Built in 1718, this building stands on a plot of land that was once home to the religious reformer Anne Hutchinson, who was excommunicated and expelled from Boston in 1638 for heresy. In the middle of the 19th century, the little brick building held the publishing house of Ticknor & Fields, which effectively made this the literary center of America. Publisher James Fields, known as "Jamie," counted among his friends Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. For many years this was the Globe Corner Bookstore, which is now in Harvard Square. To continue on the Freedom Trail: Turn right and walk 1 block.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Boston 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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