Battery Wharf and Old North Battery Point

Why is it significant?

You have arrived at Battery Wharf, a commanding promontory jutting into the entrance of the Charles River where it empties into Boston Harbor. This strategic point of land has played a vital defensive role since the earliest decades of English settlement.

Key Facts

Open the walk

You have arrived at Battery Wharf, a commanding promontory jutting into the entrance of the Charles River where it empties into Boston Harbor. This strategic point of land has played a vital defensive role since the earliest decades of English settlement. In 1646, the Massachusetts Bay Colony constructed the North Battery here, arming the point with heavy iron cannons to guard the town against hostile Dutch, French, and pirate warships.

During the American Revolution, British troops seized and reinforced the North Battery, using its heavy artillery to control harbor shipping and cover their troop movements during the bloody Battle of Bunker Hill across the river in June 1775. Today, Battery Wharf hosts the Boston Harborwalk Maritime Museum, offering free public exhibits of artifacts recovered from historic harbor shipwrecks.

Strolling along the modern harbor promenade of Battery Wharf, look down into the water around the pilings to see thriving marine life, including schools of striped bass and blue mussels. In the nineteenth century, Battery Wharf transformed into the home port for the Merchants and Miners Transportation Company, operating coastal steamships between Boston, Baltimore, and Norfolk. In the hotel lobby and outdoor plaza, historical markers and preserved maritime instruments illustrate the daily routines of nineteenth-century dockworkers and naval sentries who defended this vital coastal chokepoint. The panoramic view across the water encompasses the naval drydocks of Charlestown and the towering obelisk of Bunker Hill.

Standing on this breezy waterfront terrace with the scent of salty sea air filling your lungs, the continuity of maritime history is tangible. Centuries of military defense, steamship innovation, and modern waterfront renewal converge on this historic spit of land, where waves still wash against centuries-old stone sea walls.

Walk northwest along the waterfront promenade into the open greens of Mirabella Waterfront Park.