Hey, there! Log in / Register
Attention Globe editors: The Paul Revere House is not the oldest building in Boston
By adamg on Sun, 01/27/2008 - 2:24pm
Larry Davidson reads the canard in City Weekly and so points out that the Blake House in Dorchester was actually built at least 30 years before the Revere House. He even posts days and times you can visit the house (and, sadly, adds "It's in a safe part of Dorchester, so don't worry about what you hear about our neighborhoods").
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
If Dorchester was annexed to Boston
in 1870...does that exclude the Blake house
from "oldest house in Boston" honors? I mean,
when it was built, it wasn't in Boston yet.
We could really mess them up over there on Morrissey.
Say the Revere House is the oldest house on the
Shawmut Peninsula. That should set them
spinning for a week.
So...
The oldest house in the US must be in Delaware, right?
Sure, they built a house in 1564 in Florida, but Florida didn't become a state until 1845, so the Ryes Holt house, b. 1665, was in the US longer...
What?
If Ryves Holt was built in 1665, it's not as old as the Blake House built in 1648.
New Mexico has Native American houses considerably older than either of these.
Just following the logic
Delaware was part of the United States before Massachusetts.
Beat us by 62 days
Means that house has been in the US 62 days longer, no?
I understand what you mean, but...
...The United States came into existence on July 4, 1776. Delaware was part of the United States before the Constitution was ratified. As were the other 12 original states. Delaware was just the first state to ratify it. Also, it wasn't in effect until it was ratified by New Hampshire on June 21, 1788.
Oldest, how?
We can slice and blend this several ways. Yes, Dot was its own town and not part of Boston. More to the point, head to the house/museum site to see its claim — "It is downtown Boston's oldest building and one of the few remaining from an early era in the history of colonial America."
This is just another bit of Globe sloppiness.
boston.com commercials
Was listening to wtkk this am, and boston.com
is running a new commercial. Premise is that
for real local info, boston.com is the
place to go. This is illustrated by a couple
screwing up pronunciations and getting local info
wrong.
Kind of ironic, given the number of times in
the last few weeks that we've laughed at their
screw ups on localisms.
Fairbanks House
The oldest house in the country, period, is the Fairbanks House in Dedham. Built in 1636 and ancestral home to both John Kerry and George Bush, Vice President Fairbanks (for whom the city in Alaska is named), and a father and son pair of governors of Vermont.
...and home of a notorious
...and home of a notorious murderer, executed in 1801.
For all the claims of oldest wood frame house in North America, I wonder how much -if anything- of the original house remains.
Quite a bit
Quite a bit of the original house remains. The interior framing, at least, is all original - that is how they were able to determine when it was built. It was added on to over the years, but the original house remains. In this Globe story you can see a picture of it. The wing on the right hand side is the original building.
As for the murderer, Jason Fairbanks, over 10,000 people showed up for his hanging after he very nearly escaped to Canada. At the time there was only 2,000 residents of Dedham. The prosecutor in the case was the Attorney General (and later governor) and the defense attorney was a future Boston mayor and US Senator.
Silly New Englanders
Oh, such hooha. New England was settled after Virginia, New York and elsewhere. Yet, long before, the Spanish were building in Florida and New Mexico. Even in New Mexico, they were coming to spots where the Anasazi had lived in adobe and other houses for centuries. Some of those pueblo buildings are still occupied over a thousand years later.
There are older houses in Santa Fe and a wood frame one in St. Augustine from 1564.
17th century in this area is old, but let's not get crazy.
The house in St. Augustine....
http://fcit.usf.edu/FLORIDA/3d/staugbuild/staugbui...
Alas, during the 7+ years we lived in (North) Georgia, we never made it to St. Augustine.
Not wood framed
The Florida house is made out of "'coquina,' a rock like combination of seashell remains and mortar," not wood.