Worcester Public Health Laboratory, Belmont Hospital Complex
251 Belmont Street/Skyline Drive
The Worcester Public Health Laboratory is the last surviving part of the large Belmont Hospital Complex. Also known as the Bacteriological Lab, it was built for the City of Worcester in 1936 at a time when the City was concerned with public health problems such as syphilis and public water quality. It was built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style of Henry Hobbs Richardson, the most eminent architect of the day, by the Worcester Project Office of the Economic Recovery Act Engineering Department. (The first such bacteriological laboratory in the entire country was opened in 1885 in Worcester’s City Hall and then moved to this building.)
The medical lab is a small, one-story stone building with five bays across, a center entry, a hip roof, and is three bays deep. It is constructed of multicolored rock-face ferruginous granite, irregular in shape and laid out in a crazy-quilt pattern. The appearance of numerous pieces of orange-colored granite in the walls indicates that the stone probably came from nearby quarries on Green Hill or Millstone Hill. The hip roof has a flare at its lower edge and is covered with diamond-shaped asbestos tiles. A single eyebrow dormer window is at the center of both the north and south faces of the roof.
The main entrance is unadorned, with a four-light transom, now boarded up. A secondary entrance is located on the south side. The main room was designed to serve as the laboratory. Both single and double windows on the main facade and on the north side indicate the need for good natural lighting. Lab benches were all situated along outer walls. Rooms to the south were planned for use as an office, restroom and storage space. The laboratory floor was of quarry tile, with lower portions sheathed in ochre-colored glazed tile.
At present, the exterior stone walls are in very good condition. However, the roof, interior walls and floor are in shambles. The structure is partly boarded up and the roof is presently wrapped in a tarp.
Under the settlement agreement for construction of the new Worcester Technical High School, the City is obliged to restore the building as a museum, or if that’s not feasible, for some other agreed-upon use.
As the only remaining part of the Belmont Hospital Complex and the first such public health laboratory in the country, this building is of considerable historical significance. It could be adapted as a museum to tell about Worcester’s important contributions to medical history. Rich in local significance, the building is located on the site of Worcester’s first permanent settlement. A museum here could also share the story of Green Hill Park and the early and historic development of Worcester’s park system.