Jaques Avenue
From Worcester Activist wiki
Also WORCESTER CITY HOSPITAL, BELLEVUE AND PIEDMONT STS.
A marble stone in City Hospital reads:
“In Memory of George Jaques…a grateful city places this tablet. Though it speaks to many generations, the blessings of his gift and the gratitude of our citizens will outlast the stone.”
Abiel Jaques was graduated from Harvard University in 1807. He became principal of a nautical academy in the seafaring town of Salem in 1809.
Later he taught in Watertown, Newton, Uxbridge and other places. He also became a land surveyor, civil engineer, farmer. He died in Worcester in 1852, leaving a son.
George Jaques was graduated from Brown University in 1836. He taught in Virginia from 1838 to 1840. Then he came back to Worcester.
The land of the Jaques had once belonged to the Chandlers, before the Revolution Worcester’s largest landowners.
City Hospital, incorporated May 25, 1871, was a modest place. It started in Abijah Bigelow’s house, corner of Front and Church streets.
Soon after, Mr. Jaques gave the hospital three and a half acres of land on Prince street for a new hospital.
When he died on August 24, 1872, he left most of his estate in trust, “to be by the city applied to the sole and particular use and benefit of the institution recently established and know as the Worcester City Hospital.”
Value of the gift was over $200,000.
Grateful Worcester residents began calling the hospital Jaques Hospital.
In his honor, Prince street was renamed Jaques avenue in 1889.
George Jaques named at least two other Worcester streets, Bellevue street, not far from the hospital, was named after New York’s famous Bellevue Hospital. Piedmont street he named for its location – “foot of the mountain.”
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
