Welcome to Thursday Doors! This is a weekly challenge for people who love doors and architecture to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos, drawings, or other images or stories from around the world. If you’d like to join us, simply create your own Thursday Doors post each (or any) week and then share a link to your post in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). If you like, you can add our badge to your post.
Last week, I decided to spend a night in Burlington, Massachusetts. It really wasn’t much of a decision—I had a certificate for a free night at a hotel that was about to expire. I decided to visit Burlington because I have friends in the area that I hadn’t seen since I retired in 2019. On my way, I decided to check out Worcester Union Station. I had heard that it was once considered the most beautiful building in Massachusetts. When you visit the gallery, I think you might agree.
I have too many pictures to put in one post, so I’m going to switch between doors and architecture today, and then again, probably next week. I’m also going to spread the information I have about the station and the city of Worcester across two posts.
Worcester isn’t in the center of Massachusetts, unless (like the state government is often accused) you ignore the portion of the state west of I-91 (US Interstate highway). Worcester is about halfway between Springfield and Boston. Worcester is also the western terminus of the commuter rail system operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) more widely known as the T. The T is one of the oldest public transit systems in the United States.
Union Station was completed in 1911 and replaced an earlier station that had been operating since 1875. The earlier station was known for its 212-foot-high clock tower and massive masonry arches over the train shed.
As I’ve mentioned before, railroad stations were called Union Stations because they served a number of unrelated railroads. Worcester Union station was built by the New York Central Railroad along the Boston and Albany Railroad line. The station also served the Providence and Worcester Railroad (which was acquired by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad or ‘New Haven’), the Norwich and Worcester Railroad (acquired by the New York and New England Railroad), the Worcester, Nashua and Rochester Railroad and the Boston, Barre and Gardner Railroad (which both became part of the Boston and Maine Railroad). This information comes courtesy of Wikipedia.
Passenger service remained available out of Worcester through the early 1960s. When rail service started to decline, and prior to the formation od AMTRAK, the service and the station started to deteriorate. From 1971 until the early 1990s, the station fell into a state of disrepair. In the 1990s, an effort was launched to restore the station. I hope you enjoy the photos I have for you today. Some are historical, some are mine, taken last week. I also hope you will take a few minutes to check out some of the posts from the other participants. I visit them all, and I always enjoy them.
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All five of my current books are now available in audio book form thanks to Amazon KDP’s Virtual Voice process. The voice is AI generated, but I can honestly say, it’s pretty darn good. The audio books are reasonably priced (all below $7 US) and, if you already own the Kindle version and want to add an audio version, you can do that for $1.99. There is a five-minute sample on the book page for each book. If you’re interested, click on any of the Dreamer’s Alliance book links below the image or on the link below for my latest book.
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