{"nrhp_refnum":"73000322","name":"Old Corner Bookstore","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"NW corner of Washington and School Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Boston","county":"Suffolk County","state":"MA","lat":42.357594705000054,"lon":-71.05838802999995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1973-04-11","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Literature","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A brick gambrel-roofed building, two and a half stories plus an attic, at the northwest corner of Washington and School Streets in the central business district of Boston, Massachusetts. It was built soon after the great fire of 1711 by Thomas Crease.","why_significant":"It is the only eighteenth-century house remaining in this part of Boston. In the mid-nineteenth century it housed Ticknor and Fields, the most notable publishing house in America, and became a meeting place for leading American and English authors. It has also been certified as a Massachusetts Historic Landmark.","narrative":"Standing at the corner of Washington and School Streets in downtown Boston, the Old Corner Bookstore is a brick, gambrel-roofed building of two and a half stories plus an attic. Thomas Crease, an apothecary, built it soon after the great fire of 1711, and it is the only eighteenth-century house left in this part of the city. It served as a dwelling for more than a hundred years before Timothy Carter remodeled it in 1828 as a bookstore. From 1833 it was home to William D. Ticknor and Company, later Ticknor and Fields. Under James T. Fields the firm published Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Longfellow, Tennyson and Dickens, and the shop became known as Parnassus Corner. It also issued the Atlantic Monthly. After 1903 the building declined until a non-profit group bought it and restored it to its 1828 appearance in 1964. It now serves as a Boston Globe office, and its value lies mainly in its exterior.","period_of_significance":"18th Century (specific dates 1711, 1833)","architect_builder":"Thomas Crease (builder, 1711); Timothy Carter (leased and remodeled, 1828)","architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"Restored to its 1828 appearance in 1964; in excellent, unaltered condition, occupied and in commercial use as the in-town office of the Boston Globe.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:11:53.205097-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/53/7969/63796953/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/73000322.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73000322/ebefc69d68-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73000322/ebefc69d68-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"Beyond My Ken","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2017_Old_Corner_Bookstore.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Beyond My Ken</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2017_Old_Corner_Bookstore.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63796953","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Corner_Bookstore","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q387456"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/suffolk-county/old-corner-bookstore-73000322/"}