The Custom House Tower is a skyscraper in McKinley Square, in the Financial District of Boston, Massachusetts. The original building, the Custom House, was constructed between 1837 and 1847 and was designed by Ammi Burnham Young in the Greek Revival style. The tower was designed by Peabody and Stearns and was added between 1913 and 1915. The building is part of the Custom House District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Standing at tall, the building is Boston's 24th-tallest building.
Original building
The site was purchased on September 13, 1837. Construction of a custom house was authorized by U.S. President Andrew Jackson. When it was completed in 1849, it cost about $1.076 million, in contemporary U.S. currency, including the site, foundations, etc.<!-- (1840 dollars) -->
Ammi Burnham Young entered an 1837 competition to design the Boston Custom House, and won with his neoclassical design. This building was a cruciform (cross-shaped) Greek Revival structure, combining a Greek Doric portico with a Roman dome, resembled a four-faced Greek temple topped with a dome. It had 36 fluted Doric columns, each carved from a single piece of granite from Quincy, Massachusetts; each weighed 42 tons (37 metric tons) and cost about $5,200. Only half these actually support the structure; the others are free-standing. They are and in diameter and high.
This description of the original Custom House appears in the 1850 Boston Almanac:right|thumb|252px|Painting of the Great Seal of the United States inside the original Custom House structure.
Situated at the head of the dock between Long and Central Wharves, fronts east on the dock, west on India Street, and is in the form of a Greek Cross, [with] the opposite sides and ends being alike. It is long north and south, wide at the ends, and through the centre. It is built on about 3,000 piles, fully secured against decay; the construction throughout is fireproof and of the very best kind.
The exterior of the building is purely Grecian Doric, not a copy, but adapted to the exigencies and peculiarities of the structure, and consists of a portico [overhang] of 6 columns on each side, on a high flight of steps, and an order of engaged columns around the walls, 20 in number, on a high stylobate or basement; the order of engaged columns terminating with 4 andae [pilasters] at their intersection with the porticos. The columns are in diameter and high, the shaft being in one piece, each weighing 42 short tons/37 metric tons. The dedication ceremony was attended by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Andrew James Peters, Collector Edmund Billings, Governor David I. Walsh, Mayor James Michael Curley, Cardinal William Henry O'Connell, Bishop William Lawrence, and the building's architect, Robert Swain Peabody. The tower was opened on January 23, 1915. The clock on the upper tower of the building is in diameter. It was started at noon on April 6, 1916. The clock cost $2,500. Its hands were made of gold leaf painted Because of an undersized motor, the clock failed to work properly through much of the 20th century. In 1960, the Great Seal of the United States was painted in the lobby's dome. Due to aging conditions, the clock's hands were replaced with carbon fiber in December 2020.
thumb|The pendulum and other inner workings that control the Custom House Tower clock's four faces.
Current use
When custom officials moved into the Thomas P. O'Neill building in 1986, the Custom House was declared "surplus property". On April 16, 1987, the city of Boston purchased the building from the General Services Administration, and the building remained unoccupied and inaccessible for 14 years.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Landmarks Commission, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Beal Companies, and Jung Brannen Associates, Inc. all proposed concepts for the use of the building that ranged from museums to offices to residential developments. In 1995, the Beal Companies and Marriott Ownership Resorts International announced plans to develop the building into a timeshare resort, and retained Jung Brannen Associates as architects. In 1997, work began to convert the building into an 87-room Marriott Vacation Club.
One of the obstacles in converting the structure was the small amount of usable space on each floor of the tower, a problem that several earlier redevelopment plans faced and failed to overcome. The Jung Brannen team created ways to construct four to five suites per floor, using custom-designed built-in cabinetry and furnishings, to maximize the size and number of suites that could fit in the building. The end result was 87 one-bedroom suites with 22 different floor plans. Amenities included a private lounge, exercise area and game room and a refurbished observation deck on the tower's 26th floor. A rotunda-level maritime museum and exhibit room are among the public spaces that occupy the newly refurbished ground floor.
thumb|A view to the east from the top of the tower in 2014.
Landscape designers Pressley Associates, Inc. redesigned the front plaza in 1999, and remarked:
<blockquote>It provides a new urban linkage space that provides a sense of cohesion between Custom House Tower and Faneuil Hall and Marketplace Center. As part of the current rehabilitation of the Tower to hotel use, the mandate of the landscape architectural design was to unify and revitalize the urban environment while respecting the buildings' historical importance. A plaza has been designed to encourage pedestrian access and use, and to relate contextually to the adjacent Faneuil Hall Markets and Marketplace Center through the extensive use of large caliper shade trees, brick and granite pavements, and high quality site furnishings. The scope of work provided includes site design, construction documents, approvals process, presentations, resident engineering and construction support services.</blockquote>
The top of the tower is now accessible to the public during limited hours for a small fee. A fenced-in area surrounds the top floor and allows visitors to view the city on all sides of the tower. Peregrine falcons have been using the tower as a nesting site since 1987, and they can be viewed during nesting season through a live feed.