Shrewsbury Street on a Summer Night

Please click on the photos to enlarge them.

I’ve been taking a course called “Night Photography” at the Worcester Art Museum from photographer Norm Eggert, and our assignment on Wednesday night was to transport our cameras and our tripods to Shrewsbury Street, the “Restaurant Row” of Worcester, MA. and take pictures.

We who live in Worcester get rather sensitive when outsiders refer to our city as “Wormtown” and call it a “sleepy industrial backwater” long past its prime.

But on Wednesday, Shrewsbury Street was humming with life on a balmy summer night.  It was more like a street in Europe.  People were sitting at tables on the sidewalk, deep in conversation, with not a cell phone or I-pad in sight.  Cars rolled by with music blasting, kids hung out in Cristoforo Colombo Park, everyone was friendly and no one was afraid.

The Boulevard Diner is the Queen of Worcester’s famed diners (all manufactured right here by the Worcester Lunch Car & Carriage Company between 1906 and 1957.)  It was at the Boulevard that Madonna and her entourage ordered a hearty spaghetti dinner after a performance nearby.

 On  Shrewsbury Street, as you can see, there are plenty of places to get a drink—many of them resembling the friendly neighborhood bar in Cheers where everybody knows your name.

And there are elegant restaurants with valet parking and cuisines from every corner of the world.

At the end of Shrewsbury Street is a large rotary where the restored Union Station stands, looking just as it did when it welcomed thousands of immigrants to the factories of Worcester, in search of their American dream.  Finished in 1911, it was called “A poem in  stone,” and considered one of New England’s primary  architectural treasures.  But in 1963 the last passenger train pulled out and for more than 20 years the huge building was deserted and deteriorating, huddled in the shadow of the wrecking ball. The twin towers had been removed in 1926 because they were weakened and in danger of falling.

The city managed to restore Union Station to its former glory with the help of  alumni of WPI--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. who created new towers out of fiberglass.  It re-opened in 2000, once again a major transportation hub.

On Wednesday night as I approached  Union Station, half a dozen fire engines screamed by, and then a huge pack of motorcyclists descended—there were dozens—reminding me of the furies in the film “Les Mouches.”  I watched the traffic circulate in front of Union Station, with its new mascot—a statue of Christopher Columbus--  overlooking the scene.  Eventually it was time to walk back up Shrewsbury Street, to find a place for dinner and perhaps raise a toast to Worcester’s slow but steady renaissance.

Worcester Icons as Art?

Last weekend was the annual Arts Festival in my hometown of Grafton MA. Usually I submit paintings, but this year I decided to submit three entries in the category of “embellished digital photos” -- three photos I’ve taken recently of iconic buildings in Worcester, MA.

The first one shows the condemned clock tower building on the grounds of the Worcester State Hospital complex. This spooky-looking Victorian gothic edifice is all that’s left of the buildings that were the Worcester State Lunatic Hospital built around 1877.

This building is the setting for the opening scenes of Ed Doctorow’s novel “The Book of Daniel” about the Rosenberg children. It was heavily damaged by a fire in 1992 and has been boarded up ever since. Martin Scorsese wanted to use this building when he was making the film “Shutter Island” but he was turned down for reasons I can’t remember right now. It would have brought several million dollars to the city of Worcester.

Preservation Worcester has been fighting for years to keep this building from being demolished, and so far it’s still standing. The clock in the tower is actually red but I heightened the intensity of the color to symbolize that time is running out for this historic buildlng.

People who worked there on the medical staff have told me there are dungeon- like rooms and grim bathing facilities in the basement. I’ve heard that the place is haunted—and if any building has ghosts, I would imagine this one does.

Union Station—shown in the second photo above – was built in 1911 and was the heart of the city during its industrial heyday when immigrants were arriving by the thousands in the city to work in its factories. Eventually it fell into disrepair, the two towers of the building were removed for fear they’d be blown over, and the building was abandoned in 1975.

The building was completely renovated by the Worcester Redevelopment Authority at a cost of $32 million and re-opened in 2000. Since then there have been problems with parking, not many trains (but there will be more soon) and restaurants opening in the building have struggled, but it’s still a great place to soak up the grandiose retro décor and to have big events. I took this photo when my sketching class from the Worcester Art Museum was there at night to sketch passers-by but we pretty much ended up drawing each other.

The third photo shows Worcester’s iconic Coney Island Hot Dogs. Everyone knows and loves the Coney Island sign which drips mustard (when it’s lighted and working right.) The place is art deco heaven and I’ve seen it photographed in national ad campaigns.

Last weekend, when I was in New York at the prestigious AIPAD photo show at the Park Avenue Armory, I saw photographs of Coney Island Hot Dogs selling for $2,500. They were taken by John Woolf , a photographer from Boston who, I was told, likes to stroll around various cities at night and take time-exposure shots on the deserted streets with his camera on a tripod. Naturally he picked Coney Island Hot Dogs for the same reason I did—it’s irresistible.

My “embellished photographs” of these three Worcester icons did not win any prizes at the Grafton Art Festival, but they did inspire an urge to photograph (and embellish) more of Worcester’s great architecture. (The city is a virtual time capsule of architectural styles – especially the famous three-deckers that were built to house the factory workers.)

My next project is going to be the diners, which were manufactured in Worcester and still survive throughout New England.