Harding-Winter Street Manufacturing District

Harding and Winter Streets in central Worcester hold a cluster of brick factories built between 1870 and 1898, the surviving core of a once extensive manufacturing district. Construction of Interstate 290 in the 1970s and the decline of downtown manufacturing fragmented the larger area, but these nineteenth-century factories remain. The buildings include the J.H. & G.M. Walker Shoe Factory and storehouse, the Wachusett Building later enlarged for S.R. Heywood & Co., the Hill Envelope Company factory designed by Fuller & Delano, the Abraham Israel underwear factory, and the Worcester Stained Glass Works. The district was a leading center of boot and shoe making in the 1880s, and the Heywood Company was the city's largest shoe manufacturer in the 1890s and early twentieth century. Envelope, underwear and stained glass firms added variety typical of Worcester's industrial pattern. The area sits beside the filled bed of the Blackstone Canal, now Harding Street.