The Old State House was completed in 1713 and is the city's oldest surviving public building. It was the seat of the colonial government, with a merchants' exchange on the first floor and the courts and legislature upstairs.
A memorial near the building marks the area where the Boston Massacre happened in 1770. On July 18, 1776, two weeks after independence was declared, the Declaration was read from the balcony to the crowds below.
The lion and the unicorn, symbols of the British Crown, were torn down and burned in 1776. Replicas went back up in the 1800s and 1900s. Today it is a museum, and an entrance to the subway is in the basement.