Built 1889 NRHP Reference # 80000635 Architectural style Romanesque architecture Added to NRHP 5 March 1980 | MPS Worcester MRA Opened 1889 Architecture firm Fuller & Delano | |
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Location 2 King St., Worcester, Massachusetts Similar Wachusett Reservoir, DCU Center, Green Hill Park, Salisbury Mansion and Store, Elm Park | ||
The Brightside Apartments is a historic apartment house at 2 King Street in Worcester, Massachusetts. Built in 1888 to a design by Fuller & Delano, it is one of southern Worcester's finest 19th century apartment blocks. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, even though it had recently experienced some damage due to a minor fire.
Description and history
The Brightside is located on the east side of King Street, a residential street, just north of Main Street (Massachusetts Route 9) on Worcester's south side. It is a four story structure, built out of red brick with sandstone trim. It features symmetrical round bays flanking a center entrance, which is recessed behind a pair of fluted sandstone columns that are topped by a balcony that still sports original wrought iron railings. Between the upper floors are decorative sandstone panels, and there is a course of rockfaced sandstone between the fourth floor windows and the roof, where the projecting window bays are topped by (again, original) railings. A similar sandstone beltcourse extends across the projecting bays between the first and second floors, and some of the window bays are topped by similarly styled lintels.
The block is one of the more expensive of a series of apartment houses built in the Main South area of Worcester in the 1880s, and the most ornate to survive. The four story brick and sandstone apartment house was built in 1888 at a cost of $40,000, and was probably built to a specific plan by Fuller & Delano, unlike other buildings which were built from standard plans.