The William H. Bliss Building is an historic apartment building at 26 Old Lincoln Street in
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 census, making it the second- most populous city in New England after ...
. Built in 1888, the four story brick building is one of the few remnants of a once larger development of apartment blocks north of Lincoln Square; most of the other period apartment blocks in the area were demolished by highway development or urban renewal processes.
The building was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artist ...
in 1980.
Description and history
The Bliss Building is set amidst a collection of wide city streets, hemmed in on the west by the major intersection of Lincoln and Salisbury Streets, and a railroad line and
Interstate 290 to the east. It faces east toward Old Lincoln Street, once the main alignment of Lincoln Street, which runs northeast from downtown Worcester toward
West Boylston
West Boylston is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States and a northern suburb of Worcester. The population was 7,877 at the 2020 census. West Boylston includes the village of Oakdale, located on the opposite side of the Wachu ...
. The building is a rectangular four-story masonry structure, fashioned out of red brick with sandstone trim. Its main facade has a stone water table between the basement and ground floors, and three asymmetrically-placed windows on each side of its recessed entrance. The entrance opening is flanked by stone pilasters and topped by a stone segmented arch. The first floor windows have stone sills joined by a stringcourse of stone, and a second stringcourse connects the windows just below the stone lintels. The upper floors have six windows, divided into groups of two by brick pilasters. A corbelled brick stringcourse joins the second-floor windows, and the center pair of windows on the third floor have segmented-arch tops. A band of corbelled brickwork separates the fourth floor from a parapet containing a stone panel identifying the building.
[
The building was constructed in 1888 to a design by ]Barker & Nourse
Barker & Nourse was an architectural firm from Worcester, Massachusetts, active from 1879 to 1904.
History
The principals of the firm were Albert A. Barker (1852-1905) and Walter B. Nourse (1853-1906), and it operated from 1879 to 1904. It was ...
, local architects. It was built for William Bliss, a local real estate developer. The Lincoln Square area where it stands was originally lined with similar buildings, but it is now one of the only ones left after urban renewal resulted in the demolition of the others.[
]
See also
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References
{{National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Apartment buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Residential buildings completed in 1888
Buildings and structures in Worcester, Massachusetts
National Register of Historic Places in Worcester, Massachusetts