Notice how a 217-foot steeple and a crowded old graveyard share this single Boston corner. Park Street Church, built in 1809 with a steeple that rises 217 feet above Tremont Street, earned the nickname Brimstone Corner both for the sulfurous preaching of its clergy and for the gunpowder stored in the basement during the War of 1812. William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first public anti-slavery address from this pulpit in 1829, beginning the organized abolitionist movement.
The hymn America, with its lyrics My country, 'tis of thee, was first sung publicly by children at a service here on July 4, 1831. Adjacent to the church is the Granary Burying Ground, established in 1660, one of the oldest cemeteries in the city. The graves here read like the roster of the Revolution: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, and Paul Revere are all buried here, along with the victims of the Boston Massacre.
Benjamin Franklin's parents are buried here, though Franklin himself is buried in Philadelphia. The grave markers are mostly eighteenth-century slate, carved with winged skulls that are the Puritan image of mortality. Walk the rows slowly; the names on the stones are the names from your history textbooks.