Northeast corner of Congress Street and Water Street, Downtown Boston
Merchants’ Hall housed the original office of The Liberator, the famed anti-slavery newspaper co-founded and produced by radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Launched on January 1, 1831, the weekly publication remained in the building for almost four years.
Oliver Johnson, a fellow abolitionist and close ally of Garrison, described the newspaper’s office on an upper floor of the building as follows: “The dingy walls, the small windows bespattered with printers’ ink, the press standing in one corner, the composing stands opposite, the long editorial and mailing tables covered with newspapers, the bed of the editor and publisher.” Someone working for Harrison Gray Otis sent out by the then-mayor of Boston to learn about The Liberator, had this to say: “His [Garrison’s] office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all colors.”
The October 4, 1834, edition was the last one produced in Merchants’ Hall. In its October 18, 1834, edition, the newspaper announced: “The office of the Liberator is removed from Merchants’ Hall to No. 31, Cornhill, 3d story, over the Bookstore of Mr. Benjamin B. Mizzy.”
It is not clear when Merchants’ Hall first opened, but the demise of the four-story, brick structure is well established. It was one of the 776 buildings destroyed by the Great Boston Fire of November 9-11, 1872. At least 30 people, including 12 firefighters, lost their lives in the massive blaze that began in the basement of a warehouse at the corner of Summer and Kingston streets.
Economically, the fire was extremely costly. Garrison described the aftermath of the almost 65-acre burned zone in the heart of the city as follows: “All the street lines were completely obliterated by the debris, and many a merchant found it impossible to determine precisely where he had been doing business.” According to author Stephanie Schorow, the destruction constituted “10 to 11 percent of the total assessed value of all Boston real estate and personal property.”
By the time of the fire, The Liberator no longer existed, having published its last issue on December 29, 1865. After leaving Merchants’ Hall, the newspaper spent almost all of its subsequent years at various addresses (numbers 21, 25, and 31) on Cornhill*, a street that was home to some of the city’s most important booksellers and publishers, and a meeting place for leading intellectuals in the 19th century. (A few of the 19th -century Cornhill buildings still exist—most of them were torn down during the razing of Scollay Square in the 1960s—on the southern edge of City Hill Plaza.) In May 1860, the newspaper moved its office from Cornhill to a nearby site, what was then numbered as 221 Washington Street, where it remained until its final issue.
Today, there is a historical marker on the northeast corner of the intersection of Congress Street and Water Street that commemorates the founding of The Liberator and its existence on the site. Erected by the Bostonian Society, the marker speaks of a building, but does not name Merchants’ Hall.
Getting there:
Red Line or Orange Line to Downtown Crossing (0.3 miles, about a 7-minute walk). Blue Line or Orange Line to State (300 feet, a one-minute walk). Green Line or Blue Line to Government Center (0.2. miles, a 6-minute walk).
Related sites:
Rockledge, Garrison’s home from 1864 to the time of his death is 1879, 125 Highland Street, Roxbury.
William Lloyd Garrison birthplace and family home, 3-5 School Street, Newburyport. (We explore the site in A People’s Guide to Greater Boston.)
To learn more:
Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.
Stephanie Schorow, The Great Boston Fire: The Inferno That Nearly Incinerated the City, Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot, 2024.
*Regarding Cornhill, see our entry on John P. Jewett and Company in the Downtown Boston section of A People’s Guide to Great Boston.
