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Whose Common: 1750-1850

Smoker's Circle, on Boston Common

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Smoker's Circle, on Boston Common, 1854
"Smoker's Circle, On Boston Common" is a newspaper print from Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a periodical publication published in Boston between 1851 and 1859. Although the artist of the print was named Fernando Edwards Worcester, the individual behind the publication was a man named Frederick Gleason (Gleason 1851). It was published in 1852. The print portrays an image of men lounging on Boston Common and smoking cigars (Historic New England). They are dressed in fine attire and are accompanied by dogs. The field is densely populated with human figures and trees.

Material Composition

This artifact was originally a print in the weekly newspaper Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion. By the 1850s, periodical newspapers widely circulated after the advent of the penny press in the 1830s and 1840s (Steffen 2003, p. 383). Before the penny press was available, newspapers were only available through expensive subscriptions (Steffen 2003, p. 383). Newspapers had immeasurable public value because they connected civic affairs with the country's constituents (Steffen 2003, p. 391). Improvements in printing and paper-making technologies reduced the cost of producing newspapers and also augmented their circulation (Nord 2001, p. 94). Because of mid-19th-century technological successes, newspapers reached the public more effectively. This aided the industry of journalism while also ensuring information spread extensively. Information became more accessible to those outside of the wealthier classes. Gleason's Pictorial "won instant success" with the Boston community and proved to be profitable (Talbot 1904, p. 331). This newspaper publication was able to reach a wide following and was a financial triumph for those involved with its production. As a result, this print likely reached audiences beyond the city's upper class because it was printed in a weekly periodical after the advent of the penny press.
Smoker's Circle, on Boston Common Visual Elements
Visual Elements

Broadly, this newspaper print portrays an image of men lounging on Boston Common in 1852. The Common, now populated with a number of trees and park benches, takes on a different appearance in this image than in the ceramics from 1820. In 1822, under the leadership of Josiah Quincy, the city's government began to modify the city's aesthetics and physical landscape. Boston's moralists endorsed objects of sight that would elevate the spectator’s character (Clark 2018, pp. 17-18). Indeed, the early 19th century brought unprecedented population growth, immigration, and industrialization to the city along with heightened poverty, uncollected waste, and crippling infrastructure; Boston’s population doubled between 1790 and 1820 and the city grew "denser, messier, and more Dickensian" in its social contrasts (Clark 2018, pp. 18-26). Reform of the city's physical landscape was in response to the negative externalities that came with the broader trends of industrialization and population growth. Elite Bostonians sought to clean the streets by establishing morally inspiring landmarks and removing what they deemed to be sources of vice, including people with mental health problems and criminals (Clark 2018, p. 18). This was a phenomenon that was driven by elitist beliefs regarding public morality. Urban reform swept through the city in the period prior to the publication of "Smoker's Circle, on Boston Common." As part of this urban renewal process, Mayor Quincy sought to reform pasturage on the Common by limiting the number of cows and eliminating their ability to freely roam the city's streets untended (Rawson 2014, p. 42). Bostonians never fought more fiercely over the Common's aesthetics, as the removal of cows threatened the labor and life practices of the working class (Rawson 2014, p. 49). Eventually cows were removed, unleashing a series of rapid physical changes to Boston Common with the intention of elevating the land from a pasture to a recreational park. Over 200 trees were planted and the space was finally enclosed in 1836 (Rawson 2014, p. 64-65).
When Boston Common shed its cows in 1830, it became the largest municipal green space in America dedicated entirely to passive recreation (Rawson 2014, p. 73). In this print, it is evident that recreational relationships with the Common had usurped its use as a pastoral space. Underneath trees and dispersed throughout the ground, a crowd of men are found smoking on the grass and on park benches. The men are all dressed in suits. In this period, an emerging middle class sought to be included in genteel circles and therefore attached substantial social value to the Common's recreational amenities and the refinement they conferred (Rawson 2014, p. 49). People from middle-class backgrounds began to value the Common for access to genteel virtues and leisure. Consequently, this was a space in which average Bostonians could engage in refined behavior and intermix with the city's elites; after largely avoiding the Common in prior decades, Bostonian aristocrats began to return to the Common for recreational activities after it was transformed into a public park (Rawson 2014, p. 67). Wealthy white Bostonians returned because it offered the experience of nature's "peaceful, benign, healthful, and holy" attributes through morning walks and pleasant conversation (Rawson 2014, p. 67). As a result, this was a space that wealthier Bostonians and the middle class both occupied for access to the land's natural virtues and moral improvement. These traits are indicative of the contemporaneous emergence of transcendentalism in environmental philosophy in New England. Transcendentalism emerged in the first half of the 19th century, greatly influencing relationships with nature by introducing German romantic aesthetic principles (Ruff 2015, p. 149). By the 1840s, Frederick Law Olmsted believed that it was the responsibility of the government to provide its urban citizens with the social and cultural advantages provided by nature, endorsing the provision of public parks and recreational greens to promote the harmonious cooperation of man and nature (Ruff 2015, pp. 154-155). To contemporary leaders in transcendental thought, the availability of recreational greenery contributed to Boston's project of moral reform in the city.
In this print, human relationships with the land and with each other suggest the influence of transcendental principles. While the ceramic "Plate" lent a central focus to the State House, this depiction of the Common foregrounds nature and almost entirely leaves out the built environment. Prints of Boston Common tended to exclude the State House after the 1820s, placing more emphasis on the land's natural elements than ever before (Rawson 2014, pp. 68-69). This depiction of the Common as a recreational space, in which humans could enjoy the pleasures of nature, upheld the refined interests of the upper class. Worcester's portrayal of the park exhibits how men would lounge, smoke, and socialize comfortably under the trees. Because transcendental relationships with nature prioritized recreation, its influence on Boston Common fostered public morality by allowing humans to build harmonious relationships with the land and with each other. The land provided natural virtues that shaped genteel moral principles, which was central to the relationships cultivated in the park. From this depiction of the Common, it is evident that men used this space to uphold their gentility by spending recreational time in the presence of nature and other refined individuals. This image posits that Boston Common was enjoyed by aristocratic white men and those aspiring to reach the upper class.
An interesting and salient aspect of this image is that it appears to entirely omit the presence of women and children in addition to any suggestion of mixed-race usage on the Common. Americans in the mid 19th century largely subscribed to the notion that men and women occupied separate spheres, with middle- and upper-class women occupying a more domestic role (Kerber 1988, pp. 9-10). However, women were intimately involved with the Common's reform movement and its transformation from a pasture to a park was partially because cows and pastural labor inhibited women and children from fully enjoying the land (Rawson 2014, p. 62). Consequently, it would be expected that women and children would also use Boston Common as a recreational park in the 1850s. Whether Worcester consciously omitted women from his artwork or whether women were not present on the Common in this specific instance is unknown. In either scenario, this gendered depiction of Boston Common exhibits a level of inequality in 19th-century America. It does so by attempting to offer a visual of how people recreationally used the Common and subliminally conveying that this use was restricted to white men engaged with public refinement and transcendental relationships with the land. Meanwhile womens' relationships with nature, and those of people of color in Boston, are not represented.
Smoker's Circle, on Boston Common Display & Performance Display & Performance

This print was one page within a broader edition of the Gleason's Pictorial weekly newspaper. As a result, this artifact was one of many identical prints of the newspaper. Because of the paper's instant success with the Boston community and its profitability, this print would have reached a wide audience throughout the city. In every sizable city, dozens of businesses beckoned customers with the promise of conversation, meals, a cup of coffee, lodging, books, and access to newspapers (Steffen 2003, p. 408). Many Bostonians would have had access to identical prints of this newspaper and socialized over it. Due to this, the print would have had a social context. Newspapers were viewed as a cultural resource of vital interest to the public (Steffen 2003, pp. 418-419). Thus, this print participated in the larger public phenomenon of information diffusion. Technological improvements allowed newspapers to affect mainstream political beliefs; newspapers would have had their own political virtues, and many papers would have had optimism about moral reform after coming out of the "Age of Reform" (Nord 2001, pp. 95-104). Heightened accessibility to newspapers allowed the public to engage with political and civic virtues. This print's portrayal of a reformed and recreational Boston Common endorses emerging transcendental philosophies about the benefits of urban access to recreational parks and natural landscapes. By exhibiting how genteel men enjoyed themselves on a recreational version of the Common, this print likely participated in civic engagement with the city's urban reform.