Liberty Tree District

Six commercial buildings gather around the corner of Washington and Essex Streets in Boston, on ground once known as Hanover Square. This corner held the Liberty Tree Tavern and the great elm called the Liberty Tree, where the Sons of Liberty met after forming in 1765 to protest the Stamp Act. A carved relief plaque on the 1850 Liberty Tree Block, a brick Greek Revival and Italianate building, commemorates the tree. Nearby buildings show how the area developed as a commercial and travel district in the later 19th century. They include the Essex Hotel of about 1881, a polychrome High Victorian Gothic mercantile building of 1875, and a Federal Revival hotel facade at 640-644 Washington Street that grew from an 1824 hotel named for Lafayette. One building of about 1871 at 11-13 Essex Street has a wooden facade carved to imitate cast iron, and is the only one of its kind in the city's central business district.