Ely Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
Also INSTITUTE PARK
When dammed water lapped up softly against the rim of Salisbury Pond and workmen put the last licks to Institute Park, few Worcester residents got the satisfaction that Lyman A. Ely did.
As secretary to Stephen Salisbury, who gave the land and the park to Worcester, Ely personally supervised the construction and planning. He had taken over development of the Salisbury estate in 1885.
Mr. Salisbury’s plan was to allow the utmost freedom to visitors in roaming over the grass, roads and paths of Institute Park. The plan was carried out by Ely.
When the park was completed, Worcester was amazed at its beauty. The rustic stone tower-patterned on the Old Mill in Newport-the boathouse and bandstand, containing the ghosts of muted trumpets, the many fine trees are still as then. Only a wooden bridge crossing to an island in the Pond is gone.
Ely was a native of East Haddam, Conn. In his earlier days in Worcester he ran a real estate office and was in the boot and shoe business.
He was prominent for many years in business and political life.
He was a member of the Board of Alderman; a director of the old Worcester Board of Trade and various municipal commissions. Worcester banking circles and the Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company were other interests.
Worcester charities knew his compassion. He was a charter member and a trustee of Worcester Art Museum; a director of the Home for Aged Men and Home for Aged Women; a director of Worcester Society of Antiquity and a director of Worcester Collateral Loan Association.
He died Jan. 20, 1917, at 82. He left no near relatives.
To charity he left $30,000.
To his housekeeper, who fussed with his health and saw that he ate properly, he left $10,000. He also left her most of the furniture in his home at 80 Salisbury street and the right to live there for six months without cost.
Ely street-extending from Davis street south to Castle street-was named for him in 1872.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
