Common

History

Dictionary entries are succinct in their definitions of a common as open, shared land. G. Gregory, writing in England in 1816, detailed the legal distinctions of various kinds of commons, but his specificity regarding the relationship of lords and commoners in the English legal system serves only to highlight the contrast between English and American contexts.1

In the American colonies, early land records used the phrase “common lands” to signify both ungranted, undeveloped land (sometimes called “Proprietor’s land”) and shared land that was used for pasture or agriculture.2 In addition, the term was used to describe open spaces such as meeting house commons (or lots), although public gathering areas were also called squares and greens (see Green and Square). For example, a plan of 1742 for Charlestown, Md. [Fig. 1], depicts, in addition to the Market Place (at “M”), the Courthouse square (“L”), and two squares “for Meeting houses or other Publick Occasions” (“N” and ”O”), a Common of three hundred acres to the west of the settlement’s lots. Town commons were most frequently found in New England’s clustered and linear villages, where they were often models for subsequent settlement in the West.3 Descriptions of commons are less frequently found in the mid-Atlantic and the South.

The particular form and function of the common land were integrally tied to the nucle.ated, linear, or dispersed settlement pattern of each town or village. Contrary to popular myths about the ideal seventeenth-century New England village—with its central green or common—the layout of towns or villages dif.fered widely. Variations depended partly on the traditional models that immigrants brought with them from their countries or regions of origin, and partly on the environ.ment and the economics of the local setting.4 In some cases common lands were long, nar.row lots (as in Springfield, Mass.), and in oth.ers large plots of land near the center were reserved as town property (as in Salem, Mass.).5 In larger towns, commons set aside as public grazing space were often just outside the most densely settled areas, as indicated in maps of Charlestown, Boston [Fig. 2], and New York [Fig. 3]. In many cases, there was no cen.tralized village, and the only commonly shared land was the meeting house lot. Boston Common was one of the earliest and largest commons, but others were established in Newport, R.I. (1713), Bristol, R.I. (1680),6 and Savannah, Ga. (1733) [Fig. 4].

The early central town commons were used for burying grounds and grazing land, in some cases with a pen or “close” for enclosing animals brought in from pasture.7 It has been suggested that in towns where the commons or greens were not regularly used for grazing, they still provided places to gather cattle in the event of Indian attack.8 It also has been noted that in New England the areas that became the central village com.mons in the nineteenth century were (with the exception of Boston Common) not a part of the colonial common land for pasturage and cultivation but instead derived from the meeting house lot.9

As economies changed, so did the function of agricultural and pastoral common lands. In New England, shifts in the use of common land were caused by changes in farming techniques and land tenure systems, and also by tensions over land use rights between newcomers and descendants of original settlers.10 During the eighteenth century the uses of town commons expanded to include pest houses for victims of infectious disease (as in Newburyport, Mass.), gun houses, and powder magazines. The open space was also a convenient stage for militia exercises and public gatherings of the citizenry, such as the fireworks display on Boston Common in 1765 or Joseph Pil.more’s preaching in 1770 to a crowd in Gloucester, N.J.

The American Revolution saw the disestablishment of church and town and, in New England, also saw the rise of the center village. This village type had a commercial core marked by a bounded corporate space (a green, common, or square) and surrounded by shops, a meeting house, and private dwellings [Fig. 5].11 These commons came to be used primarily as recreational and social arenas. Their landscaping reflected that use, and the spaces became more like parks. As towns prospered and grew, they passed ordinances restricting livestock on commons and approved initiatives to fence, plant, and otherwise improve previously undeveloped commons. William Bentley’s ongoing observations (1801, 1802) of Salem Common (later Washington Square) offer a detailed view of the process of improvement of a town common, as well as a glimpse of some of the civic politics involved. He described subscription campaigns to raise funds, techniques to level the ground, the installation of decorative gates [Fig. 6], and also the conflicting claims by the militia and the town council about rights to the space. The landscape designs, however, for these late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century commons remained fairly simple. Eighteenth-century views, such as Christian Remick’s 1768 painting of British Troops on the Boston Common [Fig. 7], show relatively sparse plantings with the exception of a double row of trees known as “The Mall,” shown in the foreground of the image. The layout, in Boston and in other locations, was often limited to a few simple paths or cart tracks with an ornamental gate or two to grace a well-railed or fenced boundary [Fig. 8].

In contrast, images of commons from the second quarter of the nineteenth century reveal complex circulation routes, tree-lined walks and avenues, ornamental iron fences, and, in the most elaborate examples, fountains made possible by the introduction of pressurized city water systems. John Warner Barber’s descriptions record how improvements (such as tree planting and digging ponds), even in smaller communities, were undertaken to enhance town commons [Fig. 9]. Fencing and control of animals allowed for the development of grass lawns. At some sites, such as Salem Common and the New Haven Common (the latter was also called a green), the space was intentionally leveled to create a smoother terrain. Like squares and parks, commons in the nine.teenth century continued to be important social gathering places and prominent stages for civic and patriotic celebrations.12 Towns such as Lexington, Mass., located battle monuments on their commons.13 Like other open urban spaces, commons were lauded for their beneficial, healthful qualities; this interest in public health often involved relocating the colonial burying grounds within the boundaries of commons.

Unlike the term “square” or “park,” how.ever, the reference to common seems to have had a particular association with the rural village. In 1802, at Salem, improve.ments such as grading and fencing led to the renaming of the Common as “Washington Square” to suit its new-found urban sophis.tication. The rural associations of the term were also valued by others. A. J. Downing’s choice of the term “common” (rather than that of green, parade, or park) to describe an open green space in the middle of his plan for a suburban neighborhood implied a nostalgic harkening to a mythic age of rural village solidarity.14

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