Custom House Tower and McKinley Square

Why is it significant?

You stand beneath the soaring profile of the Custom House Tower, Boston's first true skyscraper and one of the most ingenious architectural juxtapositions in the United States.

Key Facts

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You stand beneath the soaring profile of the Custom House Tower, Boston's first true skyscraper and one of the most ingenious architectural juxtapositions in the United States. Designed by prominent architectural firm Peabody and Stearns and completed in 1915, this dramatic 496-foot neoclassical tower was audaciously constructed directly on top of the original 1847 Greek Revival customs building designed by architect Ammi B. Young.

In the early twentieth century, Boston maintained a strict municipal building height limit of 125 feet to preserve sunlight in colonial streets. However, because the Custom House was a federal government building, the federal authorities were legally exempt from city zoning laws, allowing them to construct this monumental thirty-two-story tower that dominated the city skyline for nearly half a century.

The base of the building is a Doric Greek temple supported by thirty-two monolithic granite columns, each weighing over forty tons and carved by hand from Massachusetts quarries. In the nineteenth century, ocean-going merchant ships tied up directly to wharves adjacent to the building, their bowsprits extending almost into the front windows to clear customs. In the upper clock tower, four colossal clock faces measuring sixteen feet in diameter look out over the four cardinal directions; during construction, local wags joked that the clock hands were so heavy that the electric motors could barely turn them. Today, the observation deck on the twenty-sixth floor commands an unrivaled 360-degree panorama of the harbor and urban core.

Gazing up from McKinley Square, the transition from heavy Greek temple columns to soaring neoclassical belfry is breathtaking. This historic stone sentinel symbolizes Boston's rise from a colonial seaport into a world capital of international trade and maritime finance.

Walk eastward toward the waterfront and the harbor promenade at India Wharf.