This unassuming brick meeting house is where the Boston Tea Party was planned and launched. Old South Meeting House was built in 1729 as a Puritan meeting house and became the largest public gathering space in colonial Boston. On the evening of December 16, 1773, more than five thousand Bostonians — the largest crowd ever assembled in colonial America — packed into this building and spilled into the street outside to hear Samuel Adams address them on the crisis over the Tea Act.
The British East India Company had been granted a monopoly on tea sales to the colonies, undercutting colonial merchants and asserting Parliament's right to tax without colonial representation. When the governor refused to allow the tea ships to leave the harbor without paying the tax, Adams rose and declared that he could do nothing further to save the country. It was a signal.
Within minutes, a group of men disguised as Mohawk Indians left the building, marched to Griffin's Wharf, boarded three ships, and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The meeting house was used as a British riding school and stable during the occupation; the colonists had to shovel out manure to restore it. It is now a museum; go inside and stand in the gallery where Adams spoke.