Following my successful hike, since I was nearby couldn’t resist checking out the downtown of a what used to be a thriving center of paper and textile manufacturing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I take you to…
This mural is by Jon Allen, you can find his art throughout the city. All was done as part of an effort to revitalize Fitchburg as it has fallen through rough times like any other post-industrial city. Below is another of his creations:
This depicts a healthy river full of brook trout and the face of Marion Stoddard — the woman who founded the Nashua Watershed Association and led local efforts to clean up the Nashua River in the early 1970s. In the 1960’s the Nashua River was named one of the Top 10 most polluted rivers in the nation!! 😮 Today it is both fishable and swimmable.
Below is what a stroll along the river looks like overlooking the trestle bridge.
Another cameo in the city is by no other than Caleb Neelon, I am sure your familiar with his many works if you live within Cambridge 😉.
Another piece of public art you’d find downtown is this sculpture. It is by Nora Valdez, titled “the immigrant”. It represents any immigrant from a different ethnic group carrying their homes, villages and neighborhoods along with their family and identity with them to start a new life in a new land.
I gotta say they really done a good job with the art scene in this city. Below you can see an alleyway between Boulder Drive and Main Street replete with public art. This is all efforts by the Activate Mill Street Initiative
While we are here why not admire all the historical buildings. From left to right you have:
- what used to be a YMCA building (1894), if you zoom in you will notice a triangle with the Spirit-Mind-Body inscription common on many YMCA buildings.
- The Drury building (1926), currently offering rents of $1,300 for 2 bedroom apts, what a bargain!!
- Dickinson Block: former site of the E.M. Dickinson Shoe Company.
- Other end of the Dickinson Block
Further down Main St you will see what looks like a fort. It is in fact the Fitchburg Armory MVM building which is now a senior center. In the late 1700s and 1800s, Fitchburg had several militias that combined to form the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, which is what the letters “M.V.M” stand for.
The armory faces a park whose main feature is the Soldiers and Sailors Monument representing “America” holding two laurel wreaths and flanked by a soldier and a sailor.
I leave you with three more buildings within the vicinity:
- Fay Club: social club operating since 1910. It was named after a man of the same name that amassed riches from the railroad business. His daughter inherited the residence and donated it to serve as a meeting space for the local town club.
- Fitchburg Gas & Electric Light Company: organized to illuminate gas streetlights in downtown Fitchburg. Soon to be the site of an Italian restaurant “Dario’s Ristorante” to open in the space.
- District Courthouse : supposedly the new courthouse and replacing the older one behind the Soldiers and Sailors monument.
I then go on to what is the upper common. Main attraction there is the memorials honoring the citizens who served in the World Wars:
Closeby is an artifact popularized by Atlas Obscura called the Rollstone Boulder. Apparently it was a glacier atop Rollstone Hill, excavated and then moved over to here.
Apparently there is so much folklore around the boulder that a pub opened right across the street taking on the name “The Boulder”, it was opened in 1934 just two months after the end of Prohibition.
As I departed towards Route 2, a view caught my attention. It was a cable stayed bridge!! in fact only the second of its kind in the state of Massachusetts other than the more famous Zakim Bridge. This one is named Arthur J. DiTommaso Memorial Bridge honoring a longtime member of the Police Department. It spans over railroad tracks and the North Nashua River:
