During the last ten years Worcester has changed materially in appearance and has lost much of the rural aspect which, long after it became a city, gave a charm to the streets and continued to offer refreshment and cheer to its inhabitants. —Stephen Salisbury III, 1887 in letter to Samuel Winslow
This area shall be called Institute Park in recognition of the usefulness of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute to the material interests of the city and county. —Stephen Salisbury III in deed of gift
Alonzo S. Kimball
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Kinnicutt instituted a student loan system which helped more boys through college than will ever be known. Most of the teachers kept the timing of their quizzes a secret. Not Kinnie. “A week from today there will be a quiz,” he would say. “I’m telling you this so you can prepare a crib in good time. When you’ve made one, tear it up and make another. Then tear that one up. By that time you won’t need it. You’ll know the subject and I won’t have to give you the quiz.” Dr. Kinnicutt, a naturalist as well as a chemist, was actively in terested in Worcester’s attempt of the 1880’s to create a park system. His friend, Edward W. Lincoln, who contributed his services as Park Commissioner, had created an elaborate scheme whereby the City would eventually be circled by a wide boulevard connecting a series of parks. There were many supporters of his plan. Several citizens gave plots of land for this purpose, and Lake Avenue and Park Avenue were made into long wide streets as the first links of the contemplated boulevard. Stephen Salisbury III, who was a member of Mr. Lincoln’s Commission, gave seventeen acres of land across the street from Tech for such a park and he proposed to beautify the land himself. In the deed of gift he made a deferential gesture by specifying that the park must be named Institute Park and a certain section be reserved for future building by the school. The “location and dimension” was kept flexible, to be determined by agreement be tween City and school, a prerogative that up to its Centennial year was never to be used. Salisbury Pond had originally been created when the first Stephen Salisbury had thrown an embankment across Mill Brook to provide a millsite for Ichabod Washburn’s wire mill. With its new importance as part of a park, Stephen III built a decorative bridge over one corner of the pond, added boathouses, bandstands, and a replica of a Norse Tower. He was careful to provide “facilities for ingress and egress of carriages.” He also rescued two tall Doric columns from Boston’s old Tremont House, which at that time was being demolished. These two granite columns, one with a round ball on its top, were placed as lone sentinels at the opposite boundary lines of the park. To give the school further prominence, Stephen Salisbury III arranged that the historical Jo Bill Road be renamed Institute Road. He also persuaded the City to curve the street around the bottom of Boynton Hill, thereby extending Tech’s campus considerably. At the very corner where the new road met Boynton Street, and close to the gates of the campus, Mr. Salisbury erected a small building which was to become one of Tech’s most picturesque traditions. Intended to be a magnetic laboratory, its interior had been planned by Professor Kimball. The building was to be used as an adjunct of electrical engineering, a subject which was offered as the school’s first post-graduate course. Electricity in the 1880’s was very little understood. The class of