Worcester developed as an industrial city in the 19th century because the Blackstone Canal and railways facilitated the import of raw materials and the export of such finished goods as machines, textiles, and wire.

After World War II, manufacturing there waned; economic and population decline was not reversed until the 1990s, when higher education, medicine, biotechnology, and new immigrants started making their mark.

Modern Worcester is known for its diversity and large immigrant population, with significant communities of Vietnamese, Brazilians, Albanians, Puerto Ricans, Ghanaians, Dominicans, Irish, English, Italians, Greeks, and others.

On July 13, 1674, Gookin obtained a deed to eight square miles of land in Quinsigamond from the Nipmuc people and English traders and settlers began to inhabit the region.

Having seized the courthouse, the militiamen waited for the 25 appointees from the Crown to arrive, where they were denied entry and later forced to disavow their appointments by King George III.

That same year, Massachusetts Spy publisher Isaiah Thomas moved his radical newspaper out of British occupied Boston to Worcester.

On July 14, 1776, Thomas performed the first public reading in Massachusetts of the Declaration of Independence from the porch of the Old South Church,[16] where the 19th-century Worcester City Hall stands today.

[20] After World War II, Worcester began to fall into decline as the city lost its manufacturing base to cheaper alternatives across the country and overseas.

Lake Quinsigamond (also known as Long Pond) stretches four miles (6.4 km) across the Worcester and Shrewsbury border and is a very popular competitive rowing and boating destination.

[47][48] Massachusetts' geographic location, jutting out into the North Atlantic, as well as Worcester's elevation relative to the surrounding terrain, makes the city very prone to Nor'easter weather systems that can dump heavy snow on the region.

[57] Worcester is known for its diversity and large immigrant population, with significant communities of Vietnamese, Brazilians, Albanians, Puerto Ricans, Ghanaians,[60] Dominicans, along with Chinese and Indian Americans.

As one of the top ten emerging hubs for tech startups,[65] the city's biotechnology and technology industries have helped spur major expansions at both the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

[67] In January 2017, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a law allowing 44 acres of unused state-owned land on the former Worcester State Hospital campus to be converted into a biomanufacturing industrial park.

Combined with a traditionally non-rhotic Eastern New England English accent, the name can be transcribed as "WOOS-tuh" or "WISS-tuh" (the first syllable possibly having a near-close central unrounded vowel).

Shrewsbury Street is Worcester's traditional "Little Italy" neighborhood and today boasts many of the city's most popular restaurants and nightlife.

Tuckerman Hall, designed by one of the country's earliest woman architects, Josephine Wright Chapman, is home to the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra.

However, the heart symbol may also have its provenance in lore that the Valentine's Day card, although not invented in the city, was first mass-produced and popularized by Worcester resident Esther Howland.

[81] Similarly, the invention of the classic yellow "smiley face" design by Worcester native Harvey Ball has gained it an iconic status in the city.

The non-profit Veterans Inc. is headquartered at the southern tip of Grove Street in the historic Massachusetts National Guard Armory building.

The first Armenian Church in the Western Hemisphere was built in Worcester in 1890 and consecrated on January 18, 1891, as "Soorp Purgich" (Holy Savior).

[97] Worcester was home to Marshall Walter ("Major") Taylor, an African American cyclist who won the world one-mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship in 1899.

Taylor's legacy includes being the first African American and the second black athlete to be a world champion (Canadian boxer George Dixon, 1892).

A city council acts as the legislative body, and the council-appointed manager handles the traditional day-to-day chief executive functions.

In effect from January 1949 until November 1985, this charter (as outlined in chapter 43 of the Massachusetts General Laws) established City Council/City Manager government.

Despite non-partisan elections, two groups alternated in control of council: the local Democratic Party and a slate known as the Citizens' Plan E Association (CEA).

They were joined in their political activities by networks of related Quaker families such as the Earles and the Chases, whose organizing efforts were crucial to the anti-slavery cause in central Massachusetts and throughout New England.

"[102] On October 19, 1924, the largest gathering of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) ever held in New England took place at the Agricultural Fairgrounds in Worcester.

The city's public school system also administers an adult education component called "Night Life", and operates a Public-access television cable TV station on channel 11.

Interstate 290 (I-290) connects central Worcester to I-495 in Marlboro, the Mass Pike and I-395 in nearby Auburn and the Connecticut city of Norwich.

After that, the airport encountered years of spotty commercial service, but it has since been given new life with the arrival of jetBlue, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines.