Historic Precision: Revitalizing the Old State House Council Chamber
Written by Lucy Pollock, Exhibits Manager
In 2013, The Bostonian Society recreated the Old State House’s most iconic space: The governor’s Council Chamber. A decade later, it was in need of revitalization. Learn how historians, preservationists, and historical craftspeople worked together to restore the Council Chamber for the 250th of our nation’s independence.
Recreating the Council Chamber
Historians in Boston have been practically drowning in preparations for the nation’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which will be held on July 4, 2026. But Boston’s Old State House has been commemorating semiquincentennials for over a decade—ever since 2013, the 250th anniversary of the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. Widely considered the start of the American Revolution, the end of the French and Indian War marked a period of harmony between Great Britain and her colonies. This relationship wouldn’t last long, as the end of the war prompted Parliament to enact a volley of taxes that would push her American colonies toward independence.
For this anniversary, historians at The Bostonian Society (TBS), Revolutionary Spaces predecessor organization that stewarded the Old State House, wanted to harness the power of place to transport visitors back to a time of friendship and ideological alignment between the Empire and her American colonies. No room better represented that relationship than the King’s voice in the colony, the Council Chamber.
Recreating this room took TBS historians and preservationists years of meticulous planning. No questions were left unasked and no answers were left undebated. Which portraits and maps should hang in the room? What color should the tablecloths be? How should the curtains be mounted and what should be their shape when they hang? How many chairs should be at the tables? TBS sourced top-of-the-line historic craftspeople to help answer these questions in order to immerse visitors in this uniquely British room as accurately as possible.
Their precision paid off. Since the Council Chamber’s debut exhibit A British Town, the chamber has played host to hundreds of thousands of visitors through over a decade of anniversaries. In the same room where Samuel Adams once bickered with Governor Hutchinson about Boston’s occupation by British troops, children bicker about who gets to sit in the governor’s chair and adults bicker about who gets to wear the tricorn hat.
Over these past 12 years, the Council Chamber has seen its share of wear and tear throughout high visitation and the changeover of exhibitions, leaving it looking a little less than pristine. By the fall of 2024, cosmetic repairs were piled high for Revolutionary Spaces’s Facilities & Preservation team and Exhibits team. With yet more anniversaries looming in 2025 and 2026, the teams got to work revitalizing this historic room.
The Governor’s Chair
In February of 2024, the joinery on the Governor’s Chair’s structural beams snapped. The front legs of this red velvet chair pushed forward past the seat and the velvet upholstery tore, making it unable to safely bear the weight of even our youngest visitors. But while this chair may have been able to be shored up by a screw and some superglue, Revolutionary Spaces’s Facilities & Preservation Team made the decision to repair the chair using traditional joinery and upholstery methods to preserve the historical integrity of the piece.
The craftsperson with the right skillset was just down the street from the Old State House in Boston’s North End—the North Bennet Street School (NBSS), a private vocational school teaching a variety of historic crafts. NBSS worked with TBS in 2013 to craft the historic chairs and tables for the Council Chamber, so their proven skill and familiarity with the chair made them the natural choice to keep this repair “in the family.”
An anonymous donor not only repaired the structural damage of the chair themself, but also paid for the new velvet upholstery. The Governor’s Chair was returned in mid-January of 2025.
The Council Chamber Tablecloth
A 16-foot-long tablecloth made of green baize fabric and trimmed with gold silk tape drapes over the central table in the Council Chamber. Over the years, fidgety hands tore at the trim and misplaced water bottles left water stains on the surface. Riding the momentum of the Governor’s Chair repair, the tablecloth project began shortly before the chair’s return.
Just like the chair, the tablecloth was repaired by a historic craftsperson, Natalie Larson of Historic Textiles Inc., based in Williamsburg, Virginia. Larson was the original creator of the tablecloth as well as the drapery curtains in the Council Chamber. Larson dry-cleaned the tablecloth to remove the stains and then carefully detached the old trim, both torn and intact, to prevent color or textural inconsistencies. Larson sewed more than 500 inches of new silk trim on the perimeter of the cloth and returned it to Revolutionary Spaces in February 2025.
Larson also designed and sewed the 16 floor-length curtains back in 2013. Once pulled taut and hanging effortlessly, the curtains slumped out of their original shape. Facilities & Preservation Supervisor Jack Sidlauskas undertook their rehanging:
“Using some short techniques, the curtains were all generally hung to a desired height which was exact to existing photos of the Council Chamber’s design. The end product is of typical late-18th-century design with the natural swags and curtain length.”
As Boston prepares to welcome visitors from around the world in 2026—not only for 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but also FIFA 2026 and Sail Boston 2026—the revitalization of the Council Chamber ensures that this iconic space continues to inspire wonder, reflection, and connection to our shared past. The Facilities & Preservation and Exhibits teams will remain vigilant to ensure the Council Chamber impresses majesty and history to all who visit, with every detail reflecting a deep commitment to preservation and storytelling. With the 250th on the horizon, Revolutionary Spaces stands ready to honor the legacy of this room—and the revolutionary ideals it represents—for generations to come.