![]() ![]() We believe that through close connection and mutual support, our organizations and we as individuals can emerge stronger and more flexible than ever before. MAC understands that cultural organizations and the disability community are going through challenging times and we stand with them. Social distancing and other precautions have upended the way we connect through culture. Old South Meeting House has been open to the public as a museum and meeting place since 1877 thanks to the efforts of that original Old South Association.The Museum, Arts and Culture Access Consortium recognizes that the pandemic COVID-19 is affecting New York City, the surrounding areas, and the country and has caused a massive need for change for cultural institutions everywhere. It was the first time that a public building in the United States was saved because of its association with nationally important historical events. Their combined efforts raised an enormous sum to purchase the building and its land and save Old South. A determined group of “twenty women of Boston” organized to to save the building from the wrecker’s ball: they enlisted famous Bostonians, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Louisa May Alcott to rally people to secure funds and spread the word. In 1872, Old South Meeting House was put on the auction block, sold for the value of its building materials, and slated for demolition. The Sons of Liberty led the way to Griffin’s Wharf, where they dumped 342 chests of tea into the frigid harbor. ![]() When the final attempt at compromise failed, Samuel Adams gave the signal that started the Boston Tea Party. On that day, over 5,000 men crowded into the meeting house to hotly debate the controversial tea tax. Yet it was the series of meetings that culminated on Decemthat sealed Old South’s fate as one of this country’s most significant buildings. Patriots and Loyalists alike met to argue and inform, to protest the impressment of sailors into the King’s navy, and to commemorate the bloody Boston Massacre of 1770. ![]() Old South became the center for massive public protest meetings against British actions in colonial Boston from 1768-75. Old South Meeting House was the largest building in colonial Boston and the stage for some of the most dramatic events leading up to the American Revolution.īuilt as a Puritan meeting house in 1729, Old South Meeting House stands today as one of the nation’s most important colonial sites, one of the country’s first public historic conservation efforts, and one of the earliest museums of American history.ĭuring the colonial period, members of Old South’s congregation included African-American poet Phillis Wheatley who published a book in 1773 while she was enslaved patriot leaders Samuel Adams and William Otis William Dawes, who rode with Paul Revere to Lexington in 1775 and the young Benjamin Franklin and his family. Image depicts a very early museum configuration. Saved from the wrecking ball in 1876 by “twenty women of Boston,” Old South Meeting House has been a public museum since 1877. ![]()
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