African Meeting House

The Charles Sumner House is a historic house on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts. The brick townhouse, built c. 1806, is notable as the home for many years of Charles Sumner (1811–1874), an outspoken and aggressive political opponent of slavery, whose beating on the floor of the United States Senate in 1856 was a defining moment of the pre-American Civil War period. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973.

Abiel Smith School, founded in 1835, is a school located at 46 Joy Street in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, adjacent to the African Meeting House. It is named for Abiel Smith, a white philanthropist who left money (an estimated $4,000) in his will to the city of Boston for the education of black children. The city constructed the school building with Smith's funds. Designed by Richard Upjohn as his first public project, this was the first public school for free blacks. In 1835, all black children in Boston were assigned to the Smith school, which replaced a basement school in the African Meeting House next door. It is a National Historic Landmark and a site on the Boston Black Heritage Trail and is part of the Museum of African American History. It is part of the Boston African American National Historic Site.

The Home for Aged Colored Women (HACW) was an American charitable organization that provided housing and financial assistance to poor and elderly African American women in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1860 by an interracial group of abolitionists, including James Freeman Clarke, Rebecca Parker Clarke, Leonard A. Grimes, and John Albion Andrew, and operated until 1949.

The Peter Faneuil School is an historic school building at 60 Joy Street on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a four-story brick Tudor Revival building with limestone trim, built in 1910 to designs by the Boston architect James T. Kelley and his associate, Harold S. Graves. It is named for Peter Faneuil, the benefactor who gave Faneuil Hall to the city.

The Boston African American National Historic Site, in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts's Beacon Hill neighborhood, interprets 15 pre-Civil War structures relating to the history of Boston's 19th-century African-American community, connected by the Black Heritage Trail. These include the 1806 African Meeting House, the oldest standing black church in the United States.

The Nichols House Museum is a museum at 55 Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts. The house in which it is located was designed by the architect Charles Bulfinch, and built by Jonathan Mason, the politician, in 1804. The building was renovated in 1830. The museum is named for Rose Standish Nichols (1872–1960), the renowned landscape gardener, suffragist, pacifist, and member of the Cornish Art Colony, who lived in the house between 1885 and 1960. She left the house to be used as a museum after her death. The museum preserves the lifestyle of the American upper class during Nichols' lifetime, with turn-of-the-century period rooms.

The Samuel Adams and Paul Revere Time Capsule is a time capsule located in a cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House. It is widely believed to have been buried in 1795 by then-Governor Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. It is the oldest known time capsule in the United States.The time capsule is a metal container measuring 5.5 by 7.5 by 1.5 inches (140 mm × 191 mm × 38 mm), and weighing about 10 pounds (4.5 kg). It was first removed from its location in 1855, at which time its contents were cleaned and documented. Additional items were added to it at that time, and it was resealed in place. The capsule was again removed from its location in December 2014. X-ray examination by conservation specialists at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston revealed the presence of coins and other items. It was opened by specialists in a media event in the American gallery of the museum on January 6, 2015. Its contents include newspapers pages of the period, and coins including a 1652 Pine tree shilling. There was also a silver plate, probably engraved by Revere, and a copper medal depicting George Washington. The objects were placed on display for a time. The capsule was resealed into the cornerstone in a traditional ceremony on June 17, 2015 by Boston officials. A mint set of 2015 United States coins was added, including dollar coins of presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman. A silver plaque commemorating the event was also included.

The Vilna Shul is now a historic landmark building housing a cultural center, community center, and living museum. It was a synagogue and was built for an Orthodox congregation in 1919 by immigrants primarily from Vilna, Lithuania. The building stands on what is known as the back side or north slope of Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts. The front of the Hill has always been filled with stately homes and faces the Boston Common. The back of the Hill was the early residence of Boston's black community and, later, of a series of immigrant communities. In the first half of the 20th century, there were dozens of immigrant synagogues in this area and over 50 in the city of Boston proper. By the 1980s, the Jewish community had almost entirely left the neighborhood and the building was all but abandoned. An argument broke about whether the synagogue should be sold and the proceeds given to another congregation, turned into a community center for the residents of the neighborhood, or preserved as a monument or museum to the immigrant generations of Jews.The synagogue was designed by Boston architect Max Kalman, but the Shul is not noteworthy for its architecture, according to Stanley Smith, then executive director of Historic Boston Inc., a nonprofit group that recommended preserving the old synagogue. It's not high style, not one of the great monuments of architecture that you would travel miles to see. It's like many of the early meetinghouses and churches that are highly representative of the immigrants who built them.According to the American Jewish Historical Society, there is "no record of any important event ever taking place at that congregation," which was one of many modest synagogues built by Jewish immigrants. The Vilna Shul is, however, the last of the purpose-built immigrant synagogues still standing in downtown Boston at the end of the 20th century. It therefore represents the oldest Jewish building within the city limits whose entire history has been devoted to activities of Jewish faith and culture. The Vilna Shul is also noteworthy as one of only two extant free-standing buildings on the north slope of Beacon Hill. It represents a physical, colorful, and rich part of Boston's history and built heritage. The Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage was founded to raise funds to preserve and restore the synagogue for use as a Jewish cultural heritage center. This 501(c)(3) corporation is now The Vilna Shul, Boston's Center for Jewish Culture, Inc. Three million dollars were spent on the architectural restoration of the synagogue building, which now houses a small exhibit on the history of the synagogue and of the history of Boston's Jewish community. The building opens certain weekdays and weekends is a regular part of the Beacon Hill and Boston tourist circuit. Besides being a historic, cultural, and community site, It serves as a location for regular Jewish religious services including major holidays, young family Shabbats, and is the home of Havurah on the Hill.

The Beacon Hill Reservoir (1849-c. 1880) in Boston, Massachusetts provided water to Beacon Hill from Lake Cochituate. It could hold 2.6 million US gallons (9,800 m3). By 1876, the reservoir no longer distributed water, but rather functioned as a storage facility; it was dismantled in the early 1880s.

The List of notable addresses in Beacon Hill, Boston contains information, by street, of significant buildings and the people who lived in the community. Many of the street names have changed. For instance, Phillips street was once called Southack Street.

Beacon Hill is a historic neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, and the hill upon which the Massachusetts State House resides. The term "Beacon Hill" is used locally as a metonym to refer to the state government or the legislature itself, much like Washington, D.C.'s "Capitol Hill" does at the federal level. Federal-style rowhouses, narrow gaslit streets and brick sidewalks adorn the neighborhood, which is generally regarded as one of the more desirable and expensive in Boston. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood is 9,023.

The Old West Church is a historic church at 131 Cambridge Street in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts. It was built in 1806 to designs by architect Asher Benjamin, and is considered one of his finest works. It is a monumentally-scaled example of ecclesiastical Federal architecture, whose design was widely copied throughout New England.