For generations our community has come together to learn from, to enjoy and to celebrate the arts. Whether it’s stART on the Street, Art in the Park, or art in the various museums, galleries, theatres and concert halls throughout the city, the arts, both old and new, give perspective to our lives.
During the years Worcester was a rural town (1722-1848), music and the visual arts were enjoyed mainly in the home and the churches, with a few wealthy families beginning to commission and collect art, mainly portraits and landscapes. Once Worcester became a city in 1848, the appreciation of the arts gained greater attention from community-wide collaborative efforts for cultural enrichment. The Worcester County Musical Association, founded in 1858, took advantage of Mechanics Hall—the Renaissance Revival style building completed the previous year – to bring to the city renowned orchestras and performers. The association’s music festival, which began that first year, is considered the nation’s oldest music festival.
In 1877, the Worcester Art Society was formed to promote the arts through an annual series of exhibitions and lectures held in various venues throughout the city. An early goal of the Worcester Art Society was to create an art museum. But that was not to happen then, for Worcesterites were just beginning to accumulate the wealth required for such a major philanthropic effort. Their ambitious goal was finally realized in 1896 when Stephen Salisbury III, the last of the line of one of Worcester’s wealthiest and most prominent 19th century families, invited fifty leading Worcester citizens to join him in establishing an art museum. The Museum, which opened two years later, was founded “for the benefit of all the people of the city of Worcester” with a mission “to promote art and art education.”
Thanks to prescient acquisitions by its directors and curators, as well as many gifts from generous collectors, the Worcester Art Museum soon became internationally recognized for its encyclopedic holdings of both western and eastern art, which range from the nation’s first public collection of Japanese prints to America’s largest holdings of ancient Roman mosaics to the first medieval building incorporated into an American collection.
Worcester’s other major art collections, which are housed at the American Antiquarian Society, established in 1812, and the Worcester Historical Museum (1875), also benefit from years of collecting, serving as major resources for the community and beyond.
From its founding, the Worcester Art Museum has been committed to art instruction, carrying on the mission of the Art Students’ Club, which was established in the 1880s for “the encouragement, promotion and practice of art.” Today’s artists benefit from a variety of Worcester organizations, including the Worcester Center for Crafts—one of the oldest organizations of its kind in America (1856) — and ArtsWorcester, which has been exhibiting and advancing regional artists since 1979.
Like the visual arts, the performing arts have long flourished in Worcester, thanks to a number of major venues constructed during the 19th and 20th century. Major theaters and auditoriums, such as the Franklin Square Theatre (1904) — now Hanover Theatre — Worcester Memorial Auditorium (1933), and the Centrum (1982), have provided spaces for performances ranging from live acts to film. A wide variety of galleries and performance venues, including those at the various colleges and the new Jean McDonough Arts Center (JMAC), continue to give today’s artists a variety of opportunities. Also noteworthy is the community’s program of public art, including POW! WOW! Worcester, which draws artists from around the world to create large-scale murals throughout the city.
Finally, not to be overlooked, are Worcester’s many fine examples of architecture, which add beauty to and help tell the fascinating history of New England’s second largest city. Preservation Worcester, founded in 1969, has as its mission the safeguarding of the best of these structures and encouraging excellence in future design.
Thanks to generations of generous and culturally minded community leaders, the arts are today among Worcester’s greatest assets. The Worcester Cultural Coalition, established in 1999, assists in coordinating the many activities of this rich array of cultural and educational organizations, all of which make Worcester a special place.
John Green’s pocketbook 1766
Three physicians – all named John Green – from successive generations, played a large role, both in the development of Worcester as a town (and then a city) and in the advancement of medicine in Worcester.
It all began just west of Worcester in Leicester where in the early eighteenth-century Rev. Thomas Green established the First Baptist Church. In addition to being a preacher, Thomas Green had also been trained informally in medicine and surgery by two men who had been boarders. As a result of this training, and further study on his own, his practice thrived as did his church. He actually began teaching others the practice of medicine as there were no medical schools in Massachusetts before Harvard Medical School was established in 1782. Over the course of his career, he was responsible for training over 100 doctors.
One of his sons, John Green, was trained by him in medicine and moved to Worcester in 1757 at age 21 to practice. His father had purchased several hundred acres for him to build a home on the outskirts of town in what is now Green Hill Park.
The first John Green also built an office on Main Street, just down from the Courthouse and began his practice. Worcester at that time had a population of less than 2,000. His office was in one of only seven houses located on Main Street, which ran from what is now Lincoln Square to the Town Square where City Hall now is. John Green married twice and had 12 children. One of these twelve was John Green, Jr., who he trained in medicine. Father and son practiced together until the father’s death in 1799 at age 63.
