Paul Revere House Museum

Visit a famous Patriot's home - built in 1677!

Visit the Paul Revere House Museum on the Freedom Trail in Boston's North End, and you'll get a glimpse of American Colonial life. 

When Paul Revere moved here in 1770, the house was already almost 100 years old.  Built around 1677 - 1680, soon after the Great Fire of 1676, the house - now a museum on Boston's Freedom Trail in the North End - occupies the site of an earlier home owned by two famous Puritan ministers, Increase Mather and his son, Cotton Mather. 

Paul Revere House, viewed from North Square, in front of the house

Original occupants of Paul Revere's house included wealthy Puritan merchant Robert Howard, his wife Elizabeth, their daughter Sarah, and their slave Samuel. 

By the time that Revere and his family settled in, enormous mansions owned by wealthy Tories who generally supported British colonial rule filled the fashionable North Square neighborhood where Revere's house is located.

Neighboring homes included a 26-room Georgian dwelling built in 1711.  Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson lived in a nearby 1700 mansion until an angry mob of Colonists enraged by the Stamp Act damaged it in 1765, just a few years before Revere's arrival.

Today, Paul Revere's house is the oldest house in downtown Boston.  Although it has been altered several times, you can still see the late Elizabethan or Tudor architectural style popular with Boston's earliest settlers. 

Paul Revere's house as a revolutionary stage

Revere, an up-and-coming silversmith, outwardly seemed like a good fit for this Loyalist Tory neighborhood, where he lived for 30 years. 

But almost from the beginning in the early 1770s, he had to hide his political views from his more conservative neighbors.

On March 5, 1771, Revere used the front windows of his house as the stage for his inflammatory reenactment of the Boston Massacre. 

Revere stretched oiled paper across each window and then put on a show, using shadow figures to depict the confrontation between Colonists and British troops, the deaths of the five Patriots, and finally, the dramatic appearance of Patriots' ghosts demanding retribution.

During the next few years, Revere had to sneak out of his house and past his Tory neighbors many times in order to attend secret Sons of Liberty meetings in local taverns, including the Green Dragon near Faneuil Market, and to head down to the harbor for the Boston Tea Party.

Revere's most famous secret mission took place when he rowed across the water to Charlestown and launched his famous midnight ride across the countryside to Lexington to warn Patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to Concord arrest them - and alerted Colonists along the way.

Because the British troops didn't know their plans had been detected, the Colonial Militias and Minutemen were able to catch them by surprise and cause them to flee back to Boston, fighting bloody battles all along the way as the American Revolution began.

Paul Revere's house today

Ironically, the Paul Revere house that you'll see is only part of the home where Revere and his family lived. 

By the time Revere bought the house, a previous owner had already enlarged it by adding a third floor. 

Revere and his family needed all this space. 

He and his first wife, Sara Orne, had 8 children.  After Sara died in 1773, he married Rachel Walker, and they had another 8 children.  Revere's mom also lived with them for several years. 

Not all of the children lived in the house at the same time.  Five died in infancy, all too common during that time, and several older children were living elsewhere by the time the younger ones were born - but just the same, the house must have been overflowing with kids!

How Paul Revere's house became a museum

In the decades after the Revolution, Revere became even more prosperous, and he and his family moved in 1800.  Soon after, the North Square neighborhood entered a period of decline as other wealthy occupants moved to more fashionable addresses. 

During the 1800s, the Paul Revere House served as a candy store, a bank, a cigar factory, a produce market, and tenement housing for immigrants.  Over 700 people are believed to have lived in this house from the time when it was built in the late 1670s to 1902, when Revere's descendents purchased it in order to preserve it as a museum.

Paul Revere House, viewed from the back garden

A restoration in 1907-08 returned the Paul Revere House to its original 2-story design, smaller than before Revere and his family lived there. 

The second floor overhangs the first, making the low-ceilinged rooms seem even darker and smaller. 

A massive Elizabethan-style fireplace dominates the main downstairs room.  Small diamond-paned windows, considered luxurious back in the 1600s, let in only a little light. 

Still, the house must have been warm and cozy during the winter, especially with all those children to fill it.  During the summer, the children would have played outdoors and along the nearby water's edge. 

What you'll see in the museum

The Paul Revere House is now a museum along the Freedom Trail.  If you have time, it's interesting to go inside because you get a good sense of what many of the houses were like during the late 1600s.

The main downstairs room is furnished as it might have been when the house's second owner, Robert Howard, purchased it in 1681.  He was wealthy, and the lovely furniture reflects his status.

Items from the Revere household furnish the other rooms, including Rachel Revere's favorite chair, other furniture, Paul Revere's saddlebags and pistols, and various pieces of silver.  You'll also see a silver pitcher made by Revere. 

Insider Tips

To see an impressive statue of Paul Revere on a horse, walk over to Paul Revere Mall, a pedestrian walkway between Hanover and Salem Streets. 

Boston-area sculptor Cyrus Dallin designed the statue in 1885, and it was finally cast and installed in 1940. 

Take a few moments to read the bronze plaques on the mall's surrounding brick walls recounting interesting histories of other Revolutionary War heroes and people from the neighborhood.