Living in Main South, Worcester, MA

About Main South

Where it is

Main South follows Main Street through southern Worcester, with commercial areas on Main Street and Park Avenue and residential streets such as Woodland, Freeland, Beaver, Beacon and Oread Streets around Clark University. The city does not publish a fixed boundary.

In the late 1840s Eli Thayer bought pasture along southern Main Street and, in 1849, opened the Oread Collegiate Institute, one of the country's first colleges for women, on a 10-acre hill off Main Street. Building spread slowly, reaching the area of the future campus in the 1880s and 1890s, when Jonas Gilman Clark bought land for the university. The legislature chartered Clark University on March 31, 1887, and it opened in 1889. The city bought the land for University Park across Main Street in 1887 and 1889. By 1890 the area had major industry and hundreds of new multi-unit houses.

Most of Main South's physical structure was in place before the end of the 19th century, and its streets still show it. Victorian houses, many renovated, stand beside three-deckers. The Woodland Street Historic District, next to the Clark campus, holds 19 Victorian houses built from 1868 to about 1904 in Second Empire, Italianate, Gothic Revival, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Three Queen Anne triple-deckers of about 1892 face University Park on Crystal Street, and five Colonial Revival triple-deckers of about 1916 line Beaver Street; both groups were listed on the National Register in 1990. Main Street itself carries churches listed in 1980, including Pilgrim Congregational at 909 Main Street and St. Peter's at 935.

Clark University and the Main South Community Development Corporation work together through the University Park Partnership. The CDC has renovated multi-family houses as affordable rentals in the Beacon and Oread Street block east of campus, and in 2013 the Kilby-Gardner-Hammond project added a Boys and Girls Club with a gymnasium, a learning center, an Olympic-size pool and an athletic field, along with renovated affordable housing. University Park Campus School, a Worcester public school for grades 7 to 12 founded with Clark in 1997, is on Freeland Street, and Clark's Center for Media Arts, Computing and Design opened at 7 Hawthorne Street in 2023.

Homes in Main South

Main South's housing is mostly 19th- and early 20th-century: three-deckers, multi-unit houses and Victorian houses, many renovated. National Register groups include the 19 houses of the Woodland Street Historic District and the triple-deckers on Crystal Street (about 1892) and Beaver Street (about 1916). The Main South CDC develops and manages affordable rental and ownership housing, including renovated multi-family houses on Beacon and Oread Streets and in the Kilby, Gardner and Hammond Street area.