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Founding
Founding of Worcester
county seat city in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States
- 1673 – 1848
- North America
Founding
county seat city in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States
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Worcester ( WUUST-ər, locally [ˈwɪstə] ⓘ) is a city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The principal city of Central Massachusetts, Worcester is both the second-most populous city in the state, and the 113th most populous city in the United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city had an estimated 213,862 people as of 2025, also making it the second-most populous city in New England, after Boston. Because it is near the geographic center of Massachusetts, Worcester is known as the "Heart of the Commonwealth"; a heart is the official symbol of the city. Worcester is the historical seat of Worcester County.
Founded and incorporated as a town in 1722 and incorporated in 1848 as a city, Worcester developed as an industrial city in the 19th century due to the Blackstone Canal and railways, which facilitated the import of raw materials and the export of finished goods such as machines, textiles, and wire. The city's population grew, driven by European immigration. After World War II, manufacturing in Worcester waned, and the city declined, both economically and in terms of population. This trend was reversed in the 1990s, when higher education, medicine, biotechnology, and new immigrants started making their mark on the city. The population has grown by 28% since 1980, reaching its all-time high in the 2020 census, in an example of urban renewal. Since the 1970s, and especially since the construction of Route 146 and interstates 90, 190, 290, 395, and 495, both Worcester and its surrounding towns have become more integrated with Boston's suburbs. The Worcester region now marks the western periphery of the Boston–Worcester–Providence (MA–RI–NH) census Combined Statistical Area (CSA), also known as Greater Boston.
Modern Worcester is known for its diversity and large immigrant population, with significant communities of Vietnamese, Brazilians, Albanians, Puerto Ricans, Ghanaians, Dominicans, Irish, English, Italians, Greeks, Jews and other immigrants. Twenty-two percent of Worcester's population was born outside the United States. A center of higher education, it is home to eight colleges and universities, including the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Clark University, Assumption, and Worcester State University. Worcester has many 19th-century triple-decker houses, Victorian-era mills and related buildings, and lunch-car diners, such as Miss Worcester.
The area was inhabited by members of the Nipmuc tribe at the time of European contact. The native people called the region Quinsigamond and built a settlement on Pakachoag Hill in Auburn.
In 1673, English settlers John Eliot and Daniel Gookin led an expedition to Quinsigamond to establish a new Christian Indian praying town and identify a new location for an English settlement. On July 13, 1674, Gookin obtained a deed to eight square miles (21 km2) of land in Quinsigamond from the Nipmuc people and English traders and settlers began to inhabit the region.
In 1675, King Philip's War broke out throughout New England with the Nipmuc Indians coming to the aid of Indian leader King Philip. The English settlers completely abandoned the Quinsigamond area and the empty buildings were burned by the Indian forces. The town was again abandoned during Queen Anne's War in 1702.
In 1713, Worcester was permanently resettled for a third and final time by Jonas Rice. Named after the city of Worcester, England, the town was incorporated on June 14, 1722.
On April 2, 1731, Worcester was chosen as the county seat of the newly founded Worcester County government. Between 1755 and 1758, future U.S. president John Adams worked as a schoolteacher and studied law in Worcester.
Worcester also had a role in the start of the American Revolution. On September 6, 1774, 4,622 militiamen from 37 towns in Worcester County assembled and marched on Main Street, Worcester; they sought to shut down the Crown's court before it could sit for a new session. The event was dubbed the Worcester Revolution, or the Worcester Revolt. Having seized the courthouse, the militiamen waited for the 25 appointees from the Crown to arrive, where they were denied entry and later forced to disavow their appointments by King George III. Bloodshed and violence was avoided, with no shots fired. British authority had been demonstrably overthrown in the American colonies for the first time.
In the 1770s, Worcester became a center of American revolutionary activity. The Worcester Revolt on September 6, 1774, was an early successful attempt to throw off British rule. British General Thomas Gage was given information of patriot ammunition stockpiled in Worcester in 1775. That same year, Massachusetts Spy publisher Isaiah Thomas moved his radical newspaper out of British occupied Boston to Worcester. Thomas would continuously publish his paper throughout the American Revolutionary War. On July 14, 1776, Thomas performed the first public reading in Massachusetts of the Declaration of Independence from the porch of the Old South Church, where the 19th-century Worcester City Hall stands today. He would later go on to form the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester in 1812. During the years leading up to and through the American Revolution, Worcester was an important inland center of Patriot activity and organization. In 1755–1758, future U.S. president John Adams worked as a schoolteacher in Worcester while studying law, an experience that helped shape his later views on education and self-government.
By the early 1770s, Worcester's location on the main route between Boston and western Massachusetts made it a hub for revolutionary communication and militia mobilization. In September 1774, local Patriots forced royal officials to resign and closed the county courts, effectively ending British authority in Worcester County months before the battles of Lexington and Concord.
According to local tradition, John Hancock briefly took refuge in Worcester in 1774–1775 as tensions escalated in Boston. In the winter of 1775–1776, General Henry Knox's famous "noble train of artillery" passed through Worcester while transporting captured cannon from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, stopping for supplies and repairs on its way to aid the siege of the city.
Worcester continued to commemorate its Revolutionary heritage in the decades that followed. When the Marquis de Lafayette made his triumphal tour of the United States in 1824, he was greeted with great ceremony in Worcester by local citizens and surviving veterans of the Revolution.
Throughout the conflict, Worcester's residents contributed soldiers, supplies, and civic leadership to the Patriot cause, leaving a lasting legacy reflected in the city's Revolutionary monuments and archives.
During the turn of the 19th century, Worcester's economy moved into manufacturing. Factories producing textiles, shoes and clothing opened along the nearby Blackstone River.
The manufacturing industry in Worcester began to thrive with the opening of the Blackstone Canal in 1828 and the opening of the Worcester and Boston Railroad in 1835. The city transformed into a transportation hub and the manufacturing industry flourished.
Worcester was officially chartered as a city on February 29, 1848. The city's industries soon attracted immigrants of primarily Irish, Scottish, French, German, and Swedish descent in the mid-19th century and later many immigrants of Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Syrian, and Lebanese descent. Immigrants moved into new three-decker houses (which originated in Worcester) lining hundreds of Worcester's expanding streets and neighborhoods.
In 1831, Ichabod Washburn opened the Washburn & Moen Company. The company would become the largest wire manufacturing in the country and Washburn became one of the leading industrial and philanthropic figures in the city.
Worcester became a center of machinery, wire products and power looms with large manufacturers, including Washburn & Moen, Wyman-Gordon Company, American Steel & Wire, Morgan Construction and the Norton Company. In 1908, the Royal Worcester Corset Company was the largest employer of women in the United States.
New England Candlepin bowling was invented in Worcester by Justin White in 1879. Esther Howland began the first line of Valentine's Day cards from her Worcester home in 1847. Loring Coes invented the first monkey wrench and Russell Hawes created the first envelope folding machine. On June 12, 1880, Lee Richmond pitched the first perfect game in Major league baseball history for the Worcester Ruby Legs at the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds. The first three-decker homes were built by Francis Gallagher (1830–1911) in Worcester.
After World War II, Worcester began to fall into decline as the city lost its manufacturing base. Worcester felt the national trends of movement away from historic urban centers. The city's population dropped over 20% from 1950 to 1980. In the mid-20th century, large urban renewal projects were undertaken to try to reverse the city's decline. A huge area of downtown Worcester was demolished for new office towers and the 1,000,000 sq ft (93,000 m2) Worcester Center Galleria shopping mall. After 30 years, the Galleria would lose most of its major tenants and its appeal to more suburban shopping malls around Worcester County.
On June 9, 1953, an F4 tornado touched down in Petersham, northwest of Worcester. The tornado tore through 48 miles (77 km) of Worcester County including a large area of the city of Worcester. The tornado left massive destruction and killed 94 people. The Worcester tornado would be the deadliest tornado ever to hit Massachusetts, and New England in general. Debris from the tornado landed as far away as Dedham.
In the 1960s, Interstate 290 was built right through the center of Worcester, permanently dividing the city. In 1963, Worcester native Harvey Ball introduced the yellow smiley face to American culture.
In the late 20th century, Worcester's economy began to recover as the city expanded into biotechnology and healthcare fields. The UMass Chan Medical School became a leader in biomedical research and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Park became a center of medical research and development. Worcester hospitals Saint Vincent Hospital and UMass Memorial Health Care are two of the largest employers in the city. Worcester's many colleges, including the Quinsigamond Community College, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clark University, UMass Medical School, Assumption University, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and Worcester State University, attract many students to the area and help drive the new economy.
In recent decades, a renewed interest in the city's downtown has brought new investment and construction to Worcester. A Convention Center was built along the DCU Center arena in downtown Worcester in 1997. On December 3, 1999, a homeless couple accidentally started a five-alarm fire at the Worcester Cold Storage & Warehouse Company. The fire took the lives of six firemen and drew national attention as one of the worst firefighting tragedies of the late 20th century. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and other local and national dignitaries attended the funeral service and memorial program in Worcester.
In 2000, Worcester's Union Station reopened after 25 years and a $32 million renovation. Hanover Insurance helped fund a multimillion-dollar renovation to the old Franklin Square Theater into the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts. In 2000, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences built a new campus in downtown Worcester. In 2007, Worcester Polytechnic Institute opened the first facility in their Gateway Park center in Lincoln Square. In 2004, Berkeley Investments proposed demolishing the old Worcester Center Galleria for a new mixed-used development called City Square. The ambitious project looked to reconnect old street patterns while creating a new retail, commercial and living destination in the city. After struggling to secure finances for a number of years, Hanover Insurance took over the project and demolition began on September 13, 2010. Unum Insurance and the Saint Vincent Hospital leased into the project and both facilities opened in 2013. The new Front Street opened on December 31, 2012.
The city has successfully resettled over 2,000 refugees coming from over 24 countries. Most of these refugees come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Somalia, Bhutan, Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.
In 2025, Worcester City Council passed a resolution to become a sanctuary city for the transgender community.
Worcester has a total area of 38.6 square miles (100 km2): 37.6 square miles (97 km2) of land and 1.0 square mile (2.6 km2), comprising roughly 2.59%, of water. Worcester is bordered by the towns of Auburn, Grafton, Holden, Leicester, Millbury, Paxton, Shrewsbury, and West Boylston.
Worcester is known as the "Heart of the Commonwealth" because of its proximity to the center of Massachusetts. The city is about 40 miles (64 km) west of Boston, 50 miles (80 km) east of Springfield, and 38 miles (61 km) northwest of Providence, Rhode Island.
The Blackstone River forms in the center of Worcester by the confluence of the Middle River and Mill Brook. The river courses underground through the center of the city, and emerges at the foot of College Hill. It then flows south through Quinsigamond Village and into Millbury. Worcester is the beginning of the Blackstone Valley that frames the river. The Blackstone Canal was once an important waterway connecting Worcester to Providence and the Eastern Seaboard, but the canal fell into disuse at the end of the 19th century and was mostly covered up. In recent years, local organizations, including the Canal District Business Association, have proposed restoring the canal and creating a Blackstone Valley National Park.
Worcester is one of many cities claimed, like Rome, to be found on seven hills: Airport Hill, Bancroft Hill, Belmont Hill (Bell Hill), Grafton Hill, Green Hill, Pakachoag Hill and Vernon Hill. However, Worcester has more than seven hills, examples of which include Indian Hill, Newton Hill, Poet's Hill, and Wigwam Hill.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Worcester, Massachusetts”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.