Worcester State Hospital Clock Tower

Congratulations and thank you to Preservation Worcester and other local preservationists for their work in saving the Clock Tower at the former Worcester State Hospital.

from Preservation Worcester website

I was hoping that the surrounding Administrative Building could have been saved along with the Clock Tower, but I would agree that the Clock Tower is indeed the most important element - driving home from Boston on 290, I know I am home when I see the Clock Tower in the distance.

Although it seems to be growing on me, I am still having a hard time imagining a free standing clock tower without the surrounding building:

from Preservation Worcester website

It looks naked to me! I'm sure those who remember the entire complex think that it looks naked with just the Admin Building and Cock Tower.

I wonder if there is some way that we could retain some portions of the Admin Building as a ruin? Can we retain some pieces of the building's structure and avoid the temptation to 'clean-up' the lower part of the Tower too much? Ideally, a future visitor to the site would see the ruins and the 'messy' lower part of the Tower and be able to easily read that the Tower is just a piece of something that was much larger. Perhaps lower portions of some of the walls of the Admin Building could be retained so visitors could walk through the 'rooms' of the former building. And if I put on my engineering hat for a minute, retaining some of the walls abutting the tower may help structurally support the Tower itself, thus reducing the expense associated with reinforcing the Tower alone.

Food Truck Festival Coming to Worc. This Summer

The Worcester Food Truck Festival at Elm Park

Saturday, July 14, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM (ET)

Worcester, MA

I hope they invite the hot dog truck that sets up shop there the other 364 days of the year!

Item to watch - Elsewhere on their website they mention a beer garden at the Worcester event. The Summer Nationals was just turned down in their request to sell alcohol at Green Hill Park, will we see another request to review the current "no alcohol in city parks except for the Common with special permission" rule?

Worcester Auditorium/Courthouse Reuse - Becker College's New Worcester Campus?

I'm completely making this up, but it is kind of fun to imagine what might be......



2012 - The Design Building at Becker College's Worcester Campus

Image from Becker College website.

2017 - The New Design Building at Becker College's Worcester Campus @ Lincoln Square

Cropped image of "Worcester Memorial Auditorium, Worcester Massachusetts, July 2009"

by John Phelan, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Happy Holidays from TIOW!

Worcester Common, 8:45 pm, Thursday, September 1, 2011

photo courtesy of Louie Despres

FREE Showing of Spaceballs Tonight on the Worcester Common, Dusk

Visit www.WorcesterFilmWorks.org for additional information.

Poster by Mike McMenemy

Answer: Sidewalks Should be 5 ft. Wide

You may recall back in April I had a post discussing how wide a sidewalk should be. Well, I learned yesterday from Bob Moylan that the sidewalks on our road will be increased to a width of 5 ft.

We currently have 4 ft. wide sidewalks in horrible condition and 4 ft. is just not wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. When I found out our street and sidewalks were on the list to be repaired this year, I thought I would reach out to my City Councilor, Joff Smith, and Bob Moylan, Commissioner of Public Works & Parks and ask them if they would be willing to increase the width a few feet (we have unusually wide 9 ft. grass strips) since they were going to be replacing 90% of the sidewalk already.

Existing 4 ft. Sidewalks and 9 ft. Grass Strips

I followed up with Joff by phone a few weeks later and left a voicemail. Joff called me back almost immediately; he informed me that he had spoken with Bob about my request and that Bob was looking into the feasibility of widening the sidewalks. I heard nothing from either of them following that call with Joff, and to be honest I forgot about it until NSTAR started digging up our street a few weeks ago to install new gas lines. So I again followed up to both Joff and Bob by e-mail yesterday requesting an update on my request, and Bob replied almost immediately with the good news. Apparently DPW also looked at other streets in our neighborhood to see if their sidewalks widths could also be increased (a number of streets in our neighborhood have the 9 ft. wide grass strips), but ours was the only one "free of physical limitations to allow us to widen the walk" (or, in other words: sufficiently devastated by the ALB such that there was not one tree remaining on the grass strip).

Looking forward to that first stroll down the new, wider sidewalk soon.....

(and Harry T., Summerhill Ave. is a good guess, but incorrect....)