Old South Meeting House

The Old South Meeting House is a museum and National Historic Landmark on the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston, run by the non-profit Old South Association. Built in 1729, it served as a Puritan/Congregational meeting house (basically a church, although the Puritans didn’t call it a church because they didn’t consider the space itself to be sacred, thus it could be used for secular purposes like town meetings) until the 1870s and officially became a museum in 1877. Following in the tradition of public speeches and meetings held in the space since the 18th century, including speeches commemorating the Boston Massacre and the debates that led to the Boston Tea Party, the Meeting House also acts as a forum for free speech and civic discussion, particularly in the 1920s when the Old South Association voted to allow speakers and public discussion "without regard to the unpopularity of any cause." Today, the Meeting House mainly acts as a history museum and a venue for weddings, other private events, and educational lectures.

OSMH has six full time employees, none of which are officially any sort of information professional like a curator. Emily Curran, the Executive Director, has a degree in Museum Education and has also worked at the Boston Children’s museum as the Senior Developer, developing programming, exhibits, and leaning materials. The current Visitor Services Director, my boss, Ilse Allen, has some experience with collections including cataloging and processing, while she was in the museum studies program at Tufts, but her main experience is in visitor services. Thus, none of the current staff at OSMH fill any sort of role of curator or collections manager. Emily did help to develop the museum’s current exhibit (discussed below) but it seems to have essentially remained untouched for nearly 20 years.

Within the museum, as the visitors experience it, information comes from a single exhibit, titled Voices of Protest, which consists of seven exhibit cases along the back of the hall, which include images and objects related to the Meeting House’s history, along with paragraphs of text. Each exhibit case has at least one or two physical objects and/or documents in them besides facsimile images of documents and photographs, including an original copy of Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 book of poetry, an 18^th-century Chinese label from a chest of tea, a copy of the Port Act which closed Boston Harbor in 1774, the diary of Civil War-era minister George W. Blagden, a handwritten poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and original copies of books that were banned in Boston in the 1920s. There is no information available to the public about these items besides their labels in the exhibits and, as far as I know as an employee of the museum, if there is any internal information about the items staff rarely if ever consult it, or even talk about it. As I mentioned above, the exhibit cases have essentially been the same since the 1990s and I am not sure how much any of the staff have really thought about the information potential of the objects inside them, either by changing things in the exhibits or putting anything online.

Any other information about the building and its history mainly come from staff, including Museum Assistants, which I am. We are trained to answer questions about the history and architecture of the building. There are also educational programs from school groups and some items available in the shop, such as an architecture guide.

While not much about the collection (such as it is) is intellectually accessible to the public at OSMH, the museum itself is physically accessible. The building was the largest in Boston in the 1700s and is still very open and easily maneuverable and the actual museum space is a single floor—the main hall— so there are no physical barriers to anyone coming in the main doors and going into the museum. Restrooms and the museum shop are in the basement, which is accessible by elevator.

Since the exhibit space is basic glass cases there are no apparent specific environmental controls for the documents and objects inside. The entire building has heat and air conditioning, the lights within the cases are dim and not directly on the objects, and visitors are asked not to take flash photography of anything in the building.

Besides the items in the exhibit, the only other publicly-accessible information related to OSMH in physical collections is the collection of records from OSMH (or the Old South Church)when it was a Puritan/Congregational church in the 17^th to 19^th centuries, which are housed at the Congregational Library & Archives. Thus, OSMH does not have physical control over or responsibility for these papers. The Congregational Library does have a publicly accessible finding aid for the collection but many of the collections are restricted physically because of their age and condition, but microfilm copies are available. A large problem with this collection is that there is no connection made between the Old South Church papers and the Meeting House as it exists today. The finding aid links to the current Old South Church, located in Copley Square, where the congregation of OSMH moved in the 1870s, but there is no mention of OSMH. Neither is there a mention of the Congregational Library collection on OSMH’s website. I only happen to know about this collection because of a small slip of paper on a bulletin board at the admissions desk in the museum that lets us know that inquiries about the church’s records can be directed to the Congregational Library.

Two things that OSMH does well that we have discussed in class are social media/an engaging web presence and collaboration, which I will discuss below.

Social Media & Web Presence

OSMH has an attractive, information-filled website that includes everything from schedules of upcoming events and info on planning school group visits and weddings and other functions, to a detailed history of the building and its various uses from the 17^th century to the present. Not surprisingly there is very little about the collections that the museum does have on the website. The only real reference to the exhibit and any of the objects is on the Visit page [http://www.osmh.org/visit-us] which mentions a few of the objects as something to see at the museum. There are also a few photographs of the interior of the building, some of which include the exhibit cases but there are no accompanying captions or labels to explain what you are seeing. Thus, any collections information that may be available to users is only really available in the museum itself, or perhaps through direct contact with museum staff.

The Meeting House has a much better social media presence—on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. The icons for these sites are relatively large and visible in the upper right hand corner of every page on the site. They have around 3000 likes/followers on Facebook and Twitter, although these 3000 engage with OSMH differently on each platform. Perhaps unlike many museums, OSMH doesn’t exclusively use social media as a way to advertise its events—although it certainly posts about events often. Event announcements and reminders are interspersed with informational posts about historical anniversaries and sometimes just a nice photograph of flowers outside of the building. From the images below, it is easy to see that there is a good deal of engagement with users on social media—at least on Facebook—with hundreds of likes and dozens of shares, although event-related posts have many fewer likes. There is much less engagement on Twitter where the same photograph of the flowers has only nine likes and five retweets. Obviously, then, OSMH’s main audience online is on Facebook, even though they seem to post more on Twitter, especially short blurbs about events. This does follow what we have discussed about the different purposes or uses of each site, but perhaps OSMH could do better at tailoring the amount of work done with each platform to the size and engagement of the audience.

One fun way that the Meeting House tailored its use of Twitter to engage the public and also educate them about the building’s history was tweeting “On this Day” updates on April 18 about the Midnight Ride of William Dawes who, like Paul Revere, was sent out to warn the surrounding towns about the arrival of the British army in 1775. There is a particular significance to Dawes’s ride at OSMH because he and his family were members of the congregation.

Collaboration

            Outside of normal operation hours, OSMH hosts many events, mainly educational lectures, and nearly all of them involve some sort of collaboration with other Boston-based organizations. Just in April and May of this year, types of collaborations include a lecture on photographs of Frederick Douglass simply funded by the Lowell Institute, a concert series presented by the New England Conservatory, a lecture about the history of Boston’s Market District funded by the Lowell Institute and co-sponsored by Historic New England, and Celebrate Boston, a quiz night co-sponsored by the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District with food provided by the Omni Parker House hotel and other local restaurants. From personal experience I know that some of the events are well attended while some are not, but OSMH continues to hold similar events, so they must be working well enough and generating enough money—although occasionally some events are free, such as the concert series.

Perhaps the most well-known of OSMH’s collaborations is the annual Boston Tea Party reenactment, done in conjunction with the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museums along with multiple volunteer historical reenactors. It is by far the most popular event at OSMH, with packed seats at the Meeting House, where the debates that led to the Tea Party are reenacted, and more people joining as the audience leaves the building and goes down to the Tea Party Ships and watches as reenactors dump tea into the harbor. It is a logical collaboration as well since OSMH and the BTP Ships and Museum cover the same history (and much more in OSMH’s case), that of the historical Tea Party itself. Although it is a one night event once a year it requires a good deal of planning, to sell tickets and coordinate the reenactors involved. The collaboration also is a bit less tangible because, unlike other events at OSMH where both organizations are working on the exact same activities, the Tea Party Reenactment involves two technically separate activities at each of the museums. Even so, it is a good example of a successful cooperative event that draws big crowds and generates a lot of publicity.

In the end, while the Old South Meeting House is technically a history museum, it has a more distinct history, purpose, and function that make it a less-traditional museum space. There really are no formal collections of items or information about any items available to the public, either in-person and on the Web, beyond simple exhibit labels. Instead, OSMH upholds its Mission to preserve the building as a space for free speech and civic discussion by hosting educational events where members of the public can learn about the history of the building, Boston, and the United States. It also fulfills its Mission by maintaining a strong web presence, on its own website and on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as with numerous collaborations, mainly for educational events. As a site on the Freedom Trail it maintains a piece of Boston's history, even if it does not have any significant collections.

Resources:
Old South Meeting House website: http://www.osmh.org/
OSMH 20th century history: http://www.osmh.org/history/dissent-and-free-speech
Old South Church records finding aid: http://www.congregationallibrary.org/finding-aids/BostonMAOldSouth0028
OSMH Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OSMHBoston
OSMH Twitter: https://twitter.com/OSMHBoston
Boston Tea Party Reenactment: http://www.osmh.org/history/boston-tea-party/boston-tea-party-annual-reenactment