Freedom Trail Pro Tips: WHERE ARE THE BATHROOMS?

People have got to go! There is no more pressing issue on Boston's historic Freedom Trail than the need to pee. I'm here to help. Below is every bathroom stop I know of. I'll make sure to clarify what is a public bathroom and what is a "private bathroom" that you can use.

Visitor Information Center on Boston Common

Boston Common (public bathrooms): The obvious bathroom stop is the Visitor Information Center on Boston Common, though truth be told, they have very small bathrooms that are often overrun by school groups, the homeless, and other visitors. The pros go to the Frog Pond bathrooms. They are also small, but less known, so they are also usually less gross and less full.

Boston Athenaeum (private bathrooms): This is located at 10 1/2 Beacon St., just around the corner from the Boston Common, and also close to the side entrance of the Granary Burying Ground. The first floor of the Athenaeum is open to the public, though you do have to sign in. There is a bathroom on the first floor. You see where I'm going with this?

Omni Parker House Hotel (private bathrooms): As a general rule, hotels are good for a bathroom break. The Parker House is tops, though. They have two bars and a restaurant on the first floor, and are the oldest hotel in America, so they are more accommodating than most to walk-ins. Their bathrooms are on the "mezzanine level," which is essentially the second floor. When you get to the top of the stairs, boys go right, girls go left. This hotel is located at the corner of Tremont and School, near the Granary Burying Ground and across from King's Chapel.

"What's that big clock tower in Boston?"

There are some questions visitors always ask. "Where is the closest bathroom" usually tops the list, and "is that Ben Franklin" when they see the "Franklin" monument in the Granary Burying Ground is also popular. Another top-tier inquiry is "what's that big clock tower?"

The big clock tower in question is the the old custom house. Not actually our oldest custom house ever, its domed base was built in 1847 to replace an older building which was itself a replacement to our original. The tower completed in 1915, making it the tallest building in Boston until 1964. Just off State Street in McKinley Square, the custom house was built just steps away from Long Wharf, where much of Boston's shipping arrived in the 19th century.

While this particular building has no exciting history of note (though it did play a prominent role in Boston scribe Dennis Lehane's novel Prayers for Rain), it is iconic in Boston's waterfront skyline. Currently under the management of Marriott, it serves as a luxury hotel. What many people who see it don't know though is that the base of the building is still very much open to the public. Go inside and get literature free of charge from the front desk, and then you can take a tour through the antebellum structure's breathtaking Greek revival interior, including the original dome, which resides underneath the tower today. Hanging from the ceiling around the dome, you will find very strange flags, representing prominent merchant houses of the custom house's hayday: J.H. Shattuck & Co., Z. Azarian & Co., John Mayo & Co., Gilden & Williams, H. Oxnard, and Brocker & Stugis (see photos below).

Destruction of the Liberty Tree

Engraving of a British official being tarred
and feathered at Boston's Liberty Tree

Boston's Liberty Tree - an elm tree that once stood roughly where the Chinatown T Stop is today - has long been recognized as a major symbol in the American Revolutionary. A rallying point for the South End Gang for the Pope's Day "festivities," which often led to violence against their North End counterparts and always with the destruction of anti-Catholic effigies, during the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765 it became a potent symbol of the nascent Patriot movement, as well documented by historian Alfred Young.

It is thus no surprise that the Liberty Tree became a target of destruction during the British occupation of Boston in 1775. According to a report in the Connecticut Courant on September 4, 1775, a group of soldiers led by a Job Williams, with the blessing of General Thomas Gage, "made a furious Attack upon" the famous elm. "After a long spell of laughing and grinning, sweating, swearing and foaming, with Malice diabolical, they cut down a Tree, because it bore the Name of Liberty."

While the destruction of the Liberty Tree could be construed as a significant symbolic blow to Boston's Patriot cause, the Courant dismissed the tree's demise as a setback, so long as "the GRAND AMERICAN TREE OF LIBERTY, planted in the center of the United Colonies of North-America, now flourishes with unrivalled, increasing beauty." The Liberty Tree had transcended its physical form, instead becoming an American revolutionary ideal.

This sentiment of the Liberty Tree as an undying symbol of the Patriot cause was echoed in the September 6 issue of Isaiah Thomas' Massachusetts Spy, in which the following poem appeared:

In a chariot of light from the regions of day,
the goddess of liberty came;
Ten thousand celestials directed the way,
And hither conducted the dame.
A fair budding branch from the gardens above,
Where millions with millions agree,
She brought in her hand, as a pledge of her love,
And the plant she named Liberty Tree.
The celestial exotic stuck deep in the ground,
Like a native it flourish'd and bore,
The fame of its fruit drew the rations around,
To seek out this peaceable shore.
Unmindful of names or distinctions they came,
For freemen like brothers agree,
With one spirit endu'd, they one friendship pursu'd,
And their temple was Liberty Tree.
Beneath this fair tree, like the patriarchs of old;
Their [illegible] in contentment they eat,
Unvex'd with the troubles of silver and gold,
The cares of the grand and the great.
With timber and tar they Old England supply'd,
And supported her pow'r on the sea;
Her battles they fought, without getting a groat,
For the honour of Liberty Tree.
But hear, O ye swains, ('tis a tale most profane)
How all they tyrannical powers,
King, Commons, and Lords, are uniting amain,
to cut down this guardian of ours;
From the east to the west, blow the trumpet to arms,
Thro' the land let the sound of it flee,
Let the far and the near - all unite with a cheer,
In defence of our Liberty Tree. 

While the physical Liberty Tree had already been destroyed, the symbol became one in which the Patriots rallied around. While Gage's men were able to remove the tree itself, they very likely increased the tree's potency and the Boston Patriots' resolve to oppose the crown.