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 | Boston Boston Common Reviews | Tips 21 - 30 of 71 |  |
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The 370-year-old Boston Common has served as common pasture, military drill ground and camp site, and gallows and burying site throughout its long history, so it should therefore come as no surprise that it still occupies an important place in Boston culture nowadays. The adjacent Public Garden is more recent, dating back to 1869, and takes after English-style gardens. Different monuments, sculptures and other architectural and historical attractions grace this lovely wooded area of downtown Boston, including the Public Garden's famous swan boats and "Make Way for Ducklings" sculpture, and Boston Common's Central Burying Ground and frog pond, which earned Boston the rather unflattering nickname of "frogpondium", thanks to Edgar Allan Poe. Leave a Comment Directions: Bound by Tremont, Beacon, Charles and Boylston Streets.Website: http://www.cityofboston.gov/freedomtrail/bostoncom
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| | | | Boston Common: Boston Common | Tip Rating: | | | | |
Boston Common Boston's famous park is Boston Common, a fifty-acre chunk of green, which is neither meticulously manicured nor especially attractive, though it effectively separates downtown from the posher Beacon Hill and Back Bay districts. It's the first thing you'll see emerging from the Park Street T station, the central transfer point of America's first subway and a magnet for small demonstrations and, unfortunately, panhandlers. Established in 1634 as *a trayning field* and *for the feeding of Cattell,* as a slate tablet opposite the station states, the Common is still primarily utilitarian, used by both pedestrian commuters on their way to downtown's office towers and tourists seeking the Boston Visitor Information Pavilion, just down Tremont Street from the T, which is the official starting-point of the Freedom Trail. The shabbiness of the southern side of the Common is offset by the lovely Beacon Street Promenade, which runs the length of the northern side, from the gold-domed State House to Charles Street, opposite the Public Garden. Even before John Winthrop and his fellow Puritan colonists earmarked Boston Common for public use, it served as pasture land for the Reverend William Blackstone, Boston's first white settler. Soon after it disintegrated into little more than a gallows for pirates, alleged witches and various religious heretics; a commoner by the name of Rachell Whall was once hanged here for stealing a bonnet worth 75¢. Newly elected president George Washington made a much-celebrated appearance on the Common in 1789, as did his aide-de-camp, the Marquis de Lafayette, several years later. Cattle have not grazed here since 1830. Ornate eighteenth-century iron fencing encircled the entire park until World War II, when it was taken down for use as scrap metal: it is now said to grace the bottom of Boston Harbor. Leave a Comment Address: Park Street T .Other Contact: This is one of those *blurry-art
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