Fay Street Historic District

Two three-decker houses at 4 and 6 Fay Street in Worcester form a tiny district of about a quarter acre, along with a modern garage. Built around 1896, both are Queen Anne style, with hip roofs, side-hall plans, end-bay entries under projecting porches with turned posts and brackets, and three-story bay windows. They are clad in clapboard with shingle bands and retain their 2/2 sash windows. The houses were part of the northward spread of three-decker building into the Wall Street area, where workers from the Graton and Knight leather belt company, railyards, warehouses, and meat packing plants lived. The neighborhood began with Irish and French-Canadian families and later became a focus of the city's Syrian and Lebanese communities. Contractor James A. McDermott probably built the pair and owned them through 1910. The district was recognized as a well-preserved, representative example of local three-decker design and of working-class neighborhood development.