Living in Downtown, Worcester, MA

About Downtown

Where it is

Downtown takes in Lincoln Square at the north end of Main Street, Federal Square, Worcester Common with City Hall, and Washington Square with Union Station. The city does not publish a fixed neighborhood line; its Downtown Urban Revitalization Area, as amended, covers 137.1 acres with an irregular boundary.

Downtown Worcester grew around its common, set aside in 1669 and once about 20 acres. A meeting house built there in 1719 hosted the first town meeting in 1722, and the city's history of the Common recalls the company of Minute Men organized under Captain Timothy Bigelow in 1775. The Common is now 4.4 acres at 99 Front Street, with City Hall, built in 1898 to a design by Peabody & Stearns, facing Main Street. Its memorials include the 1874 Soldiers' Memorial, a World War II memorial with water jets and engraved granite piers, and the Southwest Asia War Memorial, and in winter the Worcester Common Oval is used for skating.

Two National Register districts line Main Street. Mechanics Hall, built in 1857 at 321 Main Street by the Mechanics Association, holds the 1864 Hook organ and anchors the Mechanics Hall District, which covers 282 to 343 Main Street. South of the Common, the Main and Franklin Streets Historic District, listed in 2022, covers about four acres of Second Empire, Queen Anne, Classical Revival and Romanesque buildings; the area turned from houses to a dense commercial district over the 60 years after 1870, and its largest buildings went up between 1910 and 1914, including the Park Building and the Bancroft Hotel. The Hanover Theatre, opened in 1904 as the Franklin Square Theatre at 2 Southbridge Street, reopened for live performance in March 2008.

Downtown is part of a Downtown Urban Revitalization Plan adopted by the City and the Worcester Redevelopment Authority in 2016. As amended, its area covers 137.1 acres, about 137 parcels and 412 properties, including about 214 residential condominium units, and according to the EPA the plan also covers parts of the Canal District, where Polar Park was built. Housing downtown is largely in reused buildings: the former Worcester County Courthouse at 2 Main Street, dating to 1845, was converted between 2019 and 2021 into 118 apartments called the Courthouse Lofts. A July 2023 Telegram & Gazette opinion column by Raymond V. Mariano counted more than 2,000 apartments built or planned in the downtown and Canal District area, most of them studios and one-bedrooms.

Homes in Downtown

Downtown housing is mostly apartments and condominiums in mid-rise and converted buildings rather than houses. The city's Downtown Urban Revitalization Area includes about 214 residential condominium units among its 412 properties. Conversions include the Courthouse Lofts, 118 units in the former Worcester County Courthouse at Lincoln Square, completed in 2021.