North End

1

Hanover Street

Shopping & DiningWorth a visit

The North End’s main street is loud, crowded and worth every elbow, with an espresso bar or a pastry case every few doors. Walk it from the Greenway end. Its two famous pastry counters, Modern Pastry at No. 257 and Mike’s Pastry at No. 300, are a short block apart. Farther on, the Paul Revere Mall opens toward Old North Church, St. Leonard’s Church stands at No. 320, and Bulfinch’s St. Stephen’s at No. 401.

In late August, Saint Anthony’s Feast, a tradition more than a century old, takes over the neighborhood for four days of processions and food stalls. On any night, come after dinner, when the cafés are full and the stroll is the point. For a quieter North End, turn one block over to Salem Street.

2

Paul Revere House

Historic HousesMust-see

The oldest building in downtown Boston is a small wooden house of about 1680, and it is the one Paul Revere left on the night of April 18, 1775. It stands on the site of Increase Mather’s parsonage, lost in the Great Fire of 1676. Revere bought it in 1770 for his wife Sarah, five children and his mother, and owned it until 1800. Then came a sailors’ boarding house and a tenement with a candy store, a cigar factory and an Italian bank downstairs, until a great-grandson bought it in 1902 to save it.

It opened as a museum in 1908, and about 90 percent of the structure is original. Allow 30 minutes: heavy beams, big fireplaces, no hallways, and Revere family pieces upstairs. The brick Pierce/Hichborn House next door is closed until further notice.

Tip Cards are accepted only for $10 or more, so carry cash for a single ticket.

Boston’s only surviving church by Charles Bulfinch is a Federal-style brick building with a restored cupola, and its history is the North End’s in miniature. It went up in 1802–1804 as New North, a Congregational meetinghouse, turned Unitarian in 1813, and was sold to the Catholic archdiocese in 1862, when it took the name St. Stephen’s. Rose Fitzgerald, later the mother of President John F. Kennedy, was baptized here in 1890, and her funeral was held here in 1995.

A 1960s restoration lowered the building back to its original foundation and rebuilt the cupola. It now belongs to St. Leonard of Port Maurice Parish, whose own church is at 320 Hanover Street. Visiting hours vary, so the surest way to see the interior is at weekend Mass.

4

Paul Revere Mall (The Prado)

Streets & SquaresWorth a visit

Laid out in 1933, this brick plaza runs from Hanover Street to the back of Old North Church and serves as the neighborhood’s outdoor living room. High coped-brick walls, linden trees and granite benches make it a patch of calm in a crowded neighborhood. At the Hanover end rides Cyrus Dallin’s 1940 equestrian Paul Revere, often called the sculptor’s masterpiece; bronze plaques along the walls honor North Enders tied to the Revolution, and a granite fountain stands near the church.

For the classic photograph, stand by the Hanover Street entrance so Old North’s steeple rises behind the rider. Then take a bench with a pastry from around the corner; locals just call it the Prado. For a bench by the water instead, Christopher Columbus Park, five minutes down toward Long Wharf, has a lawn, a rose garden and a long wisteria trellis at its best in late spring.

Right behind Old North, and free, this plain brick house tells the North End’s story through the people who lived in it. Ebenezer Clough (it rhymes with “fluff”), the church’s master brick mason, built it around 1715 for his family, one of six such houses he raised on Unity Street, and it is one of only three Boston brick buildings left from the first decades of the 1700s. A third floor went on in 1808, and the house slid into tenement life: 180 families lived here between 1810 and 1944, at one point 29 people at once.

The free exhibit inside, Unearthing Childhood: 300 Years of North End Kids, follows seven real children, with artifacts lent by the city’s archaeologists. Give it 20 minutes after the church.

6

Old North Church

Religious SitesMust-see

This is the church where the lanterns hung. On the night of April 18, 1775, on Paul Revere’s orders, sexton Robert Newman and John Pulling hung two in the steeple to signal that the British were crossing by water. Christ Church, to use its formal name, held its first service on December 29, 1723, and is Boston’s oldest church building; its Episcopal congregation still worships here on Sundays. Today’s steeple is a 1955 replica.

Sit in a box pew and look up: restorers have uncovered 20 angels painted in the balcony arches by congregant John Gibbs in the 1720s and 1730s, hidden under white paint since 1912. The 1759 organ by Thomas Johnston, one of the oldest American-built organs, still plays every Sunday. The $10 pass includes the crypt, where 1,100 people lie in 37 tombs.

Tip The $15 combined ticket adds the 25-minute bell-chamber tour, a third of the way up the tower, where a teenage Revere rang the 1744 bells; expect two steep stairways.

Hanover Street is the parade; Salem Street, one block over and narrower, is where the North End shops. For generations it was the Italian quarter’s market street, lined with salumerias, fruit stands and grocers. Polcari’s Coffee, opened in 1932 by Anthony Polcari, a former tailor’s pocket-maker, still sells beans at the corner of Parmenter Street, along with more than 150 spices, grains and legumes.

Pastry shops, restaurants and independent boutiques such as Shake the Tree, at No. 67, fill the gaps. Neptune Oyster, at No. 63, takes no reservations, so go early or expect a wait. Keep walking north and the street brings you to Old North Church, at No. 193.

8

Copp’s Hill Burying Ground

Historic SitesWorth a visit

A quiet hilltop graveyard with a view across the water to Charlestown and a remarkable cast. Founded in 1659, it is the second-oldest burying ground on the original Boston peninsula. Here lie the Puritan ministers Increase and Cotton Mather; Robert Newman, the Old North sexton who hung the lanterns; Prince Hall, founder of Black Freemasonry; and Edmund Hartt, who built USS Constitution. Many free Black North Enders lie in a potter’s field on the Charter Street side.

Find the slate of Captain Daniel Malcolm, a smuggler and Sons of Liberty man; it is pocked by British musket balls, said to be from target practice. During the Bunker Hill battle, British gunners trained cannon on Charlestown from this rise. Across Hull Street, No. 44 is the Skinny House, known as Boston’s narrowest home; it is private, so look from the street.