Living in Canal District, Worcester, MA

About Canal District

Where it is

The Canal District runs from Union Station in Washington Square along Green, Water, Harding and Winter Streets to Kelley Square, and takes in the Polar Park blocks on Madison Street. It was once the northern part of Green Island, the area between the canal and Mill Brook; the section south of it keeps the Green Island name.

The Blackstone Canal, built from 1824 to 1828, linked Worcester with Providence; it opened on October 7, 1828, and the packet boat Lady Carrington was the first vessel to make the trip. The canal generally followed Mill Brook through the city, and the land between the two was first known as the Island, later Green Island after Green Street. Railroads to Boston and Providence ended canal traffic by 1848, and the Worcester stretch was folded into the sewer system and covered over in the late 19th century; it still runs underground beneath Harding Street. Historical markers about the canal stand on Quinsigamond Avenue at Canton Street, south of the district in Green Island.

Industry followed the water and the rails. The Crompton Loom Works at 132-142 Green Street has a section from 1860, the Heywood boot and shoe factory went up at 68-80 Winter Street in 1879, and the W. H. Hill Envelope Company moved into a four-story, 90,000-square-foot building at 48 Water Street in 1891. Green and Water Streets filled with brick commercial blocks, clubhouses and churches, among them St. John's on Temple Street (1845), the city's oldest Roman Catholic church, and the Goldberg Building at Water and Harrison Streets (about 1908). Construction of I-290 in the 1960s took a large share of the area's housing.

Since the 2000 reopening of Union Station, the district's old buildings have been reused: the 1850 Ash Street School became apartments in 2002, and the Winter Street factory blocks have shops below and condominiums above. Polar Park opened on May 11, 2021, on about 18 acres of former industrial land at 100 Madison Street, part of a Downtown Urban Revitalization Plan the City and the Worcester Redevelopment Authority adopted in 2016. MassDOT rebuilt Kelley Square, a seven-way intersection, as a modified roundabout with shared-use paths on Madison and Green Streets. By August 2024 four apartment buildings with nearly 550 units were open or nearly complete around the ballpark, one of them entirely at below-market rents.

Homes in Canal District

Housing in the Canal District is mostly apartments and condominiums. Older stock is in converted 19th-century buildings, such as the Ash Street School apartments (2002) and condominiums above shops on Winter Street, while the Polar Park blocks added four apartment buildings with nearly 550 units by August 2024, including one entirely at below-market rents. The city's plan also lists The Cove, a 173-unit building with first-floor retail, and Table Talk Lofts, a mixed-income project that will reopen Spruce Street between Green and Washington Streets.