A New Old Print Shop in Boston

Last week the Boston Globe welcomed the Edes and Gill print shop back to Boston—but only in its North End edition. So for the rest of us here’s Jeremy C. Fox’s profile of printer, reenactor, and sometime tour guide Gary Gregory and his new educational enterprise:

The sign outside this room just around the corner from the Old North Church reads “The Printing Offices of Edes & Gill,” and inside Gregory offers his best approximation of that historic colonial print shop.

Benjamin Edes and John Gill were the publishers of the Boston Gazette between 1755 and 1775, with Edes continuing for about another 20 years after the dissolution of their partnership. In their hands, the weekly newspaper was an important element in fomenting the American Revolution.

The recreated print shop is a collaboration between the Old North Foundation, which owns this building, and Lessons on Liberty, a nonprofit organization founded by Gregory that offers Freedom Trail tours. To prepare to run it, Gregory learned from master printers at Colonial Williamsburg and acquired two printing presses.

The larger press, which Gregory uses for demonstrations, is a reproduction of an English common press made for Colonial Williamsburg in 1949. The other, which is too delicate to use, was built between 1730 and 1750 and is one of four in the world that survive from that era.

Gary Gregory is welcoming visitors from Boston and points further afield through the summer.

Full disclosure: I’m on the Edes & Gill Print Shop’s “Executive Advisory Board,” which so far has involved no work at all. I’ve known Gary for years, and it’s exciting to see him make his dream of starting a colonial-style print shop into a solid reality.