Overview & visitor information
On December 16, 1773, five thousand angry colonists packed this brick meeting house - the largest building in colonial Boston - to debate the hated tea tax; when negotiations collapsed, Samuel Adams gave the signal and men streamed out toward Griffin's Wharf to dump the tea. The Revolution's most famous act of protest began in this room. Today the 1729 hall operates as a museum of both the Tea Party debates and its own later rescue - Bostonians saved it from demolition in 1876 in one of America's first preservation campaigns. The visit is compact (thirty to forty-five minutes), the acoustics still carry a speaking voice remarkably, and combined tickets with the Old State House two blocks away make an efficient revolutionary pairing (verify current arrangements with Revolutionary Spaces). It slots neatly into the trail's downtown morning.
