Dock Square

The Samuel Adams statue looms over historic Dock Square.

NPS Photo/Witham

Quick Facts

Location:

Boston, Massachusetts

Significance:

Marketplace, commercial center, city park

The Massachusett Tribe has lived with and stewarded the Shawmut Peninsula for thousands of years, long before it was called “Boston.” When European colonists arrived, they claimed and transformed the landscape. Settlers cut down the three hills of downtown Boston, filled in salt marshes and beaches, and built permanent structures along the shore. This place first became known as Bendall’s Cove, then the Town Dock, and later, Dock Square.¹

The original dock served as the town’s landing and maritime marketplace. The network of the Transatlantic slave trade in Massachusetts centered here. Merchants, such as Peter Faneuil, built empires by trading fish, dry goods, molasses, grain, and also enslaved people. In 1637 and 1638, Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop detailed the departure and return of the Desire, the first documented instance of the colony’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade. The Desire likely arrived in Boston at the Town Dock.2 Additionally, molasses imported from the West Indies relied on enslaved labor and sales of enslaved individuals occurred at Dock Square and the Sun Tavern nearby.3 The centrality of the dock and the markets made the space an integral part of Boston’s economy. 

Following King Philip’s War (1675-1678), a law banned Indigenous individuals from Boston. In order to enforce this law, a night watch patrolled the Town Dock. Stationed from Court Street, down Washington Street, then to the square, they imprisoned any Indigenous or disorderly people at the courthouse.⁴

In the 1700s, the square continued to grow as a bustling commercial center. Profiting from this economy, many merchants in the square resisted the wealthy’s attempts to impose more regulation in the square. However, ultimately, Peter Faneuil funded the construction of Faneuil Hall in 1740. Following its completion, Dock Square became the site of Faneuil Hall in 1742. The building created a centralized space for tradesmen to sell their goods.⁵ With Faneuil Hall now in the square, the dock solidified its role as a political space. Over the following centuries, town and city meetings held at Faneuil Hall brought critical protests surrounding American independence, abolition, suffrage, and desegregation to the square.

Anne Whitney designed the prominent statue of Samuel Adams in 1875, which the City of Boston dedicated in 1880. It moved from its original location (now Government Center) to the square in 1928. The bronze statue of Adams is a copy of Whitney’s statue in Statutory Hall at the United States Capitol Building.⁶

In Dock Square, an outline of the shoreline of Boston from 1630 before landfill is etched into the pavement. Artist Ross Miller carved plants and animals found at the shoreline on the ground around the statue of Sam Adams as part of the art installation “A Once and Future Shoreline.”⁷ Today, parts of historic Dock Square make up Sam Adams Park outside Faneuil Hall.
 

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Footnotes

1. The Bostonian Society, Publications, (Boston: Old State House, 1919), 98, Publications - Bostonian Society - Google Books.
2. National Park Service, “Piecing together the Atlantic Empire of Peter Faneuil,” Accessed August 28, 2024, Piecing together the Atlantic Empire of Peter Faneuil (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov) ; Kenneth Morgan, “Port Location and Development in the British Atlantic World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Sea in History-The Early Modern World, ed. by Christian Buchet and Gérard Le Bouedec (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2017), 166-167.
3. Eleanor Tufts, “An American Victorian Dilemma, 1875: Should a Woman Be Allowed to Sculpt a Man?” Art Journal 51, no. 1 (1992): 51–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/777254.
4. Ross Miller, “A Once and Future Shoreline,” Accessed August 28, 2024, A Once and Future Shoreline (rossmiller.com).
5. City of Boston, “Faneuil Hall,” Accessed August 28, 2024, Faneuil Hall | Boston.gov.
6. Read more about the Desire and the Massachusetts Slave Trade: The DESIRE and the Beginnings of the Massachusetts Slave Trade (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov
7. Nian-Sheng Huang, “Franklin’s Father Josiah: Life of a Colonial Boston Tallow Chandler, 1657-1745,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 90, no. 3 (2000): 61, https://doi.org/10.2307/1586007; Robert E. Desrochers, “Slave-for-Sale Advertisements and Slavery in Massachusetts, 1704-1781,” The William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2002): 627, https://doi.org/10.2307/3491467.