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Formerly known as the Old Corner Bookstore, this enduring spot on the Freedom Trail remains one of the most tangible sites associated with the writers of the New England Renaissance of the last half of the 19th century. Both the Atlantic Monthly magazine and Ticknor & Fields (publishers of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) made this modest structure its headquarters during an age when Boston was the literary, intellectual, and publishing center of the country. The store now features daily papers, books maps, and special editions and reprints of the Boston Globe newspaper.

When the Custom House was built in 1840, Boston was one of America’s largest overseas shipping ports, and customs fees were the mainstay of the Federal budget. The Neo-Classical structure once sat on the waterfront, but now stands two blocks inland. The 16-story Custom House tower, added in 1913, was Boston’s first skyscraper. Since the 1990s, peregrine falcons have nested in the clock tower under the watchful eyes of wildlife biologists. The lobby displays a few artifacts from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, and tours of the tower give sweeping harbor views.

This pedestrian shopping area is flanked by Filene’s and Macy’s department stores but is given its real life by the pushcart vendors and downtown office workers who fill the streets.

The first Anglican Church in Puritan Boston was established in 1686 to serve the British Army officers. When the majority of Anglicans fled Boston along with retreating British forces in the evacuation of 1776, the chapel became the first Unitarian Church in the New World. The church is known for its ambitious program of classical concerts.

The network of short streets connecting Washington and Tremont streets has, in recent years, assumed a new identity as the Ladder District. Once derelict and abandoned after dark, the area now throbs with clubs, bars, and restaurants. Anchoring the new district, the Millennium Tower houses the ultra-chic Ritz-Carlton Boston Common (see Ritz-Carlton Boston Common) and the top-of-the-line Loews Cineplex (175 Tremont St). A few stalwarts, such as the landmark used-book seller, Brattle Book Shop, are holding out against the moneyed big boys.

Dating from 1660, the Granary contains the graves of many of Boston’s most illustrious figures, including John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Paul Revere (see Figures in Boston History) who joined his revolutionary comrades here in 1818. Other notables include the hugely influential architect Charles Bulfinch, Benjamin Franklin’s parents, and Crispus Attucks – an escaped slave who was allegedly the first casualty of the so-dubbed Boston Massacre (see Boston Massacre (1770)). The neatly aligned gravestones bear little relation to actual graves.

Old South’s rafters have rung with many impassioned speeches exhorting the overthrow of the king, the abolition of slavery, women’s right to vote, an end to apartheid, and many other causes. Nearly abandoned when its congregation moved to Back Bay in 1876, it was saved in one of Boston’s first acts of historic preservation.

Built in 1713 as the seat of colonial government, the Old State House was designed to look down State Street to the shipping hub of Long Wharf. In 1770, the Boston Massacre (see Boston Massacre (1770)) occurred just outside its doors. And on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was first read to Bostonians from its balcony (see The Freedom Trail). Today, it’s home to the Bostonian Society & Old State House Museum.