Worcester Common (Worcester, Massachusetts) | park

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Worcester City Common. From the very beginning this area has been used as a common. In the early days, it was a pasture, burying ground, fairground, militia-training ground and market day site containing twenty acres. Later, the North-South trains bisected it. Today, twenty acres has shrunk to five and the area is used as a gathering ground for fairs and celebrations.

It contains a partially-restored early burial ground with a memorial to Colonel Timothy Bigelow, who trained a company of minutemen here and answered the call to join the revolt against the British at Concord and Lexington in 1775. At the northeast corner of the Common is the Soldiers Monument, a Civil War Memorial. Also present are memorials to the heroes of World War II and the Vietnam conflict. On the north side of the Common is the monument to the Irish immigrants who built the Blackstone Canal and the railroad, and worked in the factories during the boom time of the mid-eighteenth century.