peloponnesus, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Asia Minor and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest...
Doric
Doric order
The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...
portico
Portico
A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls...
with a Roman
Roman architecture
Ancient Roman architecture adopted certain aspects of Ancient Greek architecture, creating a new architectural style. The Romans were indebted to their Etruscan neighbors and forefathers who supplied them with a wealth of knowledge essential for future architectural solutions, such as hydraulics...
dome
Dome
A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....
, resembled a four-faced Greek temple
Greek temple
Greek temples were structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in Greek paganism. The temples themselves did usually not directly serve a cult purpose, since the sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them...
topped with a dome. It had 36 fluted Doric column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
s, each carved from a single piece of granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
from Quincy
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...
, Massachusetts; each weighed 42 tons
Short ton
The short ton is a unit of mass equal to . In the United States it is often called simply ton without distinguishing it from the metric ton or the long ton ; rather, the other two are specifically noted. There are, however, some U.S...
(37 metric tons) and cost about $5,200. Only half these actually support the structure; the others are free-standing. They are 5 feet (1.5 m) and 4 inches (162 cm) in diameter and 32 feet (9.7 m) high. Inside, the rotunda
Rotunda (architecture)
A rotunda is any building with a circular ground plan, sometimes covered by a dome. It can also refer to a round room within a building . The Pantheon in Rome is a famous rotunda. A Band Rotunda is a circular bandstand, usually with a dome...
was capped with a skylight dome.
The entire structure sits on filled land and is supported by 3,000 wooden pile
Deep foundation
A deep foundation is a type of foundation distinguished from shallow foundations by the depth they are embedded into the ground. There are many reasons a geotechnical engineer would recommend a deep foundation over a shallow foundation, but some of the common reasons are very large design loads, a...
s driven through fill to bedrock
Bedrock
In stratigraphy, bedrock is the native consolidated rock underlying the surface of a terrestrial planet, usually the Earth. Above the bedrock is usually an area of broken and weathered unconsolidated rock in the basal subsoil...
. Before land reclamation was done in the mid 19th century, Boston's waterfront
Dock (maritime)
A dock is a human-made structure or group of structures involved in the handling of boats or ships, usually on or close to a shore.However, the exact meaning varies among different variants of the English language...
extended right to this building. Ships moored at Long Wharf
Long Wharf (Boston)
Long Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts "was the busiest pier in the busiest port in America during early colonial times." It extended nearly a half-mile into the harbor, beginning from State Street...
almost touched the eastern face of the building. The Custom House was built at the end of the City docks, to facilitate inspection and registration of cargo. The federal government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
used the building to collect maritime duties in the age of Boston clipper ships.
This description of the original Custom House appears in the 1850 Boston Almanac:
- Situated at the head of the dock between Long and Central Wharves, fronts east on the dock, west on India Street, and is in the form of a Greek Cross, [with] the opposite sides and ends being alike. It is 140 feet (42.7 m) long north and south, 75 feet (22.9 m) wide at the ends, and 95 feet (29 m) through the centre. It is built on about 3,000 piles, fully secured against decay; the construction throughout is fireproof and of the very best kind.
- The exterior of the building is purely Grecian Doric, not a copy, but adapted to the exigencies and peculiarities of the structure, and consists of a portico [overhang] of 6 columns on each side, on a high flight of steps, and an order of engaged columns around the walls, 20 in number, on a high stybolate or basement; the order of engaged columns terminating with 4 andae [pilasters] at their intersection with the porticos. The columns are 5 in 4 in (1.63 m) in diameter and 32 feet (9.8 m) high, the shaft being in one place, each weighing about 42 tons.
- The cellar, which is 10 in 6 in (3.2 m) high to the crown of the arches, is principally used for the storage of goods, which are conveyed to it through the basement story. The steam apparatus for warming the whole building (which it does effectively) is situated in the cellar, having easy access to the coal vaults under the sidewalk outside of the building.
- The principal entrances to the basement story are at each end. They are for the receipt of goods for storage. Near the northwest corner, on the west side, is the entrance to the Night Inspectors' apartments, also to the private staircase leading to the Collector's room and the attic. South of the west portico is the entrance to the heating apparatus room, and on the south end is the entrance to the Custom House Truckmen's room. This story consists of rooms for the Night Inspectors, Custom House Truckmen, and Engineer of the Heating Apparatus, also three sets of Water Closets: the remainder is used for storage of goods, weigher's tabs, etc.
- The principal ingress to the entrance story is through the porticos, but it can be entered from the Collector's private staircase, and from two other private staircases in the basement. This story contains apartments and offices for the Assistant Treasurer, the Weighers and Gaugers, the Measurers, Inspectors, Markers, Superintendent of Building, etc. In the centre is a large vestibule, from which two broad flights of steps lead to the principal story, landing in two smaller vestibules therein, lighted by skylights in the roof, and these vestibules communicate with all the apartments in this story. The several rooms are for the Collector, Assistant Collector, Naval Officer, Surveyor, Public Store Keeper, their Deputies and Clerks; and for the facilities of doing business this arrangement is not surpassed. The grand-cross shaped Rotunda, for the general business of the Collector's department, in the centre of this story, is finished in the Grecian Corinthian order; it is 63 feet (19.2 m) in its greatest length, 59 feet wide, and 62 feet (18.9 m) in the skylight.
- In one of the panels of the Rotunda is inserted a tablet of marble (Dedication Tablet 1847), containing the following inscription: Boston Custom House Building. Authorized by the 23d Congress, A.D. 1835. Andrew JacksonAndrew JacksonAndrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
, President U.S.A.; Levi WoodburyLevi WoodburyLevi Woodbury was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a U.S. Senator, Governor of New Hampshire and cabinet member in three administrations. He was the first Justice to have attended law school....
, Sec'y of the Treasury.—Opened August 1st, A.D. 1847, James K. PolkJames K. PolkJames Knox Polk was the 11th President of the United States . Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives and the 12th Governor of Tennessee...
, President U.S.A.; Robert J. WalkerRobert J. WalkerRobert John Walker was an American economist and statesman.- Early life and education :Born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the son of a judge. He lived in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania from 1806 to 1814, where his father was presiding judge of the judicial district. Walker was educated at the...
Sec'y of the Treasury; Marcus MortonMarcus MortonMarcus Morton was a lawyer, jurist, and politician from Taunton, Massachusetts. He represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and served two terms as 16th and 18th Governor of Massachusetts, as well as a portion of an unexpired term in 1825, as Acting Governor.Morton...
, Collector of the Port; Samuel S. Lewis, Robert G. Shaw, Commissioners; Ammi Burnham Young, Architect.
1915-1986
By 1905, increased shipping required the building's expansion. In 1913–1915, the architecture firm Peabody and StearnsPeabody and Stearns
Peabody & Stearns was a premier architectural firm in the Eastern United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the firm consisted of Robert Swain Peabody and John Goddard Stearns, Jr...
added the tower to the base.
1986-present
In 1986 when custom officials of the United States Customs ServiceUnited States Customs Service
Until March 2003, the United States Customs Service was an agency of the U.S. federal government that collected import tariffs and performed other selected border security duties.Before it was rolled into form part of the U.S...
moved to the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Federal Building
Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Federal Building
The Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Federal Building is an administrative center of the U.S. federal government in Boston, Massachusetts. Named for former Massachusetts congressman and House of Representatives Speaker Tip O'Neill, the building houses the New England regional offices of numerous federal...
in the West End, the Custom House on State Street was declared "surplus property". On April 16, 1987, the city of Boston purchased the building from the General Services Administration
General Services Administration
The General Services Administration is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. The GSA supplies products and communications for U.S...
. The building remained unoccupied and inaccessible for 14 years. It was converted into an 84-room time share resort by Marriott Vacation Club International starting in 1997.
Since 2003, customs functions lie under the dominion of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is a federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security charged with regulating and facilitating international trade, collecting import duties, and enforcing U.S. regulations, including trade, customs and immigration. CBP is the...
, housed in Boston's O'Neill Federal Building.
Locations
- Richmond St. and Ann St.; built 1674, demolished 1847. "It was built in 1674, for a Custom House, and used some time for that purpose. Originally, it stood on the water's edge."
- State Street, ca.1770-1805
- Custom House Street (between Broad St. and India St.); ca.1823-1841
- McKinley Square, India Square and State Street, 1849-1986
Further reading
- A State of importations from Great-Britain into the port of Boston. From the beginning of January 1770. To which is added an account of all the goods that have been re-shipt from the above port for Great-Britain, since January 1769. The whole taken from the Custom-House of the Port of Boston. 1770.
- Boston, December 2, 1773. Whereas it has been reported that a permit will be given by the Custom-House for landing the tea now on board a vessel laying in this harbour, commanded by Capt. Hall. ... it was solemnly voted by the body of the people of this and the neighbouring towns assembled at the Old-South Meeting House on Tuesday the 30th day of November, that the said tea never should be landed in this province, or pay one farthing of duty ...
- New Custom-House, Boston. Merry's MuseumMerry's MuseumMerry's Museum was an illustrated children's magazine established by Samuel Griswold Goodrich in Boston, Massachusetts in 1841. Louisa May Alcott served as editor for a year or so, and also contributed stories, as did Lucretia Peabody Hale, Caroline M. Hewins, Rebecca Sophia Clarke, Helen W....
, 1841. Google books - Morison. Custom-House Records in Massachusetts, as a Source of History. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 54, 1921, p. 324+
- Daniel Bluestone. Civic and Aesthetic Reserve: Ammi Burnham Young's 1850s Federal Customhouse Designs. Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 25, No. 2/3 (Summer - Autumn, 1990), pp. 131–156.
External links
- Article on the old Boston Customs House.
- Google news archive. Articles about Boston's customs house