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The Boston Insurance Exchange building represents the historic role of insurance in the life of the waterfront and maritime commerce. Coolidge and Shattuck designed the full-block eleven-story limestone structure, distinguished by monumental pilasters ending in anthemion-ornamented capitals that separate ranks of Chicago windows with lavish bronze spandrels. The building contains the offices of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott, the current successors to a firm established by Henry Hobson Richardson in 1874, one of the oldest continuous architectural practices in the United States. Charles Bulfinch originally laid out Broad and India streets, which flank the building, between 1803 and 1807 as part of the development of the new deep-water India Wharf.