Boston National Historic Park

Boston National Historical Park is an odd kind of park. There is no gate and no single piece of ground. It is a chain of buildings and sites scattered across downtown Boston and Charlestown, most of them still standing in busy streets, and it was put together in 1974 to tie the Revolutionary story into one route.

The sites are the ones schoolchildren learn. Faneuil Hall, where town meetings argued over taxes. The Old State House, where the Declaration of Independence was read to Bostonians from the balcony in 1776. The Old South Meeting House, where the crowd gathered before the Tea Party. Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung. Paul Revere's house in the North End, the oldest building left in downtown Boston. Dorchester Heights, where cannon hauled from Fort Ticonderoga forced the British to leave the city in March 1776.

Across the river sit the Bunker Hill Monument and the Charlestown Navy Yard. The monument is a granite obelisk begun in 1825 and finished in the early 1840s, and it stands on Breed's Hill, where most of the fighting actually happened. The Navy Yard is home to the USS Constitution, launched in 1797 and nicknamed Old Ironsides during the War of 1812. She is still a commissioned ship of the Navy.

A good deal of this board is not about the Revolution at all, and that is what makes it fun. There are bird's-eye views and panoramic photographs of the whole city, the Public Garden with its swan boats, WPA posters and old advertising. There is also baseball, plenty of it. Fenway Park opened in 1912, and Boston baseball cards and team pictures fill out a side of the city that the history books skip.

Paul Revere is worth a second look when you go through the pictures. He was a silversmith and engraver first, and his own engraving of the Boston Massacre was one of the most effective pieces of propaganda of its day. His fame as a rider came later, mostly from Longfellow's poem of 1860. Many of the prints of his ride were made long after, and they show the poem more than the night itself.