WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
By Richard Carreño
[WritersClearinghouse News Service]
Hope Cemetery,
Coney Island Luncheonette, Worcester Art Museum
You can tell a lot about a city by its cemeteries. In New England, the denizens of these burying grounds, even in death, speak loudly of the accomplishment, influence, and fortune of once flourishing 19th-century communities. And even, as is the case in Worcester, poor cemetery management.
By the numbers, Worcester, with a population of about 175,000, is New England's second largest city. Though, as you walk about the city, as I did last week, you wouldn't know it. Pedestrians are few, and cars roar by with an intensity that makes its plain that their drivers have scant need nor interest in interacting with Worcester's downtown. What's left of it, that is.
Since the '70s, if not before, city officials, under the pretence of urban development, have worked tirelessly in gutting downtown's heart, in a city that's ironically nicknamed the 'Heart of the Commonwealth.' First they razed the commerical district around the Common, replacing it with a huge barrel-roofed, multi-storied shopping centre, attached to the world's largest indoor parking garage. [Sic!] The centre quickly morphed into a white elephant; the garage, almost always empty.
