Sears' Crescent and Sears' Block are a pair of adjacent historic buildings located along
Cornhill in
Boston, Massachusetts
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
. It is adjacent to
City Hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...
and
Government Center, and is part of
City Hall Plaza.
Sears' Crescent was constructed in 1816 as a series of Federal period commercial rowhouses. Around 1860 these were given a unified curving facade with Italianate styling. The Sears' Block, built in 1848, is a rare surviving instance of granite post-and-lintel construction. Both buildings were developed by
David Sears, a leading mid-19th-century developer of Boston who was responsible for the filling of
Back Bay
Back Bay is an officially recognized Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, built on Land reclamation, reclaimed land in the Charles River basin. Construction began in 1859, as the demand for luxury housing exceeded the ...
. They are the only buildings that remain on the original route of
Cornhill, one of Boston's oldest streets, most of whose route has been lost or obscured by urban renewal.
The buildings were added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1986.
The Sears' Block is now the location of the
"Steaming Tea Kettle", an 1873 trade sign commissioned by the Oriental Tea Company that was located on
a Court Street building demolished in 1967 during the construction of
Government Center. The kettle was refurbished and reinstalled in 2016 after being damaged, apparently by a truck.
Sears' Crescent was acquired in 2016 by Chevron Partners.
Image gallery
File:BrattleSt Cornhill ca1905 Boston BPL 08 02 001023.jpg, Overview of Cornhill and Brattle
:''There is another Woodchurch in Kent, a hamlet in the Manston civil parish within the Thanet district.''
Woodchurch is a Kent village, the largest civil parish in the Borough of Ashford. It is centred from the market town of Ashford and fr ...
Streets, ca.1905
File:Cornhill ca1905 Boston BPL 08 02 001023.png, Overview of Cornhill, ca.1905
File:1962 Cornhill4 Boston byCervinRobinson HABS MA787.jpg, Sears' Crescent, Cornhill, Boston, 1962
File:1962 Cornhill2 Boston byCervinRobinson HABS MA786.jpg, Corner of Cornhill and Court Street, Boston, 1962
File:1967 Cornhill Boston byGCushing HABS MA786.jpg, Cornhill, Boston, 1967
File:1967 Cornhill2 Boston byGCushing HABS MA786.jpg, Sears' Block, 1967
File:Steaming Tea Kettle, Court Street (8610212800).jpg, Steaming Tea Kettle on the Sears' Block in 1971
See also
*
References
Commercial blocks on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Buildings and structures in Boston
Government Center, Boston
Commercial buildings completed in 1816
Commercial buildings completed in 1848
National Register of Historic Places in Boston
1816 establishments in Massachusetts
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