Sixty State Street marks the site of one of two colonial taverns named the Great Britain Coffee-House, where Queen Street ended and King Street began. This Great Britain Coffee-House, established in 1713, advertised "superfine bohea, and green tea, chocolate, coffee-powder, etc." In 1838, Thatcher Magoun Sr., a ship designer, builder and merchant who ran a shipbuilding facility in Medford, established Thatcher Magoun & Son, a counting-house, on the 60 State Street site to manage his business revenue, bookkeeping and correspondence. This helped to establish State Street as one of Boston's financial centers, hence initiate the city's Financial District. His son and grandson, Thatcher Magoun Jr. and Thatcher Magoun III, kept the firm going in the maritime trade until the late 1870s. An abstract from the firm's records reads: Upon Magoun Sr.'s death at 81 in 1856, the Thatcher Magoun, a clipper ship built by Hayden & Cudworth in Medford for Thatcher Magoun & Sons, was named and launched in his memory. Author Hall Gleason described the clipper as follows: "Her figurehead was a life-like image of the father ofship building on the Mystic... She made five passages from Boston to S.F., the fastest being 113 days and the slowest 152 days; seven from N.Y. to S.F., fastest 117 and slowest 149; two from Liverpool in 150 and 115 days. The average of the fourteen is 128.7 days. S.F. to NY. in 96 days in 1869."
Design and features
Architecture
Designed by the Chicago-based firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and developed by Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, 60 State Street is clad in pink granite to blend with the red brick of Faneuil Hall, City Hall Plaza and other neighboring buildings and spaces. The granite-clad triangular pillars alternate with vertical banks of rectangular floor-to-ceiling windows in a pattern similar to that of Eero Saarinen's black granite-faced CBS Building, a.k.a. "Black Rock," in New York City. Also like Black Rock, 60 State Street is surrounded by a pedestrian plaza. Only this time the plaza is raised rather than sunken and is accessible at street level from State Street and by two flights of stairs from Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Unlike Black Rock's rectangular solid composition, 60 State Street was given eleven sides and a two-part scheme so that it has the appearance of side-by-side octagonal tubes from a distance. The chamfered corner pillars are similarly octagonal. This theme recalls Boston's historic architectural vernacular of chamfered bay windows on Beacon Hill and in the Back Bay.
Venues and tenants
The main office of a major international law firm, WilmerHale, is located at 60 State Street. The building is shared with Good Measures and is the corporate headquarters for the company. The building also served as the corporate headquarters of the Sheraton Hotel group from 1978 until they were acquired by Starwood Hotels and Resorts in 1998. is located in the building's elegant space on the 33rd floor, the site of the former Bay Tower Room restaurant. The State Room run by hosts private functions and offers panoramic views of Boston Harbor, the Financial District, Boston Common, the Massachusetts State House, the Charles River and the Mystic River. In 2009, the American IdolPreliminary round for Boston was held here. A Bank of America branch is at street level, with ATMs located at the intersection of Congress Street and State Street, where Boston's Financial District begins. Berkshire Bank announced 60 State Street as their new corporate headquarters in late 2017.
