MAExchangeCoffeeHouse

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From New England Craftsman, Vol. I, No. 12, September 1906, Page 439:

ExchangeCoffeeHouse.jpg
The Exchange Coffee House

We present a picture of The Exchange Coffee House which was for a short period occupied by the Masonic Bodies of Boston. It is said that this building was the finest in Boston, if not in the country, at the time it was built. The following description taken from Snow's History of Boston shows that even at this day it would demand attention by the elegance of its decoration and convenience of arrangement. The Masonic apartmeats in the building were dedicated by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, July 22. 1817, with an elaborate ceremony.

The early history of this structure is that of an unsuccessful speculation, which involved individuals in ruin, and seriously injured a large portion of the community. It cost the projector, and through him the public, upwards of $500,000, and was unfinished when he failed. In other hands it was completed so far as to be tenautable, and went into operation in 1808, two years and a half from the time it was commenced.

The Exchange Coffee House was an immense pile of building, seven stories in height, with a cellar under the whole, and covering 12,753 square feet of ground. Its shape was an irregular square, or that of an irregular triangle cut off at the acute angle, measuring 132 feet in its broadest front, and only 94 feet on its narrowest, from which the line of the sides diverged nearly equally. The base of the building was of hammered granite and the basement of white marble.

The front in Congress Street was highly ornamented. Six marble pilasters, of the Ionic order, upon a rustic basement supported an architrave and cornice of the same; and the whole front, which had an arched doorway, was crowned with a Corinthian pediment. On this side, there were 48 superb Venetian windows. There was another entrance towards State Street, through an Ionic porch or vestibule, and this front was ornamented with ten Ionic pilasters, and lighted by 58 windows. There was also an entrance, for the lodgers in the hotel, on Salter's Court, having a passage lor the ingress ami egress of carriages. From this dooi there was a circular stair-case, elegantly decorated, which led with out interruption to the attic story. There was also a communication from Devonshire Street, through an adjoining house.

Upon entering the house, you stood on an interior area 70 feet in length and 40 ft. wide, in the form of a parallelogram, which was lighted from the top by means of a magnificent dome, 100 ft. 10 inches in diameter. Around this area was extended a portico or rather several porticos, each, consisting of 21 columns, which reached from the ground floor to the roof, and supported five galleries leading to the different apartments. The height of the top of the dome from the floor was 83 feet. Here was an assemblage of the different orders of architecture, from the ornamental Doric to the Corinthian, which produced a very agreeable impression upon the eyes of the spectator, as he passed from the dome which surmounted the whole, to the floor upon which he stood. The interior space was as nearly as possible equidistant from the sides of the structure; and the apartments, which surrounded it upon the various stories, amounted to about 210.

The house was divided into two species of rooms: those which belonged to the hotel, and those which were rented for offices and shops to individuals. The basement story consisted chiefly of an extensive kitchen, private lodging-rooms, larder, and the cellars, with some offices that were entered from the street. The principal floor was originally intended for a public Exchange, which design never was executed, as the merchants, from long habit, prefer to stand in the street, even during the inclement winter months. A public reading room, with a very large list of subscribers, was also upon this floor, where the lodgers in the hotel had the privilege of resorting, and in which was regularly kept a journal of the most interesting occurrences of the times, whether of a political or commercial nature. A convenient coffee room, a bar and drawing-room for boarders, were also on on this floor, besides various apartments occupied by public incorporations and private individuals. On the second floor chiefly devoted to the hotel, upon the southern side, there was a dining room sufficiently spacious to admit tables for three hundred persons; about fourteen other apartments comprised the whole of the second story.

The third and fourth floors belonged to the tavern. An arched ball-room, finished with great taste in the Corinthian order of architecture, extended through both stories, and was placed immediately over the large dining hall. The other apartments on these floors were either connected with the ball room, or were lodging chambers.

Upon the northern side of the fifth and sixth floors, a large Masonic Hall was formed from a large number of lodging rooms, which were included in the apartments which we have just enumerated. The other rooms were appropriated for lodging chambers, with the exception of an observatory on the sixth floor, connected with the news room below.

This grand edifice was destroyed by fire, on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1818. It was first discovered near the southwest corner of the attic story, about seven in the evening, and before ten o'clock the whole building was reduced to a melancholy heap of ruins. The most spirited and judicious efforts could only give a temporary check to the flames, which were hastily working their way behind the partition walls and round the cornices, in places beyond reach. In a veiy short time the greater part of the 210 halls, rooms, chambers, etc., exhibited a mass of intense fire seldom witnessed. About nine o'clock the noble dome came down with frightful crash, and, soon after, nearly all the north and part of the south walls, each more than 80 feet in height, fell, and damaged many of the neighboring buildings. Several houses were much damaged, but none wholly burnt out, except the one on Devonshire Street, adjoining the Exchange. On Wednesday morning, the whole isolated front wall of the ruin, 90 feet high by 80 feet wide, with its marble columns and chimneys, appeared to stand tottering over the people's heads, and threatened in its fall to overwhelm the building opposite, which stood at the distance of 28 feet only from the wall. But in the course of that and the succeeding day they were levelled, without the least damage to the neighborhood or to the thousands of spectators who were witnesses to this sublime wreck of matter.