Main South (or South Main) is a neighborhood in southern

Worcester Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Engl ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. The area's eponymous feature is Main Street, the central roadway of the city. Main South experienced rapid economic development from the 1890s until the 1950s.

History

The history of the Main South neighborhood began when, in the 1840s, congressman Eli Thayer, a prominent abolitionist, bought land in southern Worcester in anticipation of rapid economic development. Thayer sold the land without extensive development in order to finance the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which sent abolitionist settlers to

Kansas Territory The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the United States, Union as the Slave and ...

in order to ensure that it would not become a

slave state In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave s ...

. Development began in the 1850s. In the 1880s, industrialist Jonas Gilman Clark bought land and founded

Clark University Clark University is a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1887 with a large endowment from its namesake Jonas Gilman Clark, a prominent businessman, Clark was one of the first modern research uni ...

in 1887.History and map of Main South
Clark University The Main South area has a history as a rough neighborhood, known for prostitution and hard drugs starting in the 1970s and that impression has stuck with the area, despite the fact that the Worcester Police Department has done a great deal to reduce the drug trade, and there has been some fairly successful urban renewal projects, particularly involving Clark University.

Prominent locations

* Woodland Street Historic District * Franklin Wesson House * University Park * South Unitarian Church * Worcester Corset Company Factory *

References

External links

Main South Community Development Corporation

Is Main South really headed north?
Worcester Magazine, June 3, 2010
17 arrested in prostitution sting in Main South neighborhood
Worcester Telegram & Gazette, September 10, 2010 Neighborhoods in Worcester, Massachusetts {{WorcesterCountyMA-geo-stub