The growth of Green Island as a community was helped by being surrounded by local factories during Worcester’s industrial boom. One of the largest was the Washburn and Moen factory, developed by Ichabod Washburn and Benjamin Goddard in 1831. In the late 1800’s it was bought out by the American Steel and Wire Co. (Worcester Historical Museum). The factory “represented economic success in the Worcester community” through its success as a wire mill and even after it closed other businesses used the warehouse for different things (O’Leary, 7). The story of the rise and fall of the factory connects to the industrial and economic story of Worcester as a whole and the Green Island community.
American Steel and Wire was a division of the U.S. Steel Co., and it thrived for more than a century within Worcester. Its Southworks factory was located by the Blackstone River, where it was joined by the old Blackstone Canal. It was one of several factories where Green Islanders worked. Longtime neighborhood resident Maureen Schwab remembers that her grandfather walked to his job at the “Southworks” as they called it. When asked what her grandfather did there, she said “I guess he probably pulled wire!” (Maureen Schwab, Personal Interview, 27 April, 2023). As Lorraine Laurie states, “Many a new immigrant…left home before dawn to begin a twelve-hour shift in the steamy-hot American Steel and Wire Mill” (Laurie, 34).
The community was able to thrive and build an economy because of this ready access to factory jobs. That economy boomed during World War 2, when the demand for steel was at its peak. After the war ended, however, the need for the production of steel declined dramatically, and business began to see a sharp fall. The factory officially stopped producing steel in 1977 (Worcester Historical Museum, 4). The closing of this and other nearby factories would devastate the area as jobs and earnings disappeared. The site of the factory was abandoned for decades; toxic waste continued to accumulate at the site due to an increase in illegal activity there after the factory’s closing. This once important site for the community had become instead a hazard (O’Leary, 7).
That changed in 2010, when developer Denis Dowdle acquired the enormous site and took on the job of bringing it back into use. The site covers about 44,000 acres of land, and the majority of the land was contaminated due to its industrial and more recent history (O’Leary, 7). Dowdle built a massive Walmart along with several other successful businesses including an Olive Garden Restaurant. Holy Cross Environmental Studies major Margaret O’Leary, who did extensive research into the site, states, “Remediating the former property of the U.S. Steel allowed for continued economic growth throughout the Worcester community, especially given the site’s location along Route 146” (O’Leary 11).
The old “Southworks” site has thus again become important to local life by offering access to everyday goods and providing more jobs. It also helps to tell the neighborhood, and Worcester’s, history through the Blackstone Heritage Corridor Visitor’s Center , which is a museum about the history of the area surrounding the river, is also located on the site because it shows the importance of the area, specifically the river. The site of the center used to be a wire mill which could have been where Schwab’s grandfather, mentioned above, worked. The building was a community project in which people came together to show the history and importance of the Blackstone Canal, which attracted so many immigrants first to construct it and then to work in the factories that surrounded it. It was the need for housing for those workers that led to the development of the Green Island neighborhood beginning around 1860 (Laurie 7). The center is also made with “green” architecture such as repurposed brick, solar panels, and several plants surrounding the buildings (Blackstone Heritage Corridor). Once again, the site of the Washburn and Moen factory served the community of Green Island.
The story of the U.S. Steel factory tells one of how Worcester’s abandoned industrial sites can be brought back into use and help support the citizens of Green Island again. As Dowdle explains, policies were put in place that make the remediation of toxic waste sites more feasible. Indeed, in 2018, Dowdle purchased part of the old Wyman Gordon site near Kelley Square to develop today’s Polar Park, SOMA Apartments, a Life Science complex and other projects. The present day WRTA factory offers another example of the remediation of a very toxic site in the heart of Green Island–right next to its valued Crompton Park. The WRTA site used to be a manufactured gas plant in which a massive coal tower was left unused for several years, contaminating the area and resulting in a 1 to 2 million dollar clean up of the toxic chemicals on the site (Aronow). The remediation had several positive environmental effects on the area. The historic immigrant neighborhood of Green Island grew out of the industry that surrounded it in downtown Worcester. The abandonment of those industries meant that for a long time Green Island was ringed by huge empty or unsightly and toxic relics of the industrial past. The clean up and reuse of those sites today help support today’s community and its environment. Abandoned sites still exist in Green Island. These stories of remediation suggest more sites could be redeveloped to make life in Green Island more vibrant and more green.
Works Cited
Aronow, Sophia. “MassDEP Brownfields: WRTA Maintenance and Operations Facility.” 2019, Clark University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUdWAtxlHQs&list=PLJn2AKOcYr7kd6hrDH1s09XbX_qUlHbUR&index=3
Blackstone Heritage Corridor. “Corridor Chats: A Visit to the Blackstone River Valley Heritage Center at Worcester.” 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0piD6xm7TY
Carroll, William. American Steel and Wire Company Collection. Worcester Historical Museum, Nov. 2000. https://worcesterhistoryblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/american-steel-_-wire-company-collection-2000.76.pdf
Laurie, Lorraine Michele. The Island That Became a Neighborhood: A History of Green Island in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1826-1985. Worcester Public Library, 1985.
O’Leary, Margaret. “The Relationship between Contaminated Land Sites and Adjacent Rivers: The Blackstone River and Tobias Boland Way.” 2023, College of the Holy Cross.