Faneuil Hall

Faneuil Hall stands at 1 Faneuil Hall Square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, beside the Quincy Market complex. Merchant Peter Faneuil gave the building to the town in 1742 as a public market with a meeting hall above. The original structure burned in 1761 and was rebuilt in 1762, and in 1806 it was enlarged to roughly double its width to a design by Charles Bulfinch. The building's character is Georgian, with red brick, a cupola topped by a grasshopper weathervane, and a ground-floor market and upstairs hall. The hall earned its nickname, the Cradle of Liberty, because colonists gathered there in the 1760s and 1770s to protest the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act and other British measures. Samuel Adams and James Otis spoke here, and later reformers including abolitionists and suffragists used the hall for their causes. The Great Hall on the second floor still hosts public events and naturalization ceremonies, and is decorated with large paintings, among them Peter Frederick Rothermel's depiction of Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne. The fourth floor houses the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, chartered in 1638, with a small military museum open to visitors. The ground floor is occupied by shops, while the surrounding Quincy Market and cobbled pedestrian squares host food vendors, street performers and tourism. The National Park Service runs the building as part of Boston National Historical Park, offering short talks by rangers in the Great Hall. The site has undergone repeated restoration, most notably a major rehabilitation in the 1970s that revitalized the entire market district. A visit to the hall itself takes 20 to 30 minutes, though the surrounding market invites more time. It is a stop along the Freedom Trail.