Various intricate streets and passages lead eastward from Tremont Street into Washington Street, these two chief business highways in a certain sense being parallel. Washington Street is the main thoroughfare of the city, having prominent theatres, newspaper offices, many of the largest stores and great office buildings, and it finally crosses over into the South End, being a wider and straighter street in this newer portion. Benjamin Franklin was born in a little old dwelling near Washington Street, where now stands a newspaper office. Alongside is the "Old South Church," the most famous church of Boston, but now an historical relic and museum of Revolutionary antiquities, the congregation having built themselves a magnificent temple, the "New Old South Church," upon Boylston Street, in the fashionable quarter of the Back Bay. This ancient church is a curious edifice of colonial style, built in 1729, when it replaced an earlier building. It has a tall spire and a clock, to which it is said more eyes are upturned than to any other dial in New England. The interior is square, with double galleries on the ends, and its original condition has been entirely restored. It is brimful of history, and was the colonial shrine of Boston, wherein were held the spirited meetings of the exciting days that hatched the Revolution. Within it were arranged the preliminaries leading to the march from its doors of the party of disguised men who went down to the Liverpool wharf and threw the tea overboard in December, 1773. Behind the pulpit is the famous window through which climbed Dr. Joseph Warren in 1775 to make the oration on the anniversary of the "Boston Massacre," that had so much to do with creating the high condition of feeling producing the final defiance of the British soldiery, culminating in the battle of Lexington. The British afterwards turned the building into a riding-school. Franklin was baptized in the original church, and here Whitefield preached. For nearly two centuries there was delivered, in this noted church, the annual "election sermon" before the Governor and Legislature. It was only by the greatest exertions that the venerable building was saved from the fire of 1872, which halted at its edge. It now belongs to a patriotic society, who maintain it as a precious historical relic.