The Paul Revere House at 19 North Square was built in 1660, making it the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston. In 1770, a 35-year-old Revere purchased the small greenish-grey clapboard house. Six of his children were living there when a smallpox epidemic spread to three of the girls. The city's selectmen ordered everyone quarantined for thirty days, a guard posted outside around the clock. The family survived.
Archaeology has since revealed the more intimate details of life at North Square: the Reveres shared a privy with the neighbouring Hitchbourns, and kept a cow and a dog on the property. No horse, though. Revere, history's most famous midnight rider, did not own one until he was seventy.
VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the house to reframe Revere not just as a revolutionary messenger, but as craftsman and civic builder: the man who copper-plated the State House dome, cast the bells of King's Chapel, and founded a copper company whose descendants are still in business.