McNamara House & Store, 455-457 Millbury Street, Worcester

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS MA-1300. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Millbury Street, Worcester, Worcester County, Massachusetts USGS Worcester South, Massachusetts Quadrangle Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinates: Significance The McNamara House and Store is an early and largely intact exam- ple of the multistory commercial/residential building type in Worcester. It is notable for its Stick Style architecture. Developed as part of the expanding Irish community around Vernon Hill and this section of Millbury Street, and owned and operated as a saloon between and by individuals with Irish surnames, the building has an important association with the history of Irish im- migration in Worcester in the latter part of the century, when the Irish still constituted the largest immigrant group in the city.

Description The McNamara House and Store is a three-story wood frame struc- ture with a cruciform gable roof with overhanging eaves. The foundation is brick and stone; the exterior wall clapboard and shin- gle; the roof covering asphalt shingle. The windows are two-over- two sash, with single windows in some places and groupings of sev- eral in others. The building has projecting bays on the north and south facades, and porches of different design on the north, west and south sides; the one on the south has two levels, the others one. The recessed rear porches resemble those of three-deckers in the area. The architectural style is Stick Style, represented here by gable stickwork, brackets on the porches' supporting posts, and turned posts and decorative railings.

A woodframe storefront stretches across most of the street facade; the enameled panels under the windows were added about On the interior, the first floor contains a store, a few steps down from the main floor of the apart- ment behind it; the second and third floors have apartments. The building has residential entrances at the southwest corner and on the north side, and a central entrance to the store from the sidewalk. Although in sound condition, the exterior wood surfaces are bare of paint. History The McNamara House and Store, then numbered# 277 Millbury Street, was built about on the site of an earlier structure.

The area was then rapidly developing with houses and commercial buildings serving the expanding Irish community, many of whose workers were employed at the Washburn & Moen Central Works and Quinsigamond Iron and Wire Works. John McNamara, who MCNAMARA HOUSE AND STORE HABS No.

MA-1300 (Page 2) may have been the original owner of the house and store, had oper- ated saloons and lived at four other addresses on Millbury Street be- fore moving his saloon and residence to in where he lived until his death in His widow kept the saloon until and lived on one of the floors and either rented out other floors of the building or took in boarders until Until the property had one address and three occupied floors tenanted by wireworkers with Irish surnames; by there was a shift to six premises occu- pied by a more diverse set of tenants. In the street address of the property changed to two numbers: (the store) and (the residence) Millbury Street, which it retains today. In O'Donnell & Co.

operated a saloon on the property; by it was a grocery store operated by William Cinsky; by the store at was vacant, and remained so until when Peter Jogas ran a gro- cery store; from to John Srupas ran the grocery store; from then to it was vacant. Because liquor licensing was voted on annually in Worcester and the temperance forces sometimes won, saloons had intermittent histories. The building is vacant today.

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS MA-1300. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Adams, Virginia Hedges, and Andrew C. Winters. Historic and Architectural Survey Report: Route 146 Improvements, Worcester and Millbury, Massachusetts. Prepared for the Massa- chusetts Department of Public Works. Pawtucket, RI, Includes Inventory Form for Millbury Street, Worcester, also on file at the Massachusetts Historical Commission. Rice, Franklin P. The Worcester of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety- Eight: Fifty Years a City. F. S. Blanchard & Co., Worcester, Massa- chusetts, Rosenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, Stone, Orra L. History of Massachusetts Industries: Their Inception, Growth, and Success. S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Worcester Board of Trade.

A Tribute to the Columbian Year by the City of Worcester. F. S. Blanchard & Co., Worcester, MA, Worcester House and City Directories. F. W. Beers & Co. Atlas of the City of Worcester, Mass. New York, Sanborn Map Co. Insurance Maps of Worcester, Mass, Historians: Stanley F. Moss and Lauren C. Cook,Boston Affiliates, Inc., October MCNAMARA HOUSE AND STORE HABS No. MA-1300 (Page 3) 5 McNamara House and Store Portion of Insurance Map of Worcester, Massachusetts, (Sanborn Map Company, New York) MCNAMARA HOUSE AND sroRE BABS No MA-1300 (Page4) f MCNAMARA HOUSE AND STORE HABS No. MA-1300 (Page 5) 5 'l" 29 1 4 II 5 'l" balcony bath kitchen T - co living room 0 l.O storage = N r-1 work storage +- store l display 39 '6" porch ~~ FIRST FLOOR 10 'O" MCNAMARA HOUSE AND STORE HABS No.

MA-1300 (Page 6) balcony bath bedroom kitchen bedroom living room bedroom bedroom balcony SECOND FLOOR 10 IQ II MCNAMARA HOUSE AND STORE HABS No. MA-1300 (Page 7) balcony bedroom kitchen toile bath bedroom bedroom bedroom living room .. '2. LI.;:--- THIRD FLOOR 10 1 0 II