Dock Square

For the square in Kennebunkport, Maine, see Dock Square (Kennebunkport).
Dock Square, Boston, c. 1840s; Old Feather Store (at left) and Faneuil Hall (in middle)

Dock Square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, is a public square adjacent to Faneuil Hall, bounded by Congress Street, North Street, and the steps of the 60 State Street office tower.[1] Its name derives from its original (17th-century) location at the waterfront. From the 1630s through the early 19th century, it served boats in the Boston Harbor as "the common landing place, at Bendell's Cove," later called Town Dock.[2] "Around the dock was transacted the chief mercantile business of the town."[3] After the waterfront was filled in during the early 19th century, Dock Square continued as a center of commerce for some years. The addition in the 1960s of Government Center changed the scale and character of the square from a hub of city life, to a place one merely passes through.[4] As of the 1950s the square has become largely a tourist spot, with the Freedom Trail running through it. John Winthrop, coming from Salem where he landed as a Puritan from England, ended up "setting up a dock at the head of the cove (now Dock Square), and here began the town of Boston, which soon was recognized as the political and economic center of the [Massachusetts Bay] colony (Morgan 61).

  1. ^ City of Boston. Street book
  2. ^ Walter Kendall Watkins. The great street to Roxbury Gate, 1630-1830. Bostonian Society Publications, 1919.
  3. ^ Boston Street Laying-Out Dept. A record of the streets, alleys, places, etc. in the city of Boston. Boston: City Printing Dept., 1910.
  4. ^ Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker. Dock Square. Boston Globe, Oct 5, 1997. pg. 18.