Boston and Beyond

This Drive Comes From...

National Geographic Driving Guide: New England

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This drive in eastern Massachusetts links the birthplaces of two American revolutions—the American Revolution itself, which gained intellectual force in Boston and flashed into life when the muskets fired on Lexington Green, and the American industrial revolution, which began when capital and labor were added to the force of the Merrimack River at Lowell and Lawrence. Along the way is Concord, where the American literary renaissance flowered more than a century ago.

The route begins in Boston, crosses the Charles River to Cambridge, then sets out, like Paul Revere, for Lexington and Concord. After circling west through the manicured countryside of Boston's western suburbs, the drive takes in the former textile cities of Lowell and Lawrence. CONTINUED

- Boston
- Cambridge
- Lexington
- Concord
- Wayside
- Lowell

(Continued From Top)

Boston
Most of Boston's (Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau +1 617 536 4100 or 800 888 5515) principal attractions are tucked onto the small peninsula where, in 1630, the Puritans founded their “city on a hill.” The Revolutionary era comes to life along the Freedom Trail, a 2.5-mile [4-kilometer] walking route that connects 16 landmarks related to American independence. It begins downtown at Boston Common, the nation’s oldest public park, wanders through the historic North End, and ends up across the Charles River at the Charlestown Navy Yard. (For information on schedules and fees for sites listed below, call or visit the Boston National Historical Park Visitor Center, 15 State St. +1 617 242 5642. Or stop by the Visitor Information Center on Boston Common, Tremont and Park Sts.)

Old State House in the heart of downtown Boston

Photograph © Sara Leen

Along the way you’ll visit the Bulfinch-designed Massachusetts State House (Beacon St.), the state government seat for 200 years; Park Street Church (Park and Tremont Sts.), where abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison made his first Boston speech in 1829; and the Old Granary Burying Ground (Tremont St.), the resting place of Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and other patriots. Sam Adams launched the Boston Tea Party at the Old South Meeting House (310 Washington St.), while the 1713 Old State House (State St.) was the colonial capitol. Faneuil Hall (Merchants Row), a popular gathering place for colonial dissidents, became known as the Cradle of Liberty.

Parading through Boston's historic North End

Photograph © Vincent J. Musi

The trail continues in Boston’s North End, where the circa 1680 Paul Revere House (19 North Sq.) is the oldest building in downtown Boston. Nearby, signal lanterns that hung at the Old North Church (193 Salem St.) warned citizens of British troop movements on the eve of the battles of Lexington and Concord.
Across the Charles River in Charlestown, the Battle of Bunker Hill is re-created in a multimedia diorama at the Bunker Hill Pavilion (55 Constitution Rd.). Just uphill, visitors can climb the 220-foot [67.1-meter] granite Bunker Hill Monument. The trail ends at the Charlestown Navy Yard, berth of the nearly 200-year-old U.S.S. Constitution. A museum explains the ship’s undefeated career and how it earned the name Old Ironsides.
Not all of Boston’s important attractions are on the Freedom Trail. The New England Aquarium (Central Wharf. +1 617 973 5200. Adm. fee) features a four-story saltwater tank alive with tropical fish from the Atlantic Ocean. An original tea chest is one of many exhibits at the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum (Congress St. Bridge. +1 617 338 1773. Mar.-Nov.; Adm. fee), housed in a replica of one of the infamous tea party ships. At the fun-filled Children’s Museum (300 Congress St. +1 617 426 8855. Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee), kids can walk on a giant’s desk (where pencils and erasers are 12 times their normal size) and explore a two-story Japanese house. Next door, the Computer Museum (300 Congress St. +1 617 426 2800. Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee) lets visitors experiment with the latest uses of computer technology; exhibits also document computer history from the vacuum-tube era to the present.
The narrow, gaslit streets of Beacon Hill (Beacon St. between Cambridge St. and the Charles River. Walking tour info +1 617 742 1854) are worth a few hours’ stroll for their early 19th-century architecture and abundant historical associations. Two worthwhile stops: the African Meeting House (8 Smith Ct., off Joy St. +1 617 742 1854. Daily Memorial Day-Labor Day, Mon.-Fri. rest of year; donations), a restored 1806 church in which the New England Antislavery Society was founded in 1832, and the Harrison Gray Otis House (141 Cambridge St. +1 617 227 3956. Tues.-Sat.; Adm. fee), which offers a glimpse of genteel Boston society in the years after the Revolution.
Boston’s preeminent art museums are the Museum of Fine Arts (465 Huntington Ave. +1 617 267 9300. Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee), world famous for its French Impressionist paintings, Asiatic collections, and American paintings and decorative arts, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (280 The Fenway. +1 617 566 1401. Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee), a replica of a Venetian palazzo built in 1899 by Mrs. Gardner to house her esteemed art collection. Since her death in 1924, nothing has been added or sold from her original holdings, which are strongest in Italian Renaissance art but span 30 centuries. Try to arrange your visit to coincide with one of the delightful concerts, held in the Tapestry Room.
About 3 miles [4.8 kilometers] south of downtown, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum (Columbia Point. +1 617 929 4523. Adm. fee) offers an in-depth look at the life and legacy of the President whom Bostonians claim as their own. On the other side of town, hundreds of participatory exhibits at the Museum of Science (Science Park. +1 617 723 2500. Adm. fee) explain everything from basic principles to applied technology.

Cambridge

Statue of John Harvard, Harvard Yard, Cambridge

Photograph © Vincent J. Musi

Leaving Boston, drive across the Charles River to Cambridge (Office for Tourism +1 617 441 2884 or 800 862 5678. Visitor Information booth at Harvard Sq. subway stop), one of the world’s great educational centers. At Harvard Square, walk through the iron gates into Harvard Yard, the heart of 360-year-old Harvard University (Visitor information +1 617 495 1573). Harvard has three art museums (+1 617 495 9400. Tues.-Sun.; One adm. fee for all): the Fogg (32 Quincy St.), featuring American and European collections; the Busch-Reisinger (Werner Otto Hall; enter through Fogg), specializing in northern European art, particularly German expressionism; and the Arthur M. Sackler (485 Broadway), concentrating on classical, Asian, and Islamic art. The university’s Museums of Cultural and Natural History (26 Oxford St. +1 617 495 3045. Adm. fee) encompass the Botanical Museum, with its collection of 3,000 exquisitely detailed glass flowers; the Mineralogical and Geological Museum; the Museum of Comparative Zoology; and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
From Harvard Square drive west on Brattle Street to the Longfellow National Historic Site (105 Brattle St. +1 617 876 4491. May-Oct. Wed.-Sun.; Adm. fee), the 1759 Georgian mansion where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow resided for over 40 years. Here you can see many of the poet’s books and furnishings.

Lexington

Commemorating the Battle of Lexington, Lexington Green

Photograph © Vincent J. Musi

Return to Harvard Square and take Massachusetts Avenue 10 miles [16.1 kilometers] west to Lexington (Greater Merrimack Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau +1 508 459 6150 or 800 443 3332). On a cool morning in April 1775 Minute Men and British soldiers exchanged the first shots of the American Revolution at Lexington Green. Several sites around the green recall the events leading up to that day. For orientation, stop by the Lexington Visitor Center (1875 Massachusetts Ave. +1 617 862 1450), where a detailed diorama explains the battle. Nearby are the 1709 Buckman Tavern (1 Bedford St. +1 617 862 5598. Mid-April–Oct.; Adm. fee), furnished as it was when the Minute Men gathered here before the battle; and the Hancock-Clarke House (36 Hancock St. +1 617 861 0928. Mid-April–Oct.; Adm. fee), where Paul Revere and William Dawes warned Samuel Adams and John Hancock of the impending attack.
Just outside downtown Lexington, the British used Munroe Tavern (1332 Massachusetts Ave. +1 617 862 1703. Mid-April–Oct.; Adm. fee) as a field headquarters and hospital after the Battle of Concord. It looks as it did then, right down to a bullet hole in the ceiling.
Around the corner at the Museum of Our National Heritage (33 Marrett Rd. +1 617 861 6559), the Scottish Rite Masonic order offers changing exhibits and an extensive library of American history and society.
Proceed west on Massachusetts Avenue or Mass. 2A to Minute Man National Historical Park (+1 508 369 6993), which straddles much of the Battle Road between Lexington and Concord. A film and displays at the Battle Road Visitor Center (Mass. 2A. +1 617 862 7753. Mid-April–Oct.) explain troop movements. Nearby, part of the Battle Road is preserved as a footpath.

Concord

North Bridge in Concord

Photograph © Vincent J. Musi

Several miles west in Concord, another unit of the park centers around a replica of the North Bridge, marking the spot where the “shot heard round the world” was fired on April 19, 1775. Daniel Chester French’s famous statue of the Minute Man with his plow and musket stands nearby, and a film, diorama, and colonial-era military paraphernalia at the North Bridge Visitor Center (174 Liberty St. +1 508 369 6993) detail battle events.
Concord’s fame spills into the literary realm, for it was here that the American literary renaissance flourished a century and a half ago. In 1834-35 essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson resided at the Old Manse (269 Monument St. +1 508 369 3909. Mid-April–Oct. Wed.-Mon.) while writing his seminal essay Nature. Later, Nathaniel Hawthorne rented the colonial house and wrote Mosses from an Old Manse. Emerson and Hawthorne memorabilia are on display.
Hawthorne also lived at The Wayside (455 Lexington Rd. +1 508 369 6975. Mid-Apr.–Oct. Thurs.-Tues.; Adm. fee), a part of the historical park. Later famous residents were the Alcott family, including the transcendentalist philosopher A. Bronson Alcott and his daughter, author Louisa May Alcott. The Alcotts lived for a much longer time at the nearby Orchard House (399 Lexington Rd. +1 508 369 4118. Closed first two weeks in Jan.; Adm. fee), a rambling, possibly pre-1700 structure that’s almost entirely furnished with Alcott furniture and possessions. Louisa May wrote Little Women here. Especially endearing are the bedroom wall drawings by her sister May Alcott, who became an accomplished artist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Concord, lived for nearly 50 years in the Emerson House (28 Cambridge Tpk. +1 508 369 2236. Mid-Apr.–Oct. Thurs.-Sun.; Adm. fee), which has been preserved with almost all its furnishings. His study was moved intact across the street to the Concord Museum (200 Lexington Rd. +1 508 369 9609. Adm. fee). Devoted to the town’s history from Indian times through the 20th century, the museum’s splendidly furnished period rooms document three centuries of tastes and occupations. Rounding out the collection are costumes, old silver, weapons used during the Battle of Concord, and a fascinating room filled with the possessions of a man who thought little of possessions—Concord’s own Henry David Thoreau.
Thoreau himself is at rest on Autho’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Mass. 62), just outside busy Concord center. Here too are the graves of Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and the sculptor Daniel Chester French.
The drive heads south out of town to a place forever associated with Thoreau, Walden Pond (Walden Pond State Reservation. Mass. 126. +1 978 369 3254. No pets. Park closes when parking lot reaches capacity. Parking fee in summer). The half-mile-long [0.8-kilometer-long] pond and its surrounding woods are popular for swimming, canoeing, picnicking, fishing, and strolling. But people mainly come here to experience first hand some of what Thoreau wrote about when he spent two years here. Near the park entrance stands a furnished, full-size replica of his tiny cabin, along with a statue of Thoreau and interpretive displays. A cairn marks the site where his cabin stood, accessible by a half-mile [0.8-kilometer] trail from the parking area.

Wayside
The drive rambles south to Wayland, then heads west on US 20—in colonial times the Boston Post Road. A bit more than 5 miles [8.1 kilometers] ahead is the turnoff for the Wayside Inn (Wayside Inn Rd. +1 508 443 1776. Reservations recommended for lodging and meals). Inside the big, gambrel-roofed building you’ll find a warren of cozy, low-ceilinged rooms, many with fireplaces, and ten upstairs guest chambers. A tavern as early as 1706, the inn became famous—and received its name—when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote Tales of a Wayside Inn, a sort of Yankee Canterbury Tales, after visiting in 1863. Henry Ford restored the inn in the 1920s and built on the grounds a working gristmill and the nonsectarian Mary-Martha Chapel.
Backtracking on US 20 to South Sudbury, the route then heads north through Stow to Bolton. This portion of the drive takes in attractive country towns and rolling countryside laced with apple orchards.
At Bolton, drive north on Harvard and Bolton Roads to Harvard, where the Fruitlands Museums (102 Prospect Hill Rd. +1 508 456 3924. Mid-May–mid-Oct. Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee) recall the story of the utopian experiment undertaken here by A. Bronson Alcott and his followers in 1843-44. They planned to live communally and self-sufficiently, but experience showed them to be better talkers than farmers; they abandoned Fruitlands after seven months. The Fruitlands farmhouse is now a museum of the transcendentalist movement. On the 200-acre [80.9 hectare] grounds are museums of Shaker life, American Indian arts and crafts, and 19th-century American portraits and landscape paintings.
From Harvard, follow Littleton Road to Littleton. Stretch your legs at the Oak Hill—Tophet Chasm Conservation Land (King and Oak Hill Roads off Mass. 110. +1 508 486 9537). One trail leads to a swamp within the cliff-enclosed chasm, and another climbs up to Summit Rock for views all the way to Boston.

Lowell

Looms in Boott Cotton Mills Museum, Lowell

Photograph © Vincent J. Musi

East on Mass. 110 sprawls Lowell (Greater Merrimack Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau +1 508 459 6150 or 800 443 3332), where an expansive downtown district of canals and one-time textile mills has been set aside as Lowell National Historical Park (Visitor Center, 246 Market St. +1 508 970 5000). A film and exhibits at the Visitor Center tell the story of Lowell’s planned development as an industrial city in the early 19th century, based on the waterpower of the Merrimack River and its century of prowess as a textile capital. From the center, venture either alone or with a guided tour (in summer, aboard restored trolleys and canal barges) to other park sites. The Working People Exhibit (40 French St. +1 508 970 5000. Call for schedule) describes the hard lives of Lowell’s immigrant mill workers and Yankee farm girls turned factory hands. A whole floor of working early 20th-century power looms at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum (Foot of John St. +1 508 970 5000. Adm. fee) make a racket—and a stream of cotton cloth sold as dish towels in the gift shop. The mill’s exhibit on capital, labor, and the organization of Lowell’s industries is extremely informative.
Around the corner on Bridge Street is one of the finest memorials to any writer anywhere. Made of stark steel monoliths, the Kerouac Commemorative (Eastern Canal Park) bears passages from the works of Lowell native Jack Kerouac.
Follow Mass. 110 east along the Merrimack River to Lawrence (Chamber of Commerce +1 508 686 0900), another former textile city. The Lawrence Heritage State Park (Visitor Center, Canal St. at Jackson. +1 508 794 1655) offers an excellent perspective on the city’s industrial experience, particularly with regard to the 1912 Bread and Roses strike, which galvanized the American labor movement. Its appellation came from a poem by James Oppenheim describing the 25,000 textile workers as striking for basic necessities (bread) plus a little extra (roses). A film fleshes out the history, while vivid interpretive exhibits include a full-size replica of a tenement kitchen.