Woodford Street Historic District

Five three-decker houses and their five rear garages make up this small district at the southern end of Woodford Street in Worcester. All were built around 1926 as part of an automobile-oriented suburb east of the Vernon Hill Playground. Each house has a gable roof with a pedimented facade, a three-tier porch, wide bracketed cornices, and clapboard on the first story with shingles above. Porch openings vary between semicircular, peaked and basket-handle shapes, and the garages are cinderblock. The district is notable for how well this late group of three-deckers has been preserved. It also records a pattern of settlement: the first owners and tenants included grocers, merchants, a brick company president and craftsmen, many of them Jewish families who had left the older Grafton Hill neighborhood along Providence Street. The area was judged significant locally for its history and its architecture, and it retains its original character.