Circuit Avenue
From Worcester Activist wiki
Also COLUMBUS PARK, GENOA, and LIBSON STS
Also ISABELLA, FERDINAND, COLUMBUS & CABOT STS.
During the first 50 years of Worcester as a city, great chunks of brush land were opened to development by enterprising real estate men. Today those sections of Worcester have blended into the whole. Fine streets, permanent houses, sewers, electricity, gas and telephones mark areas where brush and trees grew wild.
Among those who opened new sections of the city was the firm of Warden & Phelps. They “settled” Shrewsbury street, near Bloomingdale; Eastern avenue, north of Belmont: Elm Hill; the Auburn line, and crowned the whole with Columbus Park.
Both men were born in Worcester. Warden attended the public schools and at 20 went into the fancy goods business on his own in Lynn. Later he had a crockery business in Worcester until 1885, when he sold it to enter the real estate business in partnership with the more romantic Phelps. Phelps also went to local schools, then joined the Pacific Mail Co. as purser on steamers plying between San Francisco, Yokohama, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
When he returned to Worcester he spent several years in the foundry business, then went west to mine in Colorado and other states. For prospective purchases Warden & Phelps planned Columbus Park as the answer to a home-lover’s dream:
“The view from the eastern slope is one of the best to be had of the city, while the western outlook with the charming indented shores of Coes’ Lake and its wooded islands in the foreground, and “Asnebumskit” towering over the intervening foothills and valleys, are subjects worthy of the brush of the painter.”
“Terms of sale: Ten dollars down…”
Warden & Phelps drew a road around the development, called it Circuit avenue from the shape and tagged a North, South, East or West on it. Carrying through the Columbus motif in 1880, they named adjoining streets Genoa, Lisbon, Isabella, Ferdinand, Columbus and Cabot.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
