Built in 1713, this historic landmark served as a merchants' exchange as well as the seat of colonial and state governments. In 1761 James Otis opposed the Writs of Assistance here, inspiring John Adams to state "then and there the child independence was born." A cobblestone circle beneath its balcony marks the site of the 1770 Boston Massacre when British soldiers fired into a crowd of Bostonians. Fugitive slave Crispus Attucks was among the five victims who died that day. Today the Bostonian Society maintains the building as a museum of Boston history.