Living in Vernon Hill, Worcester, MA

About Vernon Hill

Where it is

Vernon Hill rises in southeastern Worcester, along Vernon Street and Providence Street, with Vernon Hill Park at its top at 144 Providence Street. Perry Avenue, which runs parallel to and east of I-290, lies on its lower western slopes, and Wikipedia's list of Worcester neighborhoods places Vernon Hill on the East Side.

Vernon Hill is one of the seven hills on which Worcester, like Rome, is said to stand. Its main streets follow old routes: the Massachusetts Historical Commission's survey of the city infers a native trail running south toward Singletary Pond along the line of Vernon Street and Greenwood Street. In the Early Industrial period (1830 to 1870) the survey records a residential cluster on the west slope of Vernon Hill along the Ward Street and Millbury Street axis. The Upsala Street School, a Romanesque Revival building by the Worcester architect George Clemence at Upsala and Louise Streets, was finished in 1894 and enlarged in 1902 and 1923.

The street railway opened the hilltop. As the system was electrified, from the first electric line in 1891 to the last horsecars in November 1893, it added a line on Providence Street; Upsala Street cars crossed Vernon Hill, and tracks laid across Vernon Square in 1902 let them reach downtown by Green Street. In September 1912 the Providence Street line was extended 3,605 feet along Holcombe and Granite Streets. A streetcar also ran on Vernon Street, and as development pushed into the hill's steeper terrain in the 1910s, View Street was laid out and built with three-deckers. The George Fontaine Three-Decker at 141 Vernon Street, built about 1918 while the area was developing as a streetcar suburb, dates from this phase, as do the 40 three-deckers of the Euclid Avenue and Montrose Street district on a hillside between Vernon Street and Perry Avenue, most built between 1910 and 1930 and 27 of them with gambrel roofs.

The last wave came in the late 1920s. Ten three-deckers with seven period garages at 127 to 145 Providence Street, built between 1926 and 1930, and four on Perry Avenue, built about 1928 as infill on the lower slopes, date from Worcester's last period of three-decker construction. The National Register listed these two groups on February 9, 1990, with the View Street district, the George Fontaine and David Dworman three-deckers and the Euclid Avenue-Montrose Street district. The summit is public land: Vernon Hill Park, at 144 Providence Street, has ballfields, tennis and basketball courts, a pool run by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, and the city's first off-leash dog park, opened in August 2017.

Homes in Vernon Hill

The three-decker is the documented housing type on Vernon Hill. National Register records describe groups built from the 1910s to 1930 on View Street, Euclid Avenue and Montrose Street, Providence Street and Perry Avenue, mostly in Colonial Revival and Craftsman styles, many with gambrel roofs and some with period garages, plus single listed three-deckers at 141 Vernon Street and 159 Providence Street. The 1894 Upsala Street School has been converted into apartments. No published count of housing types or ownership for Vernon Hill alone was found.