Worcester ( ) is a city in the state of Massachusetts
in the United States of America
. Named after Worcester
, England
, the city
had a population of 172,648 in the 2000 census, making it the second
or third largest city in New England.
It is the
county seat of Worcester County
.Worcester is located approximately 40 miles
west of Boston
, and marks the western periphery of the
Boston-Worcester-Manchester (MA-RI-NH) U.S. Census
Combined Statistical Area (CSA).
Due to its location in
Central
Massachusetts, Worcester is often referred to as the
"Heart
of the Commonwealth." The city is also noted for its
mill era Victorian architecture.
History
Early
Bird's-eye view, c.
The Pakachoag tribe of the
Nipmuc nation of
Native
Americans were the indigenous settlers of the area. They called
it Quinsigamond, meaning "fishing place for
pickerel."
Lake Quinsigamond
provided fine hunting and
fishing grounds a short distance from their
main village near a spring on
Pakachoag Hill in what is now Auburn
. Mt. Wachusett was their sacred place.
Worcester was first settled by the
English in 1673, but the modest settlement of
six or seven houses was burned to the ground during
King Philip's War on December 2, 1675,
when settlers were either killed or driven off. The town was
subsequently resettled and was incorporated in 1684. On
September 10 of that year,
Daniel Gookin and others petitioned to have
the town's name officially changed from Quinsigamond to Worcester.
However, its inhabitants were still vulnerable to attack, and some,
such as Samuel Lenorson Jr., were taken hostage by natives during
the 1690s. When
Queen Anne's War
started in 1702, the town was again abandoned by its English
inhabitants except for Diggory Sargent.
Sargent was later
tomahawked, as was his wife, who was
too weak to make the journey on foot to Canada
.
Their children were taken to Canada and survived.
In 1713, Worcester was resettled for the third time, permanently,
which ruled, by Jonas Rice, whose farm was located atop Union Hill.
Named
after the historic city of Worcester, England, Worcester
[= War + cester camp] was incorporated as a town in 1722
and chartered as a city in 1848. When the government of
Worcester County was established on April 2, 1731, Worcester was
chosen as shire town (later known as a
county seat). From that date until the
dissolution of the county government on July 1, 1998, it was the
only county seat.
Revolutionary Period
As political tensions rose in the months before the
Revolution, Worcester served as a center
of revolutionary activity. Because it was an important
munitions depot, Worcester was targeted for attack
by
Loyalist general
Thomas Gage. However, officers sent
secretly to inspect the munitions depot were discovered by
Patriot Timothy Bigelow.
General
Gage then decided to move on to the second munitions depot in
Lexington
. In 1775, determining that Boston
was too
dangerous, Isaiah Thomas moved his
newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy,
to Worcester. The Massachusetts Spy was one of the
few papers published continuously during the Revolution.
On July
14, 1776, Isaiah Thomas, intercepting the packet from Philadelphia
to Boston, performed the first public reading of
the Declaration of
Independence ever in front of Worcester
City Hall
. In 1812, Thomas founded the American
Antiquarian Society
, a research library holding nearly two thirds of
the items known to have been printed in America from 1639 through
1820. The Society's holdings from 1821 to 1876
compare favorably with those of the Library of Congress
and other major research libraries.
Industrial Revolution
American Steel & Wire Company,
c.
1905, employer of about 5,000
Known for innovation in
commerce,
industry,
education, and
social thought, Worcester and the nearby
Blackstone Valley claim their historic
role as birthplace of the American
Industrial Revolution.
Ichabod Washburn, an early
industrialist, developed a process for
extruding steel wire. His company, Washburn & Moen, founded in
1831, was "the company that '
barbed-wire
fenced the
American West,'" and
held the battle lines during
World War
I. In 1840, Loring Coes invented the
monkey wrench. In the 1850s, George Crompton
and L.J. & F.B. Knowles founded companies that manufactured
textile looms which
drove the Industrial Revolution. Another Worcester innovator,
physician Russel Howes, invented the first
envelope folding machine in 1856. It could produce
25,000 envelopes in ten hours, using three operators.
Women found economic opportunity in Worcester. An early female
entrepreneur,
Esther Howland,
designed and manufactured the first American
valentine cards in 1847. Women also found
opportunity in The Royal Worcester Corset Factory, a company that
provided employment opportunity for 1200 women; it was the largest
employer of women in the United States in 1908.
Several entrepreneurs brought growth to Worcester's economy during
this period.
John Jeppson, a skilled potter, emigrated from Hoganas
, Sweden
to Worcester
in search of a better life. In Worcester he founded Norton
Company, now
Saint-Gobain, the world's
largest manufacturer and supplier of performance engineered
abrasives for technical manufacturing and
commercial applications, in addition to general household and
automotive refinishing. Jeppson created economic opportunity for
the thousands of his countrymen who followed him to Worcester, and
for others, too. Many
Irish immigrants
settled in Worcester during this period, as well. They helped build
the
railroad and
Blackstone Canal, further driving
Worcester's economic engine.
An innovative form of affordable housing appeared in the 19th
century: the
three-decker. Hundreds of
these houses were built, affording capacious, comfortable
apartments for a homeowner and two tenants. Many extended families
settled in these houses, developing safe, stable neighborhoods for
city factory workers.
20th centuryWyman Gordon manufactured ...David Clark manufactured
space suits for almost all NASA space explorations.
Wyman
Late 20th and early 21st century
In
December 1999, the Worcester Cold Storage Fire
received national attention. Two homeless
people, deemed mentally disabled, accidentally knocked over a lit
candle in an abandoned cold storage warehouse, igniting a
conflagration. Six firefighters lost their lives in an attempt to
rescue the homeless people. Less than two years before the attacks
on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, this fire was one
of the worst firefighting tragedies of the late 20th-century.
President
Bill Clinton, Vice President
Al Gore, and other local and national
dignitaries attended services and a memorial program.
The first decade of the 21st century saw the closing and creation
of major cultural instutions in the city. In April 2006, the
Worcester Common Outlets, a
1,000,000 square foot mall that occupies a large swath of downtown
Worcester was planned to be demolished as to make way for the
long-planned "City Square," a multi-use collaboration of several
downtown buildings for commercial, retail, and residential use. The
Worcester Foothills
Theatre, formerly located in the Outlets, "suspended
operations" on May 10, 2009 due to lack of funding. It is unclear
if it will ever reopen. Also, a year earlier, in March 2008, the
Hanover Theatre
for the Performing Arts opened as a venue for touring broadway
style shows.
Today,
Worcester is emerging as an attractive alternative to the rest of
Greater Boston due to its more
affordable home prices and its relatively close commuting distance
to Boston and the communities of Metrowest.
Pronunciation
"Worcester" is correctly pronounced with two
syllables, not three ( ).
Geography
Worcester is located at (42.268843, -71.803774).
Worcester and surrounding area,
looking north at 3700 feet (1128 m)
According to the
United
States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of
38.6 square miles (99.9 km²), of which, 37.6 square
miles (97.3 km²) of it is land and 1.0 square miles
(2.6 km²) of it (2.59%) is water.
Worcester is bordered
by the towns of Auburn, Grafton
, Holden
, Leicester
, Millbury
, Paxton
, Shrewsbury
, and West Boylston
. These towns serve as some of the bedroom
communities and suburbs of the greater Worcester area.
The
Blackstone River passes
through Worcester. Its headwaters are found in Institute Park. The
river courses underground through the center of the city, and
emerges at the foot of College Hill, flowing through Quinsigamond
Village and into Millbury. Water Street, originally the Blackstone
Canal, is emerging as the center of the "Canal District." Legend
has it that the city sits atop seven hills: Airport Hill, Bancroft
Hill, Belmont Hill (Bell Hill),
Grafton
Hill, Green Hill, Pakachoag Hill and Vernon Hill. Actually,
there are more than seven hills. Other hills include; Indian Hill,
Poet's Hill, Wigwam Hill among others.
Worcester's lakes
include:Lake
Quinsigamond, the site of rowing
competitions, Indian Lake, Bell Pond, and Coes Pond.
Worcester counts within its borders over 1,200 acres (5 km²)
of publicly owned property. Elm Park, purchased in 1854 and laid
out by
Frederick Law Olmsted,
was not only the first public park in the city (after the 8 acre
(32,000 m²) City Common from 1669) but also one of the first public
parks in the U.S. Both the City Common and Elm Park are listed in
the
National
Register of Historic Places. In 1903 the Green family donated
the 549 acres (2.2 km²) of Green Hill area land to the city,
making Green Hill Park the largest in the city.
Green Hill
Park Shelter
, built in 1910 is on the National Register of
Historic Places]]. In June 2002, city and state leaders
dedicated the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Green
Hill Park grounds. Other parks include: Newton Hill, East Park,
Morgan Park, Shore Park, Crompton Park, Hadwen Park and University
Park.
Neighborhoods
Dodge Park gazebo
- North Worcester
- Greendale
- Burncoat
- Summit
- Indian Hill
- Indian Lake
- Lincoln Street
- Green Hill Park
- West Side
- Tatnuck
- West Tatnuck
- Mill Street
- Worcester Airport
- Park Ave
- Downtown
- Lincoln Square
- Federal Square
- Shrewsbury Street
- Lake Avenue/Quinsigamond Lake
- Bell Hill
- Grafton Hill
- Vernon Hill
- Kelley Square/Water Street
- Green Island(a.k.a.the island)
- College Hill
- Quinsigamond Village
- South Worcester
- Main South
- Cambridge Street
- Webster Square
- Plantation Street
- Sunderland/Massasoit Road/Rice Square
Demographics
Successive waves of immigrants have in the past formed coherent
ethnic enclaves, some of which continue to contribute to the rich
ethnic texture of Worcester today.
Swedessettled in Quinsigamond Village and
Greendale, Italians settled along Shrewsbury Street, Irish and
Polish settled around Kelly Square, Lithuanians settled on Vernon
Hill, and Jews built their first synagogue on Grafton Hill. The
African-American community has existed since colonial times. Since
the late 1800s, Grafton Hill and Vernon Hill have been points of
entry for immigrants from all over the world:
Irish,
Italians,
Lithuanians, Poles, Syrians, Lebanese, Puerto Ricans, French
Canadians, and more recently, Albanians and Brazilians. Other
prominent groups include Russians, Armenians, Greeks, Vietnamese,
Liberians, and Congolese.
City skyline, looking northeast from
Queen Street
Prior to the 2000 census Worcester was the second largest city in
New England, second only to Boston.
According to a 2006 estimate this title
has been reclaimed after briefly losing it to Providence
in the 2000 census.As of the
censusof 2000, there were 172,648 people, 67,028
households, and 39,211 families residing in the city. The
population densitywas 4,596.5 people per
square mile (1,774.8/km²). There were 70,723 housing units at an
average density of 1,882.9/sq mi (727.0/km²). The racial
makeup of the city was 77.11%
White, 6.89%
African American, 0.45%
Native American, 4.87%
Asian, 0.06%
Pacific Islander, 7.24% from
other races, and 3.39%
from two or more races.
Hispanicor
Latinoof any race were 15.15% of the
population. The top 5 largest ancestries include:
Irish(19.0%),
Italian(11.6%),
French(10.3%),
English(6.2%), and
Polish(6.1%)
[14866]
There were 67,028 households out of which 29.0% had children under
the age of 18 living with them, 38.3% were
married couplesliving together, 15.6% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 41.5% were non-families.
33.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 12.2% had
someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average
household size was 2.41 and the average family size was 3.11.
The population is spread out with 23.6% under the age of 18, 13.3%
from 18 to 24, 30.3% from 25 to 44, 18.6% from 45 to 64, and 14.1%
who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. For
every 100 females there were 92.4 males. For every 100 females age
18 and over, there were 88.7 males.
The median household income is $35,623, and the median family
income is $42,988. Males had a median income of $36,190 versus
$28,522 for females. The
per capita
incomeis $18,614. About 14.1% of families and 17.9% of the
population were below the
poverty line,
including 24.6% of those under age 18 and 11.6% of those age 65 or
over. Of the city's population over 25, 76.7% are high school
graduates and 23.3% have a bachelor's degree.
Climate
Worcester's continental climate is typical of the
New
England
region.The weather changes rapidly owing to
the confluence of warm, humid air from the southwest; cool, dry air
from the north; and the moderating influence of the Atlantic Ocean
to the east. Summers are typically warm and humid, while winters
are cold, windy and snowy. New Englanders expect snow as early as
October (rarely), and as late as May.
The USDA
classifies the city as hardiness zone 5.
The hottest month is July, with an average high of
79 °
F(26 °
C) and a low of 61 °F (16 °C). The coldest
month is January, with an average high of 32 °F (0 °C)
and a low of 16 °F (-8 °C). Periods exceeding in summer
and below in winter are not uncommon, but rarely prolonged. The
all-time record high temperature is 102 °F (38.8 °C),
recorded on July 4, 1911. The all-time record low temperature is
-24 °F (-31.1 °C), recorded on February 16, 1943.
The city averages 47.3
in(1,200 mm)
of
precipitationa year,
including averaging 68 in (172 cm) of snowfall a season,
receiving more snow than coastal locations less than 40 miles
(64 km) away.
Massachusetts' geographic location's jutting
out into the North
Atlantic
also make
the city very prone to Nor'easter weather
systems that can dump more than 20 in (50 cm) of snow on the
region in one storm event.
While rare, the city has had its share of extreme weather. On
September 21, 1938, the city was hit by the brutal
New England Hurricane of 1938.
Fifteen years later, Worcester was hit by a
tornadothat killed
94 people. The deadliest tornado in New England history, it damaged
a large part of the city and surrounding towns.
It struck Assumption Preparatory School,
now the site of Quinsigamond Community
College
.
Government
Worcester is governed by a Council-manager government with a popularly elected mayor. A city council acts as the legislative body, and the council-appointed manager handles the traditional day-to-day chief executive functions.
City councilors can run as either a representative of a city
district or as an at-large candidate. The winning at-large
candidate who receives the greatest number of votes for mayor
becomes the mayor (at large councilor candidates must ask to be
removed from the ballot for mayor if they do not want to be listed
on the mayoral ballot). As a result, voters must vote for their
mayoral candidate twice, once as an at large councilor, and once as
the mayor. The mayor has no more authority than other city
councilors, but is the ceremonial head of the city and chair of the
city council and school committee. Currently, there are 11
councilors: 6 at-large and 5 district.
Worcester's first
charter, which went into
effect in 1848, established a Mayor/
Bicameralform of government. Together, the two
chambers — the 11-member Board of
Aldermenand the 30-member Common Council — were
vested with complete legislative powers. The mayor handled all
administrative departments, though appointments to those
departments had to be approved by the two-chamber City
Council.
Seeking to replace the old outdated charter, Worcester voters in
November 1947 approved of a change to Plan E municipal government.
In effect from January 1949 until November 1985, this charter (as
outlined in chapter 43 of the Massachusetts General Laws)
established City Council/City Manager government. This type of
governance, with modifications, has survived to the present day.
Initially, Plan E government in Worcester was organized as a
9-member council (all at-large), a ceremonial mayor elected from
the council by the councilors, and a council-appointed city
manager. The manager oversees the daily administration of the city,
makes all appointments to city offices, and can be removed at any
time by a majority vote of the Council. The mayor chairs the city
council and the school committee, and does not have the power to
veto any vote.
In 1983, Worcester voters again decided to change the city charter.
This "Home Rule" charter (named for the method of adoption of the
charter) is similar to Plan E, the major changes being to the
structure of the council and the election of the mayor. The
9-member Council became 11, 6 At-Large and 1 from each city
district. The mayor is chosen by popular election, but must run as
an At-Large Councilor.
Politics
Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans'
Memorial, erected in 2002
Lincoln Square c.
Worcester's social progressivism includes a number of
temperanceand
abolitionistmovements. It was also a leader in
the
women's suffragemovement: The
first national convention advocating women's rights was held in
Worcester, October 23-24, 1850.
Two of the nation’s most radical (and often despised)
abolitionists,
Abby KelleyFoster and her
husband Stephen S. Foster, adopted Worcester as their home, as did
Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, the editor of
The Atlantic Monthlyand
Emily Dickinson's avuncular
correspondent, and Unitarian minister Rev.
Edward Everett Hale.
The area was already home to
Lucy Stone,
Eli Thayer, and
Samuel May, Jr. They were joined in their
political activities by networks of related Quaker families such as
the Earles and the Chases, whose organizing efforts were crucial to
the anti-slavery cause in central Massachusetts and throughout New
England.
Anarchist
Emma Goldmanand two others
opened an ice cream shop in 1892. "It was spring and not yet warm,"
Goldman later wrote, "but the coffee I brewed, our sandwiches, and
dainty dishes were beginning to be appreciated. Within a short time
we were able to invest in a soda-water fountain and some lovely
coloured dishes."
On October 19, 1924, the largest gathering of the
Ku Klux Klanever held in New England took place
at the Agricultural Fairgrounds in Worcester. Klansmen in sheets
and hoods, new Knights awaiting a mass induction ceremony, and
supporters swelled the crowd to 15,000. The KKK had hired more than
400 "husky guards," but when the rally ended around midnight, a
riot broke out. Klansmen's cars were stoned, burned, and windows
smashed. KKK members were pulled from their cars and beaten.
Klansmen called for police protection, but the situation raged out
of control for most of the night. The violence after the
"Klanvocation" had the desired effect: Membership fell off, and no
further public Klan meetings were held in Worcester.
Robert Stoddard, owner of The Telegram and Gazette, was one of the
founders of the John Birch Society.
Sixties radical
Abbie Hoffmanwas born
in Worcester in 1936 and spent more than half of his life there.
Until he was 30, Worcester was the center of his universe; when he
moved to New York in 1966, Worcester remained a haven. Even during
his years as a fugitive, he would slip back into town and gather
with old friends at his favorite restaurant,
El
Morocco.Biographer and friend
Jonah
Raskinexplains that "Worcester provided him with his view of
society and his way of dealing with the world."
Fire Department
The citizens of the City of Worcester are protected 24/7 by the
professional firefighters of the Worcester Fire Department. The
Worcester Fire Department operates out of ten fire stations
throughout the city and operate an apparatus fleet of 13 engines, 7
ladders, one rescue, one dive water rescue, and one special
operations unit out of two divisions, the North Division and the
South Division. The Department is staffed by over 400 full-time
firefighters and responds to over 30,000 emergency calls
annually.
Economy
Historically, Worcester's economic roots
were tied to the Blackstone River,
and in the beginning to the Blackstone
Canal, which connected Worcester to the port of Providence,
Rhode Island.Textiles, shoes, and finished clothing were
some of the first industries in the city. A second wave of
manufacturing facilities soon came on the scene to further develop
Worcester into a manufacturing center. Wire and machinery were the
strengths of this economic cycle. One of the leaders of this
manufacturing wave was , an inventor and philanthropist, who
developed a heat-treating process crucial to developing steel
strong enough to be used in train couplings and the first
automobile crankshafts. His company,
Wyman-Gordon, has been a leading manufacturer
of machine parts.
, another innovator, received the first patent (1891) for a lunch wagon, or diner. He built his "fancy night cafes" and "night lunch wagons" in the Worcester area until 1901. After building a lunch wagon for himself in 1888, Thomas Buckley decided to manufacture lunch wagons in Worcester. Buckley was very successful and became known for his "White House Cafe" wagons. In 1906 Philip Duprey and Irving Stoddard established the Worcester Lunch Car Company, which shipped 'diners' all over the Eastern Seaboard. Worcester's Boulevard Diner
, Parkway Diner and Miss Worcester Diner
are all examples of Worcester Lunch Car Company units, with the Miss Worcester being located across the street from the former factory.
They were joined in early
automobilemanufacture by
American
Wheelock, which built compressed air-powered trucks at
Worcester in 1904.
In the 1930s a local merchant, Anthony "Spag" Borgatti, opened
Spag's, a small hardware business. Credited
with the invention of discount marketing, he stored his wares in
old trailer trucks in order to avoid paying taxes. He was a local
philanthropist. Every spring, Spag offered free tomato seedlings to
his customers.
Today, Worcester has a diversified economy.
The largest employer
is the University of Massachusetts Medical
School
.The adjacent biotech park is host to many
innovative companies, including
Advanced Cell Technology, which
focuses on the development of effective methods to generate
replacement cells from stem cells, and
Abbott Laboratories, a leading
pharmaceutical research and manufacturing firm.
Morgan Construction, a manufacturer of steel rolling mills, has
their headquarters in Worcester. Wright Line, a manufacturer of
consoles and other workstations for 911/emergency operations
centers, server enclosures and racks for data centers, office and
computer lab furniture, is also headquartered in the city.
Saint-Gobain has a substantial presence in
Worcester following its 1993 purchase of the Norton
Abrasives
, a 100+ year old manufacturer of abrasives,
ceramics, and specialty materials.Polar Beveragesis also located in the
city.
In the financial sector,
Hanover
Insurancemaintains their national headquarters in the city. A
subsidiary of
Unum(formerly UnumProvident), the
Paul Revere Life Insurance Company, is also headquartered in
Worcester as is the Harleysville Worcester Insurance Company, the
oldest insurance company based in Massachusetts.
David Clark Companypioneered
aeronautical protective equipment since 1941, ranging from
anti-gravity suits to space suits. Innovations include
full-pressure suits for X-15 test pilots flying to record speeds
and altitudes and the spacesuit worn by all Apollo astronauts on
lunar missions. The company produces the suits worn by modern space
shuttle astronauts.
The
Worcester
Foundation for Experimental Biology located in nearby Shrewsbury is best known for the development of the oral
contraceptive pill (1951) and for pioneering research on in vitro
fertilization.The first American conceived by this method
(1981),
Elizabeth Jordan Carr,
lived in nearby Westminster.
In the area of
small
businessretailing, Worcester is home to the notable
popular cultureemporiumThat's Entertainment(est.
1980), which in 1997 was one of three
comic
bookstores worldwide that received a "Will Eisner Spirit of
Comics Retailer Award" from
Comic-Con International: San Diego.
The award, named for comic book creator
Will
Eisner, recognizes "an individual retailer who has done an
outstanding job of supporting the comics art medium both in the
community and within the industry at large".
Education
Primary and secondary education
Worcester's Public Schools educate more than 23,000 students in
Kindergartenthrough 12th grade. The
system consists of 33
elementary
schools, 4
middle schools, 7
high schools, and 13 other learning
centers such as
magnet schools,
alternative schools, and
special educationschools. The
city's public school system also administers an adult education
component called "Night Life", and operates a cable accessible
television station, Channel 11.
The
Massachusetts
Academy of Math and Science was founded in 1992 as a public
secondary school located at the Worcester
Polytechnic Institute
.
Twenty-one private and parochial schools are also found
throughout Worcester, including the city's oldest educational
institution, Worcester
Academy
, founded in 1834, and Bancroft School, founded in
1900.
Higher education
Boynton Hall, 1868, designed by
Worcester architect Stephen Earle, Worcester Polytechnic
Institute
Jonas Clark Building, 1887, by Stephen
Earle, Clark University
UMass-Worcester Medical School
Hospital
Worcester is home to several institutes of higher education,
including:
- Clark University
, founded in 1887, is the first graduate school in
the country. It is noted for strengths in psychology and
geography. Well-known professors include Albert A. Michelson, who won the first American
Nobel Prize in 1902 for his measurement of light, Robert Goddard, the father of the space age,
and G. Stanley Hall from Clark University, the
founder of organized psychology as a science and profession, the
father of the child study movement, and the founder of the American Psychological
Association. Clark offers the only program in the country
leading to a Ph.D. in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies.
Sigmund Freud spoke only at Clark
during his single trip to the United States.
- The
University of Massachusetts Medical
School (1970) is one of the nation's top 50 medical
schools. Dr. Craig Mello won the 2006 Nobel Prize for
Medicine. The University of Massachusetts Medical School is ranked
fourth in primary care education among America's 125 medical
schools in the 2006 U.S. News & World Report
annual guide "America’s Best Graduate Schools."
- Becker College
is a private college with campuses in Worcester and Leicester,
Massachusetts. It was founded in Leicester in 1784 as
Leicester Academy; the Worcester campus was founded in 1887 and the
two campuses merged into Becker College in 1977.
An early higher education institution, the
Oread Institute, closed in 1934.
Many of these institutions participate in the
Colleges of Worcester
Consortium.
This independent non-profit collegiate
association includes academic institutions in Worcester and other
communities in Worcester County, such as Anna Maria
College
in neighboring Paxton.It operates and facilitates cooperation
among the colleges and universities. One example is its
inter-college shuttle bus and student cross registration.
Other Programs
Worcester is the home of
Dynamy, the oldest
student residential internship program in the United States. The
organization was founded in 1969 and provides internships to young
adults during a
Gap year, helping them
mature, become self-sufficient and choose a vocation.
Culture
Warner Memorial Theater, opened 1932,
designed by Drew Eberson, Worcester Academy
Museums and libraries
Worcester is home to several noteworthy libraries and museums,
including:
- The
American
Antiquarian Society, a national library.
- The Worcester Art Museum,
whose highlights include works by El Greco,
Rembrandt, Matisse,
Renoir, Gauguin,
Kandinsky, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock.
- The
Higgins
Armory Museum
, housed in a steel Art Deco Building, is the sole museum in the
Western Hemisphere devoted to arms and armour.
- The
EcoTarium, a Science Museum
.
Performing arts
Performing arts centers and arenas are abundant in the city. They
include,
- Mechanics Hall
, a Renaissance
Revival concert hall on the National Register of
Historic Places.
- Tuckerman Hall, designed by
Josephine Wright Chapman,
one of this country's earliest woman architects, is home of the
Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra.
- The Hanover
Theatre for the Performing Arts, at the site of the old Poli
Palace Theatre on Main Street, is Worcester's venue for Broadway
Shows, concerts, and nationally recognized performers.
- The Worcester Palladium, on
Main Street, is a venue attracting many musicians and performers
from around the world.
- The New
England Metal and Hardcore Festival is usually held in April at
the Palladium. It has run annually since 1999.
- Rock and Shock, a horror
convention and heavy metal concert is held at the Palladium and DCU
Convention Center each October.
Annual events
- The Worcester Music Festival is the oldest music festival in
the United States. This festival is presented by Music Worcester, Inc., which also
presents the Mass Jazz
Festival.
- stART on the Street is a large street art festival which takes
place on the 3rd Sunday in September". This is hosted by the
Central MA Arts
Assembly.
- Worcester First Night is the name of the city's New Years Eve celebration.
Popular music
In 1963,
a WPI
-based folk trio called the Wanderers recorded one
album for Strand Records.This was done under the name Minute
Men to avoid confusion with another existing recording group. The
trio also recorded one single for
Swan
Recordsunder the name College Boys.
Also in
1963, WPI-based rock
band the Blue Echoes recorded a local hit single on their own
Bristol label.This was picked up and released nationally by
the Lawn subsidiary of
Swan Records.
The group later recorded two more singles on the local BEP label,
one of which was a regional hit.
Worcester was the site of an experimental and highly controversial
creative community comprising musicians, artists, poets and writers
called Congress Alley in the late 1960s. Ultimately over 350 people
were involved. The Congress Alley "district" encompassed roughly
0.6 square miles, bounded loosely by Highland Street on the North,
Chandler Street on the South, Park Ave on the West and Main Street
on the East. It was the subject of a popular song, penned by
Stephen Martin and aptly titled
Congress Alley. Originally
recorded by Orpheus (see below), it has since been recorded by
several other artists, including Lee Andrews (originally with the
doo-wop group
Lee Andrews
& the Hearts). Andrews named the group that recorded the
song Congress Alley, which was also the title of the album
itself.
The soft-rock group Orpheus (
Orpheus
), which recorded three albums and four singles for
MGM Recordsin the late 1960s, was initially
based in Congress Alley. All three albums and two of the singles
charted nationally. In 1971 a reconstituted group, which also
included several members of the Congress Alley community, recorded
one album and one single for
Bell
Records.
The
J.Geils
Bandwas formed in Worcester in 1967. Several original members,
including
John Geilshimself, Richard
"
Magic Dick" Salwitz and Danny Klein,
were associated with the Congress Alley community.
Early in the 1970s former Congress Alley denizen Norman Schell
founded the country-rock band Clean Living. The group, which
included other Congress Alley alumni, recorded two albums and one
hit single for
Vanguard
Records.
In September 1981, the
Rolling
Stonesplayed an unscheduled performance at the nightclub Sir
Morgan's Cove (later renamed The Lucky Dog) before embarking on
their national tour that year.
Billed as "Blue Monday with The
Cockroaches", the Stones played before a packed house of 350 people
who had been given tickets in a promotion by WAAF
Radio that
day.
One of
Rammstein's performances in the
Family Values Tourended with lead
singer
Till Lindemannand keyboardist
Christian "Flake" Lorenzbeing
arrested due to the controversial performance of "
Bück dich" during a concert on June 5, 1998
in Worcester. They were each fined $200 and spent the night in
jail.
"Wormtown," a nickname for Worcester that first appeared about
1978, originally referred to an
undergroundmusical
subculture, but later became used by a few to
refer to the city itself.
Other cultural resources
The Worcester County Poetry Association fosters the poetic
tradition by sponsoring readings by national and local poets,
celebrating Bloomsday, and holding conferences and literary tours
of Worcester. Local poets have competed successfully in the
National Poetry Slam.
The
Worcester Center for
Crafts, founded in 1856 as the Worcester Employment Society,
provides professional-level craft studies to the Worcester
community. The Craft Center's original purpose was to foster
economic empowerment by teaching immigrants the skills needed to
create and sell crafts. Today, The Worcester Center for Crafts
offers craft education in weaving, metalwork, woodwork, enameling,
jewelry-making, and other crafts, and seeks to promote an
appreciation for fine craft.
Religion
The Unitarian-Universalist Church of Worcester was founded in
1841.
The First Unitarian Church of Worcester...
Worcester
is home to six synagogues, including
Temple
Emanuel, a leading Reform congregation, and Congregation Beth Israel
, a Conservative
synagogue founded in 1924.The
synagogue and its
rabbiwere the subject of the
book
And They Shall be My People: An American Rabbi and His
Congregationby
Paul Wilkes.
Media
Main Article:Media of Worcester,
Massachusetts
The
Worcester Telegram
& Gazetteis Worcester's only daily newspaper.
The paper, known
locally as "the Telegram" or "the T and G," is wholly owned by
The New York
Times Company
.WCTR, channel 3,
is Worcester's local news television station, and WUNI-TV
, channel 27, is the only major over-the-air
broadcast television station in Worcester.Radio stations based
in Worcester include WCUW
, WSRS, WTAG
, WWFX, WICN and WXLO.
Sports
Main Article:Sports in
Worcester
Worcester has a long storied past with sports teams and sporting
events. The city was home to
Marshall
Walter Taylor, an
African
Americancyclist who won the world one-mile (1.6 km) track
cycling championship in 1899. Taylor’s legacy is being the second
black world champion in any sport. Taylor was nicknamed the
Worcester Whirlwindby the local papers.
Lake
Quinsigamond is home to the Eastern
Sprints, a premier rowing event
in the United States.Competitive
rowingteams first came to Lake Quinsigamond in 1857. Finding
the long, narrow lake ideal for such crew meets, avid rowers
established boating clubs on the lake's shores, the first being the
Quinsigamond Boating Club. More boating clubs and races followed,
and soon many colleges (local, national, and international) held
regattas, such as the
Eastern
Sprints, on the lake. Beginning in 1895, local high schools
held crew races on the lake. In 1952, the lake played host to the
National Olympic rowing trials.
The city
is home to the American Hockey League team Worcester Sharks, which plays at the
DCU
Center
as developmental team for the National Hockey League's San Jose Sharks.The AHL was formally
represented by the
Worcester
IceCatsfrom 1994 to 2005.
The city’s professional
baseballteam, the
Worcester Tornadoes, started in
2005 and is a member of the
Canadian-American
Association of Professional BaseballLeague.
The team plays at the
Hanover
Insurance Park at Fitton Field
on the
campus of the College of the Holy Cross
and is not affiliated with any major league
team.The
New England Surge,
a member of the
Continental Indoor Football
League, played their home games in the DCU Center in their two
years of existence, 2007 and 2008.
Candlepin bowlingwas invented in Worcester
in 1880 by Justin White, an area bowling alley owner.
Golf's
Ryder Cup's
first official tournament was played at the Worcester Country Club
in 1927. The course also hosted the
U.S.Openin
1925, and the
U.S.Women's Openin 1960.
Worcester’s colleges have had long histories and many notable
achievements in collegiate sports.
The College of the Holy Cross represents NCAA Division 1 sports in
Worcester.The other colleges and Universities in Worcester
correspond with division II and III. The
Holy Cross Crusaderswon the
NCAA men's
basketball champions in 1947and
NIT men's basketball
champions in 1954, led by future NBA hall-of-famers and Boston
Celtic legends
Bob Cousyand
Tom Heinsohn.
The Crusaders men’s hockey team defeated
the Minnesota
Golden Gophers in the first round of the 2006
NCAA Division I Tournament in the biggest upset in NCAA Hockey
history.
Transportation
Highways and Roads
Worcester is served by several interstate highways.
Interstate 290 connects
central Worcester to
Interstate 495,
I-90 in nearby Auburn, and
I-395.
I-190 links Worcester to
MA 2 and the cities of
Fitchburg
and Leominster
in northern Worcester County. I-90 can
also be reached from a new
Massachusetts Route 146
connector.
Worcester is also served by several smaller Massachusetts state
highways.
Route 9
links the city to its eastern and western suburbs, Shrewsbury and Leicester. Route 9 runs almost the entire length of the
state, connecting Boston and Worcester with Pittsfield
, near the New York
state border. Route 12 was the primary
route north to Leominster and Fitchburg until the completion of
I-190.
Route 12 also connected Worcester to
Webster
before I-395 was
completed. It still serves as an alternate, local route.
Route 146, the Worcester-Providence
Turnpike, connects the city with the similar city of Providence,
Rhode Island. Route 20
touches the southernmost tip of Worcester near the
Massachusetts Turnpike. U.S.
20 is a
coast-to-coast route connecting the Atlantic
to the Pacific Ocean
, and is the longest road in the United
States.
Rail
Worcester is the headquarters of the
Providence and Worcester, a
Class II railroad operating
throughout much of southern New England. Worcester is also the
western terminus of the
Framingham/Worcester commuter rail line run by the
Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Authority.
Union Station
serves as the hub for commuter railway
traffic. Built in 1911, the station has been restored to its
original grace and splendor, reopening to full operation in 2000.
It also
serves as an Amtrak stop, serving the
Lake Shore Limited from Boston to
Chicago
. In October 2008 the MBTA added 5 new trains
to the Framingham/Worcester line as part of a plan to add 20 or
more trains from Worcester to Boston and also to buy the track from
CSX Transportation.
Train passengers may
also connect to additional services such as the Vermonter line in Springfield
.
Bus
The
Worcester
Regional Transit Authority, or WRTA, manages the municipal bus
system. Buses operate intracity as well as connect Worcester to
surrounding central Massachusetts communities. The WRTA also
operates a shuttle bus between member institutions of the
Colleges of Worcester
Consortium. The Worcester bus station was recently relocated to
Worcester Intermodal Center at Union Station. From here,
Peter Pan Bus Lines (based in nearby
Springfield) services other points in the Northeast.
Air
The
Worcester
Regional Airport
, managed by Massport for
the city, lies at the top of Tatnuck
Hill, Worcester's highest. The airport consists of one
7,000 ft runaway and a $15.7 million dollar terminal built to
attract airlines and passengers. The airport held numerous airlines
from the 1950s through the 1990s, but it has encountered years of
spotty commercial flights and disloyal air carriers.
On September 4, 2008,
Direct Air announced they
would begin serving Worcester to Orlando, Florida
, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
, and Punta Gorda, Florida
in the spring of 2009. Currently, this is
the only commercial service serving the city.
Healthcare and utilities
Old Worcester State Hospital at dawn,
the building facing east and catching the sun rising above the
Shrewsbury hills.
Built 1870-1877, it was designed by Ward P.
Delano of the Worcester firm, Fuller & Delano.
The Worcester State Insane Asylum Hospital (1833) was the first
hospital in the United States established to treat mental
illnesses.
Worcester
is home to the University of Massachusetts Medical
School, ranked fourth in primary care education among
America’s 125 medical schools in the 2006 U.S. News & World Report
annual guide "America’s Best Graduate Schools." The school also
operates the UMass Memorial Health Care, the clinical arm of the
teaching hospital, which has expanded its locations all over
central Massachusetts. St. Vincent Hospital at Worcester Medical
Center in the downtown area rounds out Worcester's primary care
facilities. Fallon Clinic, presently the largest private
multi-specialty group in central Massachusetts, includes St.
Vincent's Hospital in its over 30 locations. Fallon Clinic was the
creator of Fallon Community Health Plan, a now independent HMO
based in Worcester, and one of the largest
health maintenance
organizations (HMOs) in the state.
Worcester has a municipally owned water supply. Sewage disposal
services are provided by the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution
Abatement District, which services Worcester as well as some
surrounding communities.
National
Grid USA is the exclusive
distributor of
electric power to the city, though due to
deregulation, customers now have a choice of electric
generation companies.
Natural
gas is distributed by
NSTAR Gas; only
commercial and industrial customers may choose an alternate natural
gas supplier.
Verizon, successor to
New England Telephone,
NYNEX, and
Bell Atlantic,
is the primary wired telephone service provider for the area. Phone
service is also available from various
national wireless
companies.
Cable television is
available from
Charter
Communications, with
Broadband Internet access also
provided, while a variety of
DSL providers and resellers are able
to provide broadband Internet over Verizon-owned phone lines.
Sister cities
Worcester has the following
sister
cities :
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
- Wall & Gray. 1871 Atlas of Massachusetts. Map of Massachusetts. USA. New England. Counties - Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden, Worcester, Middlesex, Essex and Norfolk, Boston - Suffolk, Plymouth, Bristol, Barnstable and Dukes (Cape Cod). Cities -
Springfield, Worcester, Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, Newburyport, Salem, Lynn, Taunton, Fall River. New Bedford. These 1871 maps of the Counties
and Cities are useful to see the roads and rail lines.
- Beers,D.G. 1872 Atlas of Essex County Map of Massachusetts Plate 5. Click on the map
for a very large image. Also see map of 1872 Essex County Plate 7.
External links
_carrying_sack_of_hose_supporters_home.jpg/180px-Nearly_9_A.M._Girl_(about_8_yrs._old)_carrying_sack_of_hose_supporters_home.jpg)
is a public, 4-year college founded in 1874 as
Worcester Normal School
, the fourth oldest Roman
Catholic college in New England, was founded in 1904. At
, it has the largest campus in Worcester.
, Greece
(2005)
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