Boston is where the whole business of being American began, so it’s not surprising that the country’s oldest historical society is located here, in an 1899 Colonial Revival-era building at the intersection of Hemenway and Boylston. This is the Massachusetts Historical Society’s seventh home, and it suits them. Even the lobby oozes old, new world charm. Lisa Krassner, the organization’s newest president, leads me up the spiral marble staircase into a hallway lined with gleaming colonial-era furniture to an elegant circular chamber that looks out on a corner of the Emerald Necklace and the Fenway’s endless construction projects.