Old Corner Bookstore

Old Corner Bookstore

The Old Corner Bookstore in 2008, then occupied by Ultra Diamonds.
Location Boston, Massachusetts
Coordinates 42°21′27″N 71°3′32″W / 42.35750°N 71.05889°W / 42.35750; -71.05889Coordinates: 42°21′27″N 71°3′32″W / 42.35750°N 71.05889°W / 42.35750; -71.05889
Built 1712
NRHP Reference # 73000322[1]
Added to NRHP April 11, 1973

The Old Corner Bookstore is a historic commercial building in the center of Boston, Massachusetts. It is located at the corner of Washington and School Streets, along the Freedom Trail of revolutionary and early American historic sites.

History

The site was formerly the home of Anne Hutchinson, who was expelled from Massachusetts in 1638 for heresy.[2] Thomas Crease purchased the home in 1708, though it burned down in the Great Boston Fire on October 2, 1711.[3] Crease constructed a new building on the site in 1712 as a residence and apothecary shop. For generations, various pharmacists used the site for the same purpose: the first floor was for commercial use and the upper floors were residential. In 1817, Dr. Samuel Clarke, father of future minister James Freeman Clarke, bought the building.[3]

The building's first use as a bookstore dates to 1828, when Timothy Harrington Carter leased the space from a man named George Brimmer. Carter spent $7,000 renovating the building's commercial space, including the addition of projecting, small-paned windows on the ground floor.[3]

Corner Bookstore building, 19th century

From 1832 to 1865, it was home to Ticknor and Fields, a publishing company founded by William Ticknor, later renamed when he partnered with James Thomas Fields. For part of the 19th century, the firm was one of the most important publishing companies in the United States, and the Old Corner Bookstore became a meeting-place for such authors as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.[4] Ticknor and Fields rented out the whole building, using only the corner for a retail space. Other section of the building, particularly upstairs rooms and storefronts facing School Street, were in turn sublet to other businesses.[5] After the death of Ticknor, Fields wanted to focus on publishing rather than the retail store. On November 12, 1864, he sold the Old Corner Bookstore to E. P. Dutton; Ticknor and Fields moved to Tremont Street.[6] A succession of other publishing houses and booksellers followed Ticknor and Fields in the building.

In keeping with its literary past, in the 1890s the shop carried magazines such as: Arena, Argosy, Army and Navy Journal, Art, Art Amateur, The Atlantic, Black Cat, Bookman, Bradley His Book, Catholic World, The Century Magazine, The Chap-Book, The Church, The Churchman, Current Literature, Donahoe's Magazine, Every Month, Forum, Gunton's Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Harper's Round Table, Harper's Weekly, Home and Country, Judge, Ladies' Home Journal, Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, Leslie's Weekly, Life, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Munsey's Magazine, The Nation, North American Review, Outing, Pocket Magazine, Poet Lore, Public Opinion, Outlook, Puck, Puritan, Red Letter, Review of Reviews, Scientific American, Scribner's Magazine, Shoppell's, St. Nicholas Magazine, Town Talk, Truth, Vogue, What to Eat, Yale Review, and Youth's Companion.[7]

Preservation

The building was threatened with demolition in 1960 and was "rescued" through a purchase by Historic Boston, Inc. for the sum of $100,000.[8] Historic Boston is a not-for-profit preservation and real estate organization that rehabilitates historic and culturally significant properties in Boston’s neighborhoods so that they are a usable part of the city’s present and future. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Boston Landmark under the auspices of the Boston Landmarks Commission.

Recent tenants

In recent times, the Old Corner Bookstore's retail space was the original location of the Globe Corner Bookstore (a division of the Old Corner Bookstore Inc.), which operated there for 16 years from 1982 to 1997 and specializes in travel books & maps. A Boston Globe company store operated in the building from 1998 through 2002, selling Boston Globe products and tourist memorabilia.

The building is now recognized as a site on Boston's Freedom Trail, Literary Trail, and Women's Heritage Trail.[9]

A national discount jewelry chain, Ultra Diamonds, occupied the retail space from 2005 until the company's bankruptcy in 2009. Then the space was briefly used as a showroom for crafts created by North Bennet Street School students and faculty. The space now houses a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant.

Images

Historical tenants

Henry Oscar Houghton, 19th century

Tenants of no.76 Cornhill

Tenants of 135 Washington Street

See also

References

  1. ↑ National Park Service (2008-04-15). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. ↑ Old Corner Bookstore Building | Museum/Attraction Review | Boston | Frommers.com
  3. 1 2 3 Wilson, Susan. Boston Sites & Insights: An Essential Guide to Historic Landmarks in and Around Boston. Beacon Press, 2004: 175. ISBN 978-0-8070-7135-9
  4. ↑ Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991: 281. ISBN 0-87745-332-2
  5. ↑ Winship, Michael. American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 180. ISBN 0-521-45469-7
  6. ↑ Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 279.
  7. ↑ "On the News-Stands." Printers' Ink, v.18, no.13, March 31, 1897.
  8. ↑ Old Corner Bookstore Buildings
  9. ↑ Wilson, Susan. Boston Sites & Insights: An Essential Guide to Historic Landmarks in and Around Boston. Beacon Press, 2004: 173. ISBN 978-0-8070-7135-9
  10. ↑ Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff. "Old Corner Bookstore." A topographical and historical description of Boston], Part 1, 2nd ed. Boston: Printed by request of the City Council, 1871
  11. 1 2 Boston Directory. 1789
  12. ↑ Boston Directory. 1789, 1807
  13. ↑ Monthly Anthology, June 1807
  14. ↑ Henry Jenks. Old School Street. New England Magazine, Nov. 1895
  15. ↑ Boston Directory. 1823
  16. ↑ Boston medical and surgical journal, May 19, 1829
  17. 1 2 3 Shurtleff. 1871
  18. ↑ Boston medical and surgical journal, March 17, 1829
  19. ↑ North American Review, v.30, 1830
  20. ↑ Scott. Waverley Novels, v.3. Boston: Parker, 1838
  21. 1 2 Boston Almanac. 1841
  22. ↑ Freemasons Monthly Magazine. 1844
  23. ↑ Boston Almanac. 1847
  24. ↑ Boston Directory. 1849
  25. 1 2 Boston Directory. 1868
  26. ↑ Boston Almanac. 1871
  27. ↑ Boston medical and surgical journal. 1872

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Old Corner Bookstore.
Preceded by
Site of the first public school, Boston Latin School		 Locations along Boston's Freedom Trail
Old Corner Bookstore 		Succeeded by
Old South Meeting House
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