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     In November, 1909, plans were announced  for the development of an exclusive residential district on one of the last agricultural tracts on the city's west side, along Pleasant Street between Newton Square and Tatnuck.

Worcester Telegram,

November 3, 1909, p.1:

For brothers Cornelius and Thomas O'Connell, recent newcomers from Maine, and partners in the O'Connell Real Estate Company, it would be their third development in the city since 1905.

              A better view from the bird's eye

                    (separate window)

Written by Donald W. Chamberlayne   (Preface)

 

The land consisted of two adjacent farms which originally had been part of a single farm which traced back to 1727 when the land was purchased by a family of Scots-Irish immigrants named McFarland.

Both farms were being sold together.  One of them, owned by members of the sixth generation of their family on the land, was to retain the old homestead farmhouse and a lot surrounding it at the corner of Pleasant Street.  The other family was selling its house along with its land, opting to relocate.

The intended target of the planned development was the upper middle stratum of Worcester's social spectrum. The city was growing rapidly in population, and its emerging middle class wanted new and better housing.  The new trolley system and now the automobile were combining with that growth to bring increasing pressure on the land at the edge of the urbanized city for the space needed for new residential development. On the west side, the emphasis was on the upper segments of the economic spectrum.

 

Advertisement in Worcester Magazine, 1910: { O'Connell Ad, Feb 1910 }

 

  View of the land from Newton Hill in 1891:

Pleasant Street in the foreground, turns at Newton Square and heads westerly;
June Street across the middle at the base of the hill.

 

 

 

 

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LENOX is based on public records, including city directories, building permits, the U.S. census, articles in the local press and in the Board of Trade monthly, Worcester Magazine, biographies in local histories, and more.