Dates

• Existence: 1669 (date of establishment)

Historical Note

Standing at the northwest corner of Copley Square, Old South Church is an outstanding and colorful example of Northern Italian Gothic architecture, advocated in the 1850s by the English architectural critic John Ruskin. This National Historic Landmark building is an unusually ornate design for a New England Congregational church. It radiates the opulent taste and the sense of optimism and progress of the Industrial Revolution following the Civil War. The building, formally known as the “New” Old South Church, is the third home of the congregation, which was gathered in 1669. The building was completed in 1875, and is distinguished by its tall bell tower (campanile); brown, pink and grey stonework; walls of Roxbury puddingstone; decorative carvings; its polychromatic roof of red and black slate tiles; and its copper cupola or lantern.

Famous personages related to Old South Church include the following: Our first minister, Rev. Thomas Thacher who, during an outbreak of the small pox and measles, published in 1677 a useful medical broadside, said to be the first “patient information brochure” in the colonies. Samuel Sewall was a judge and diarist. In 1697 at the Cedar Meeting House (Old South’s first building), Sewall publicly recanted the error of his rulings as one of the nine Salem witch trial judges who in 1692 condemned so-called witches to death. Sewall went on to publish in 1700 the first anti-slavery tract on this soil, The Selling of Joseph. In this work he argued strongly against slavery making him one of the earliest colonial abolitionists. Moreover, his 1725 essay, “Talitha Cumi” refers to the right of women. In 1717, Sewall was appointed chief justice of Massachusetts. The Old South congregation baptized Benjamin Franklin on the day he was born in 1706 and his family members were prominent leaders. Phillis Wheatley, America’s first published black poetess, and Mary Chilton, the first woman to step ashore at Plymouth in 1620, were members of this church. So, too, were Samuel Adams, revolutionary and patriot, William Dawes who rode with Paul Revere, and Thomas Prince, book collector.

Old South Church played a significant role in early American history through the bold actions of the Sons of Liberty at the Old South Meeting House. There, in 1773, Samuel Adams gave the signal for the “war whoops” that started the Boston Tea Party. (Read "Sanctuary of Freedom," a keynote address delivered by Rev. James W. Crawford, Senior Minister Emeritus.) During the Civil War, 1,019 men enlisted in one day at Old South to fight for the Union cause. Old South’s ministry has been distinguished by eloquent preaching on matters of theology and conscience and by our Congregational commitment to freedom of the pulpit, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, public education and civil rights. As poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “So long as Boston shall Boston be, And her bay tides rise and fall, Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church, And plead for the rights of all.” Members of Old South have helped found numerous institutions serving economic and social justice, including the City Mission Society, the YMCA, the Boston Seafarers Society, Training Inc., Boston Aging Concerns – Young And Old United, Match Up Interfaith Volunteers and Tent City Corporation.

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