Exchange Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
Also MARKET ST.
“The Indians are among us,” Wrote Capt. Samuel Wright from Worcester to Co. John Chandler, Jr., in May, 1725, “and we have had several pursuits after them, and have been very vigilant in prosecuting all methods to come up with them by watching and ranging the swamps and lurking places, and by watching at nights in private places without the garrisons: but they are so much like wolves we cannot yet surprise them…”
The second garrison in Worcester during the Third Settlement stood near the head of Exchange street.
In it, settlers and their families crowded during alarms. Massachusetts Indians had ceased to be troublesome, but numbers were drifting in from Canada as allies of the French to make the frontier nervous.
The garrison was a square, two-storied structure of rough-hewn timbers interlocking at ends and secured with pegs. It was high and strong enough to dismay the stoutest redskin.
If the garrison was breached through sheer numbers, settlers climbed to the second floor, pulled up the ladder and fired down. The upper part projected out two or three feet over the bottom. This was handy for spilling liquid lead, boiling water or pitch.
The garrison was topped by a small watch tower. It was proof against arrows and bullets.
Exchange street was first laid out by Deacon Daniel Heywood, according to historian William Lincoln. In 1836 it was called Columbian avenue. Others say it was Market street before that.
Columbian avenue, Market street – or Market street and Columbian avenue, the street got its present name in 1848, from Central Exchange.
This was an L-block of three stories, built about 1800, a few feet south of Main street. One part of the structure was the Worcester Bank: the rest the home of its bachelor president, Daniel Waldo.
After he built a fine mansion next door, the L-block became a fashionable boarding house, then Central Exchange. It housed the post office, law and printing offices.
Everyone called it the Exchange.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
