Looking for the Tea Party Location Today

In the 1850 Boston Evening Transcript story about public memory of the Boston Tea Party that I quoted a couple of days ago, John Russell wrote: “Very few persons now know where to find Griffin’s Wharf, the name of which should have been preserved through all time.”

Boston had grown significantly between 1773 and the date of that article, grown even more since. The site of the tea destruction, the shallow water at low tide beside Griffin’s Wharf, has become dry land. But where exactly?

John Robertson has a website devoted to that question, considering many clues, false clues, and more or less reliable maps produced over the years. Since he first posted his findings, what was a vacant lot has become the site of the InterContinental Hotel Boston, 510 Atlantic Avenue. Under the western slice of that building, Robertson says, was where Griffin’s Wharf lay in 1773.

The tablet above is on 470 Atlantic Avenue, the brick building beside the chrome hotel. It was installed (on a predecessor to that building, numbered 495) as early as 1898 by the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum is nearby in the channel.