Boston Common
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40 free Boston Common trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Boston Common has been shared ground since 1634, which makes it the oldest city park in the United States. In nearly four centuries it has been a pasture, a military camp, a place of punishment, a parade ground and a stage for some of the largest gatherings in New England history. This quiz covers the whole story: the settlers who set the land aside, the redcoats who camped on it, the monuments and memorials that line its paths, the famous visitors who drew huge crowds, and the neighbors that ring its fifty acres in downtown Boston. It suits visitors planning a walk through the city, locals who cross the grass every day, teachers building a lesson on colonial and Revolutionary Boston, and anyone who likes a good fun fact. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which animals grazed on Boston Common from the 1630s until Mayor Harrison Gray Otis formally banned them in 1830?
Cows
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.
Q 02Park Street and Boylston stations, at two corners of Boston Common, opened in 1897 as part of America's first what?
Subway
Subway tunnels dug beside the park in the 1890s also turned up forgotten graves, which were reburied together in the Central Burying Ground.
Q 03Which Canadian province sends Boston a Christmas tree for Boston Common each year in thanks for 1917 disaster relief?
Nova Scotia
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.
Q 04A stone monument on Boston Common honors the Oneida club of 1862, the first organized American team in which sport?
Football
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.
Q 05Which American writer mocked Emerson and the Transcendentalists as Frog-Pondians, after the pond on Boston Common?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston yet feuded with its literary set, dismissing their work as obscure for its own sake.
Q 06Which pope said Mass for about 400,000 people on Boston Common in 1979, a visit marked there by a granite slab?
John Paul II
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.
Q 07Which 1989 film about the 54th Massachusetts was inspired by its writer's visit to the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common?
Glory
Glory came to screenwriter Kevin Jarre after he saw the monument, and it won three Academy Awards, including one for Denzel Washington.
Q 08The Embrace on Boston Common recreates a hug Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife shared after he won which award?
Nobel Peace Prize
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.
Q 09British troops camped on Boston Common set off in April 1775 for which two towns, starting the Revolutionary War?
Lexington and Concord
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.
Q 10Boston Common is the first official stop on which 2.5-mile walking route past landmarks of the American Revolution?
Freedom Trail
Freedom Trail walkers owe the route to journalist William Schofield, who proposed in 1951 linking the city's landmarks with a footpath.
Q 11Which neighboring park, divided from Boston Common by Charles Street, is home to the famous Swan Boats?
Public Garden
Public Garden visitors have ridden the pedal-powered Swan Boats since 1877, and the site was once counted as an extension of the Common.
Q 12The Massachusetts State House faces Boston Common from former pasture land of which governor and Founding Father?
John Hancock
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.
Q 13The Boston Massacre Memorial on Boston Common depicts which man, remembered as the first to fall in the 1770 shooting?
Crispus Attucks
Q 21During World War II, Boston Common gave away most of which feature for scrap metal?
Iron fencing
Iron fencing had ringed the Common's mile-long perimeter since 1836, paid for in part by donations from residents.
Q 22In 1777, fireworks on Boston Common marked the first anniversary of the adoption of which founding document?
Declaration of Independence
Declaration of Independence celebrations that July 4 saw Colonel Crafts, a Son of Liberty, light up the Common with fireworks.
Q 23In 1766, Bostonians lit fireworks on Boston Common to celebrate the repeal of which hated British tax law?
Stamp Act
Crispus Attucks appears on the bronze relief with the four other victims, beneath a figure of Revolution holding a broken chain.
Q 14The Shaw Memorial on Boston Common honors the 54th Massachusetts, a Union regiment that enlisted which soldiers?
Black volunteers
Black volunteers filled the ranks, and the sculptor hired live models so that each marching soldier would have a distinct, individual face.
Q 15Which playwright's works have been staged free on Boston Common each summer by a company formed in 1996?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare gets one free outdoor production each summer; the first on the Common, Romeo and Juliet, played at the Parkman Bandstand in 1997.
Q 16About 100,000 people filled Boston Common for a Moratorium rally, addressed by George McGovern, against which war?
Vietnam War
Vietnam War opposition brought the crowd out on October 15, 1969, when economist John Kenneth Galbraith also spoke from the Common.
Q 17A huge bonfire blazed on Boston Common in October 1781 to celebrate the British surrender at which Virginia town?
Yorktown
Yorktown was the war's decisive battle, a sweet reversal for a park the British army had occupied until its evacuation in March 1776.
Q 18Which presidential hopeful spoke from the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common at a 2007 rally with Deval Patrick?
Barack Obama
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.
Q 19Boston Common is the first link in which seven-mile chain of parks planned by Frederick Law Olmsted?
Emerald Necklace
Emerald Necklace parks got the name because the chain seems to hang from the neck of the Boston peninsula, ending at Franklin Park.
Q 20In both world wars, Bostonians put parts of Boston Common to which home-front use?
Victory gardens
Victory gardens sprouted on the Common in both wars, alongside war bond rallies, troop entertainment and victory parades.
Stamp Act repeal was toasted on May 19, 1766, continuing a fireworks tradition on the Common that dates back to 1745.
Q 24The Central Burying Ground on Boston Common holds British soldiers who died of wounds from which 1775 battle?
Bunker Hill
Bunker Hill casualties lie beside redcoats who died of disease during the occupation, in a cemetery opened on the Common in 1756.
Q 25Which famous pilot used an appearance on Boston Common in the 20th century to promote commercial aviation?
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh spent much of his time after his 1927 Atlantic flight promoting air travel, and the Common gave him a ready-made stage.
Q 26Which landmark tree on Boston Common, nicknamed Boston's Oldest Inhabitant, was toppled by a storm in 1876?
The Great Elm
The Great Elm was mourned by thousands, and Boston's mayor signed souvenir photographs mounted on veneer cut from its wood.
Q 27A 1713 riot that began on Boston Common, in which the lieutenant governor was shot, was sparked by the price of what?
Bread
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.
Q 28Which painter of the George Washington portrait on the dollar bill is buried on Boston Common?
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart lies in the Central Burying Ground, which also holds composer William Billings, who wrote the Revolutionary War anthem Chester.
Q 29Which cemetery, the resting place of Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, was originally part of Boston Common?
Granary Burying Ground
Granary Burying Ground dates from 1660, when the Common covered the whole block; its name comes from a grain store that stood next door.
Q 30A departing Massachusetts governor traditionally walks down the State House steps into Boston Common to symbolize what?
Rejoining the people
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.