40 Fun Facts About Boston Common

Which animals grazed on Boston Common from the 1630s until Mayor Harrison Gray Otis formally banned them in 1830?

Cows were the reason the Common existed: it began as shared pasture, and overgrazing forced a limit of 70 at a time as early as 1646.

Park Street and Boylston stations, at two corners of Boston Common, opened in 1897 as part of America's first what?

Subway tunnels dug beside the park in the 1890s also turned up forgotten graves, which were reburied together in the Central Burying Ground.

Which Canadian province sends Boston a Christmas tree for Boston Common each year in thanks for 1917 disaster relief?

Nova Scotia has sent the tree every year since 1971, repaying Boston for the relief train it rushed north through a blizzard after the Halifax Explosion.

A stone monument on Boston Common honors the Oneida club of 1862, the first organized American team in which sport?

Football as the Oneidas played it, the so-called Boston game, mixed kicking and carrying years before any formal rules, and later took hold at Harvard.

Which American writer mocked Emerson and the Transcendentalists as Frog-Pondians, after the pond on Boston Common?

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston yet feuded with its literary set, dismissing their work as obscure for its own sake.

Which pope said Mass for about 400,000 people on Boston Common in 1979, a visit marked there by a granite slab?

John Paul II came on October 1, 1979, and the marker lies on the park's big western lawn, which sits on top of an underground garage.

Which 1989 film about the 54th Massachusetts was inspired by its writer's visit to the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common?

Glory came to screenwriter Kevin Jarre after he saw the monument, and it won three Academy Awards, including one for Denzel Washington.

The Embrace on Boston Common recreates a hug Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife shared after he won which award?

Nobel Peace Prize news in 1964 prompted the hug; sculptor Hank Willis Thomas cast only the couple's intertwined arms, in a bronze 20 feet tall.

British troops camped on Boston Common set off in April 1775 for which two towns, starting the Revolutionary War?

Lexington and Concord became the war's opening clashes; by 1775 the Common was an entrenched British camp with a garrison of 1,750 men.

Boston Common is the first official stop on which 2.5-mile walking route past landmarks of the American Revolution?

Freedom Trail walkers owe the route to journalist William Schofield, who proposed in 1951 linking the city's landmarks with a footpath.

Which neighboring park, divided from Boston Common by Charles Street, is home to the famous Swan Boats?

Public Garden visitors have ridden the pedal-powered Swan Boats since 1877, and the site was once counted as an extension of the Common.

The Massachusetts State House faces Boston Common from former pasture land of which governor and Founding Father?

John Hancock's mansion overlooked the Common, and two years after his death the town bought his pasture as the site for a new capitol.

The Boston Massacre Memorial on Boston Common depicts which man, remembered as the first to fall in the 1770 shooting?

Crispus Attucks appears on the bronze relief with the four other victims, beneath a figure of Revolution holding a broken chain.

The Shaw Memorial on Boston Common honors the 54th Massachusetts, a Union regiment that enlisted which soldiers?

Black volunteers filled the ranks, and the sculptor hired live models so that each marching soldier would have a distinct, individual face.

Which playwright's works have been staged free on Boston Common each summer by a company formed in 1996?

William Shakespeare gets one free outdoor production each summer; the first on the Common, Romeo and Juliet, played at the Parkman Bandstand in 1997.

About 100,000 people filled Boston Common for a Moratorium rally, addressed by George McGovern, against which war?

Vietnam War opposition brought the crowd out on October 15, 1969, when economist John Kenneth Galbraith also spoke from the Common.

A huge bonfire blazed on Boston Common in October 1781 to celebrate the British surrender at which Virginia town?

Yorktown was the war's decisive battle, a sweet reversal for a park the British army had occupied until its evacuation in March 1776.

Which presidential hopeful spoke from the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common at a 2007 rally with Deval Patrick?

Barack Obama used a stage that has hosted concerts and speeches since 1912, when it was built on the site of a filled-in pond.

Boston Common is the first link in which seven-mile chain of parks planned by Frederick Law Olmsted?

Emerald Necklace parks got the name because the chain seems to hang from the neck of the Boston peninsula, ending at Franklin Park.

In both world wars, Bostonians put parts of Boston Common to which home-front use?

Victory gardens sprouted on the Common in both wars, alongside war bond rallies, troop entertainment and victory parades.

During World War II, Boston Common gave away most of which feature for scrap metal?

Iron fencing had ringed the Common's mile-long perimeter since 1836, paid for in part by donations from residents.

In 1777, fireworks on Boston Common marked the first anniversary of the adoption of which founding document?

Declaration of Independence celebrations that July 4 saw Colonel Crafts, a Son of Liberty, light up the Common with fireworks.

In 1766, Bostonians lit fireworks on Boston Common to celebrate the repeal of which hated British tax law?

Stamp Act repeal was toasted on May 19, 1766, continuing a fireworks tradition on the Common that dates back to 1745.

The Central Burying Ground on Boston Common holds British soldiers who died of wounds from which 1775 battle?

Bunker Hill casualties lie beside redcoats who died of disease during the occupation, in a cemetery opened on the Common in 1756.

Which famous pilot used an appearance on Boston Common in the 20th century to promote commercial aviation?

Charles Lindbergh spent much of his time after his 1927 Atlantic flight promoting air travel, and the Common gave him a ready-made stage.

Which landmark tree on Boston Common, nicknamed Boston's Oldest Inhabitant, was toppled by a storm in 1876?

The Great Elm was mourned by thousands, and Boston's mayor signed souvenir photographs mounted on veneer cut from its wood.

A 1713 riot that began on Boston Common, in which the lieutenant governor was shot, was sparked by the price of what?

Bread prices soared because merchants shipped scarce grain abroad for higher profits, so the crowd went on to attack one merchant's ships and warehouses.

Which painter of the George Washington portrait on the dollar bill is buried on Boston Common?

Gilbert Stuart lies in the Central Burying Ground, which also holds composer William Billings, who wrote the Revolutionary War anthem Chester.

Which cemetery, the resting place of Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, was originally part of Boston Common?

Granary Burying Ground dates from 1660, when the Common covered the whole block; its name comes from a grain store that stood next door.

A departing Massachusetts governor traditionally walks down the State House steps into Boston Common to symbolize what?

Rejoining the people as a private citizen is the point of the walk, which uses main doors that are opened on only three kinds of occasion.

The Brewer Fountain on Boston Common is a bronze cast of a gold-medal winner from an 1855 World's Fair in which city?

Paris foundries cast the copy for merchant Gardner Brewer, who had it installed in 1868 within sight of his Beacon Street house.

In 1848, a huge crowd gathered at the Frog Pond on Boston Common to celebrate the arrival of what?

Piped lake water from Lake Cochituate first flowed into the pond that day, through an aqueduct that went on serving Boston until 1951.

Before nineteenth-century landfill, the western edge of Boston Common along Charles Street bordered what?

Tidal marshes of the Back Bay once met the Common's western slope; of the park's four original hills and three ponds, only one of each survives.

Which sculptor spent almost fourteen years on the Shaw Memorial that faces the State House from Boston Common?

Augustus Saint-Gaudens took the commission in 1884 and saw it unveiled in 1897, with veterans who had marched to war from that very spot in the parade.

Which reclusive Anglican minister, Boston's first European settler, sold the Puritans the land for Boston Common?

William Blackstone, also spelled Blaxton, had lived alone on the peninsula for years, then tired of his Puritan neighbors and sold all but six of his acres.

Which rise on Boston Common, a favorite sledding spot for generations, is crowned by the Soldiers and Sailors Monument?

Flagstaff Hill holds a towering granite column designed by Martin Milmore, dedicated in 1877 before a crowd that included Union generals McClellan and Hooker.

Which poet's For the Union Dead sets the Shaw Memorial against a parking garage being dug beneath Boston Common?

Robert Lowell made it the title poem of his 1964 collection, and it became one of his best-known works.

Tremont Mall, a promenade beside Boston Common since 1728, was modeled on which royal London landmark?

St. James's Park inspired the walk, which was joined by four more malls until promenades ringed the whole Common by 1836.

The Shaw Memorial on Boston Common marks Robert Gould Shaw's death in an 1863 assault on which Confederate stronghold?

Fort Wagner guarded the sea approach to Charleston, South Carolina, and the frontal attack cost the regiment roughly 40 percent of its men.

Which composer opened Three Places in New England with a movement inspired by the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common?

Charles Ives wove borrowed tunes into the movement, among them the bugle call Reveille and the spiritual Deep River.