Old Corner Bookstore

History

The Old Corner Bookstore is a historic commercial building at the northwest corner of Washington and School streets in the Downtown Boston section of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The building consists of four attached structures: the main corner building at 283 Washington Street, and annexes at 277 Washington Street and 5–7 and 11 School Street. The corner structure was built in 1718 as a residence and apothecary shop, becoming a bookstore in 1829. The building is a site on Boston's Freedom Trail, Literary Trail, and Women's Heritage Trail. The Old Corner Bookstore was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and listed as a Boston Landmark in 2025.

The site was formerly occupied by the home of Anne Hutchinson, which was built in 1634 and burned down in the Great Boston Fire of 1711. Its owner, Thomas Crease, constructed a new building on the site in 1718 as a residence and apothecary shop. The neighboring Cunningham House at 277 Washington Street initially functioned as a separate structure. The corner building's first use as a bookstore dates to 1829, when Timothy Harrington Carter leased the corner space and built the two annexes on School Street. From 1832 to 1865, it was home to publishing companies led by William Ticknor, including Ticknor and Fields. During this time, it became a meeting place for such authors as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

The last bookstore tenant moved out in 1903, after which the building had multiple commercial tenants in the 20th century. The Cunningham House and bookstore properties were consolidated into one building between 1917 and 1922. After the Old Corner Bookstore building was threatened with demolition and replacement in 1959, Historic Boston was formed to save the building, acquiring it in 1960. The Boston Globe newspaper moved into the ground floor in 1964, and several tenants, including the Globe Corner Bookstore and a Globe company store, occupied the building over the years. Since 2011, the ground floor of the corner structure has been occupied by a Chipotle Mexican Grill fast-food restaurant; the other structures have been occupied by various businesses over the years.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. The official nomination form is linked under Sources.