The Worcester Art Museum is world-renowned for its 35,000-piece collection of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photography, prints, drawings and new media. The works span 5,000 years of art and culture. View paintings by Cassatt, Gauguin, Goya, Monet, Sargent and Whistler; admire floor mosaics from the ancient city of Antioch; see cutting-edge contemporary art; and discover the Museum's many other treasures. Special exhibitions showcase the masterworks, seldom-seen gems, and important works on loan.
An acoustical masterpiece - is internationally regarded as one of the world's great concert halls for its superb acoustics and inspirational beauty.
Founded in 1812 by Revolutionary War patriot and printer Isaiah Thomas, the AAS is both a learned society and a major independent research library. The AAS library today houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources and reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century.
The hall was designed in 1902 by Josephine Wright Chapman, one of America’s first female architects, is a neo-classically designed hall of exceptional beauty. Hall is used by the Salisbury lecture society, and the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra,
Located at 40 Highland Street, is Worcester’s only historic house museum. Built in 1772 as a combination house and store, it served as the home of “gentleman-merchant” Stephen Salisbury. The store closed after the Embargo of 1812, and by 1820 all of the space once used for the store had become living quarters. Salisbury Mansion has been restored to the 1830s to reflect the time when it was home to the widow Elizabeth Tuckerman Salisbury. It is considered one of the best documented historic house museums in New England.
The WHM is devoted to local history and includes a research library of over 7,000 titles, an archive that houses thousands of documents, and a collection of artifacts, all vital to the study of Worcester history. A few examples of WHM’s holdings include correspondence of abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster, Blackstone Canal Company records, Civil War era diaries and letters, and artifacts related to Worcester’s industrial past including early woodenware and ceramics, weaponry from the colonial era through World War II, paintings and sculptures, and a significant costume and textile collection.
The French-Renaissance styled Worcester Union Station was originally completed in 1911 for the Boston and Albany Railroad (B&A), but it was also used by the New York, New Haven and Hartford and the Boston and Maine railroads. Union Station's facilities include the Grand Hall, with original elliptical stained-glass ceilings, interior marble columns and mahogany wood trim, Luciano's Cotton Club, a 1920s gangster-themed restaurant, and the Union Station Parking Garage, which has 500 spaces and direct access to the station.