Old Corner Bookstore
Standing at the corner of Washington and School Streets in Downtown Crossing, the Old Corner Bookstore is downtown Boston's oldest commercial building and one of the city's most recognizable stops on the Freedom Trail. Built in 1718, it spent the better part of the 19th century as the headquarters of one of America's most important publishing houses, and it was officially designated a Boston Landmark in December 2025. The building looks much as it always has from the outside, even though what's happening inside it today would surprise a 19th-century visitor.
A Pharmacy, Then a Publishing House
The building's story starts earlier than most visitors expect. The corner lot had previously held the home of Anne Hutchinson, the colonial dissenter banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her religious views, until that house burned in the Great Boston Fire of 1711. Druggist Dr. Thomas Crease built the current brick structure in 1718, running an apothecary shop on the ground floor while living upstairs with his family.
The building has become a beloved landmark in Boston over the three centuries since, but it didn't become a bookstore right away. That happened in 1828, when it was leased to booksellers Carter & Hendee, who opened their shop there in 1829. The business changed hands a few more times before 1832, when William Ticknor and John Allen took over the space as Allen & Ticknor. Over the next three decades, through several name changes, the firm became Ticknor and Fields in 1854 and turned the Old Corner Bookstore into the literary center of the country.
The Ticknor and Fields Era
Between 1832 and the mid-1860s, Ticknor and Fields published some of the defining works of American literature directly out of this building, starting with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in 1850 and Henry David Thoreau's Walden in 1854. After the firm bought The Atlantic Monthly in 1859, it also ran several landmark pieces in the magazine straight out of the Old Corner Bookstore, including Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride, Julia Ward Howe's The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Edward Everett Hale's The Man Without a Country. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. were regular visitors, and Longfellow and Hawthorne both came through often enough that the shop became known as a gathering place for the writers shaping the country's literary identity. Publisher James T. Fields sold the building in November 1864, and the firm finished its move to Tremont Street by 1865, ending more than three decades as one of Boston's great literary addresses.
Still Standing, Now a Landmark
The building almost didn't survive the 20th century. In 1959, city renewal plans called for demolishing it to make way for a motel and a federal redevelopment project. A group of Bostonians pushed back, forming the nonprofit Historic Boston Incorporated specifically to save it. The organization acquired the building in December 1960 and has owned it ever since, leasing out the storefronts to fund preservation work on other historic buildings across the city.
That preservation effort reached a new milestone recently, and a long time coming: a petition to designate the building a landmark was first submitted back in 1994. The Boston Landmarks Commission voted unanimously on May 13, 2025, to designate the Old Corner Bookstore and the adjacent Cunningham House a landmark, a decision that still needed approval from the Boston City Council and Mayor Michelle Wu before it took legal effect. That approval came through, and on December 16, 2025, the City of Boston officially announced the designation, alongside the Old North Church and Campus and the Old South Meeting House. The designation locks in legal protection for the building's historic exterior going forward.
What's Actually There Today
Here's the part a lot of history write-ups skip: the Old Corner Bookstore is not a working bookstore anymore, and it hasn't been one for a long time. Since 2011, the ground floor has operated as a Chipotle Mexican Grill, with a DIG restaurant occupying another storefront in the complex. There are no shelves of books to browse and no guided tours of the interior. What you can do is stand on the corner, look up at a genuinely 300-year-old brick building, and read the historical marker that explains what happened inside it. For a lot of visitors, that contrast, a Revolutionary-era publishing house now serving burrito bowls, is part of what makes the stop memorable.
Visiting the Old Corner Bookstore
The building sits at 283 Washington St, Boston, MA 02108, right in the Downtown Crossing shopping district. It's an easy stop to combine with a Freedom Trail walk, since the Old Corner Bookstore is itself one of the trail's official sites, close to the Old South Meeting House and the Old State House. Because the building is privately leased commercial space, there are no set visiting hours or tickets for the historic site itself. The exterior and the street-level marker are viewable anytime; the storefronts keep their own restaurant hours.
Look up rather than in. The building's brick facade sits on a thick granite foundation and is topped with a distinctive gambrel roof, with 12-over-12 windows on the second story and smaller, 6-over-6 paned dormers facing Washington Street, one of the few surviving examples of that early 18th-century look left in downtown Boston. A plaque near the entrance lays out the building's history for anyone who stops to read it, which is really the whole visit: a few minutes to take in a 300-year-old building that outlasted a fire, a 1960s demolition threat, and several changes of use, before continuing on to the rest of the Freedom Trail.
A short walk away on Beacon Hill, the African Meeting House is worth adding to the same outing. Built in 1806, it is considered the oldest extant Black church building in America, serving for decades as a place of worship and organizing for Boston's free Black community before the Civil War. Today it operates as a museum run by the Museum of African American History, telling the history of African Americans in Boston through the building itself. Together with the broader Downtown Boston area, these two stops cover more than a century of the city's civic and literary history in under a mile of walking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Old Corner Bookstore still a bookstore?
No. The building's ground floor has been a Chipotle Mexican Grill since 2011, with a DIG restaurant in another storefront. The site is preserved and landmarked for its history, but it no longer operates as a bookstore or offers guided interior tours.
What is the Old Corner Bookstore's address?
283 Washington St, Boston, MA 02108, at the corner of Washington and School Streets in the Downtown Crossing area.
Is the Old Corner Bookstore the oldest bookstore in Boston?
Not currently, since it isn't a bookstore anymore. Historically, it's better described as downtown Boston's oldest commercial building, built in 1718, which happened to house a bookstore and later the influential publisher Ticknor and Fields for much of the 19th century.
Is the Old Corner Bookstore part of the Freedom Trail?
Yes. It's one of the trail's official historic sites, located close to the Old South Meeting House and the Old State House in downtown Boston.
When did the Old Corner Bookstore become a Boston Landmark?
The City of Boston officially designated it a Boston Landmark on December 16, 2025, following a unanimous recommendation from the Boston Landmarks Commission in May 2025.
Plan Your Boston Tour With Boston Sightseeing
The Old Corner Bookstore is a short walk from Stop 2 (Old State House Museum) and Stop 3 (Downtown) on Boston Sightseeing's hop-on hop-off route, making it an easy add to a day spent covering the Freedom Trail and downtown Boston by double-decker bus. Hop off at either stop, walk over to see the building and the marker, then hop back on to keep moving through the rest of the city's historic sites without arranging separate transportation.
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