I remember going there in the 50's and playing "snaps". It was a game like marbles but was played on a board and you used little round "snaps" that looked like napkin rings and you snaped them with your thumb and index finger. The Flag pole and monument were stll there then as was the rotary. The flag in Lincoln Square was one of only a few in the country authorized to fly 24 hrs a day.

The Lincoln Square Boy's Club has been incorporated into the campus of Worcester Vocational High School. It is known as 'Building A', and is currently the home of the Early Childhood and Health Assistant trades.

I remember going to the boys club in the 40's. Yes we played snaps then also.So of my best times were at the club. They had a wood working shop swimming in the pool movies for 5 cents.there were bus trips from there to other places. A gym we played soft ball. I remember the gye teaches name Brownie. I was born in Worcester in 1939.That club was a great place to go. They also had a girls club up the street on Lincoln St. I lived on Keefe Place but is not there anymore.Living in new york now I miss Worcester but I guess it just isn't the same anymore

Fond memories of the Lincoln Sq Boys Club... We lived in Westboro, still a pretty small town in the late 60's with no such thing as an indoor pool. So all the boys in our neighborhood learned to swim at the Boys Club. One of the dads' would drive us all in, if Mr. Winchell drove we would always ask for the story of how he learned to swim by being thrown into Lk Quinsigmond when he was 2yrs old. This was told as we crossed the Lk on Rt 9, just as we would enter 'the big city'! Anyway, going to the Boys Club was great. So politically incorrect by today's obnoxious standards. No girls allowed- all boys swam naked and the instructors weren't afraid of disiplining misbehaving kids. Afterwards we'd go upstairs for penny candy- bulls eyes and root beer barrels. I can still see them in the glass case and taste them 30-some years later.

I lived on Belmont Hill and spent many childhood days at the Boys' Club. I even worked there during my high school years. On a rainy Saturday, well over 1000, maybe 2000 kids would pack into the club for swimming, basketball in the gym, library, game room. The game room, in addition to the "snaps" game mentioned previously, had shuffleboard, ping pong, table hockey, building blocks, checkers, chess, all checked out using your "club ticket". There were also movies, 5 cents, on Saturdays, and in later years, roller skating in the movie auditorium. This same auditorium hosted dances on Saturday nights, occasionally with a live band. At 14 years of age, you were able to go to the "Senior Room" on the top floor which had 4 full-size pool tables, at 10 cents per hour, 2 ping pong tables and a card room which had card tables hosting Kitty Whist games constantly and a color TV. I hung out there, especially on Saturday dance night, when the neighborhood girls would also be there. It was a lively place, filling a real need in the community. I and my circle of friends were well-served by the club. While we went there for recreation, it was also a place to escape troubled homes and a point of contact for various community services. Local college students would come as volunteer tutors. You know, I could go on for pages, but let me just end by saying I was sad to hear of its closing.

Going to the "Club" was a Saturday morning ritual for my circle also. We kept our club tickets on a brown shoestring around our necks, and just the walk down Belmont Street from Eastern Ave to the club was an adventure. The musty, mildewey smell that always seemed to linger in the foyer was confirmation that one had arrived.

I used to be at the boys club from after school till closeing :-) On weekends if they didn't have the roller derby or Wrestling in the auditorium we be back at the boys club. And right down the road on Main street when Central street used to run right acroos to summer street. There as I thnk the E.M Lowes, down stairs there was a bowling alley were with $0.50 we could spend most of the day. I stll have my Old Boys Club card with the Shoe string to go around the neck. Snaps was my favoraite game hahaha. Come home with a cold towel around my finger It was worth it.

Was a member of the boys club from 1937 till 1942,many memorys,went swimming mostly every time there.lived up on kendall st,some of my friends Bob Cox,Clifford Cox,Paul Donahue.

I remember the basketball tournaments of the late 40's when the Webster Shamrocks from St. Louis High School showed the Worcester guys how the game of basketball is played. Don Coyle , Ernie Ducharme, Len Nowicki, Jackie Lonergan, etc.

In the late 40's, Mom worked at Telechron on Foster Street, and when Dad was on the day shift at American Steel and Wire, the Boys Club was our after school baby sitter. We would take the Shortline Bus from Holden. I think the fare was either six or twelve cents, and would stay at the Club until the folks got off work and picked us up. We swam, played snaps, pool, used the library, ran the indoor track, and explored some of the "secret areas" the club. I also remember sitting in the oval watching the train activity in the square.

I belonged to th WBC in later 40s & early 50s! The YMCA was a bit ritzy as I remember. It was the swimming pool we really wanted to use. My dad & I won a WBC contest abt baseball. 1st & 2nd place got to go to a Redsox game , box seats & meet famous players. We won 1st place with my dad's predictions & my essay on Stan Museul.(sp?) We were supposed to meet Ted Williams, but he had just broken his arm! We met Don Dimagio, Birdy Tebbits ( most harry arms I had ever seen as a kid!). I still have autographs . The newsclipping is posted on our Grafton History site I think. Dick almost GHS57 & STHS57 in Spfld in MD for last 25 yrs!

My family moved alot for KendalL St., Dayton Place, to Greenhill Parkway but the one constant thing was the Boys Club - you kept your friends no matter were you moved to. I was the Games Room Champ for the months - which gave you bragging rights and the right to play any game first in the games room. I was a summer camp counselor -a join effort with the Girls club - met my first summer love there. On a saturday the was the movies for .10 you saw a movie and a cartoon but had to get there early as the seating was limited - eventually they added a second matinee. And to get and SS on your membership card - boy that was something or to be old enough to go into the seniors room on the third floor - and go from a brown card to grey well that was just the cat's meow. The last time I was there was in 1972 (October 28th to exact) as I went into the Navy the next day to say goodbye to all the friends I had made since going there since 1961. I certainly do miss this piece of Worcester history and all the good times had there.

First of all, EXCELLENT site. Born in Worcester in the 50's I spent a tremendous amount of time at the Lincoln Square Boys Club and as a result learned so many skills that I still implement today. The club was an exciting place to visit, learn and socialize and was a place that I always felt safe at. My one diappointment is that my son will never experience the benefits of such a great place.

I loved this place - was there everynight. I was a games room champ for 3 months (big honor at the time) My "date" and I won the Valentine's Day Honor, I also was Honored as the Boys Club Memeber of the Month. I ran track at Burncoat High and I trained in the uper part of the gym - it had a small oval track that I would run 100 laps a night. The swimming instructor there (Richard LaHair) just passed away this Thanksgiving(2003) from a car accident - he was such a nice guy.

We lived on Natick St off of Belmount, we had 4 boys in our family,my cousins had 4 boys in theres add another 2 to 4 cousins and we all went to the boys club packed with our peanut and jelly sandwiches,the snaps, checkers, ping pong, swimming,gym, hobby shop,plus the staff made it the best place to go on saturdays. At the end of the day 8:00 to 4:30 we would laod up into 2 station wagons and off we go. Thanks to the Boys Club

It's a beautiful building. BUT ....we always thought Lincoln Sq. Boys' club sucked ... IONICS AVE BOYS' CLUB RULES! Former member of IABC of the 60's and 70's.

The Ionic Ave Boys Club is still active (as the Boys & Girls Club), and will continue serving kids for three more weeks. On August 1, 2006 it will be closed, and we will be moving to a brand new facility built at 65 Tainter St (the site of the old Rice Barton factory)!!! We held a 'farewell party' for Alumni in June, sorry you didn't have the opportunity to take a last look! We pulled out old photos, scrapbooks, plaques, and trophies to provide one last memory of 90 years of kids. You can find information on our website (http://www.bgcworcester.org); our move was also the cover story of this week's Worcester Magazine (http://www.worcestermag.com/archives/2006/07-06-06/index.html)! -Bob

My dad was a Boys Club member in the early 1930s. I don't know if that would have been this Boys Club or another one? He always lived in the Main Street areas that were the Albanian immigrant enclaves (near Southbridge St and Belmont St and so on), so he may have belonged to one of the other clubs. He made it sound like the Boys Club was a more important part of his life than his school was.

I went to the Lincoln Square Boys Club in the 70's. This made up the happiest memories of my childhood. There were all the activities mentioned above including a Model making room, Library etc... I learned to swim here. There were differnt levels of swimming. i.e. Tadpoles, swordfish etc...

I lived right at Lincoln Square in the 40's and 50's. Mention of the membership cards brings back memories of the weekly movies( and wild crowds) and of excruciating gym classes North High held there. I tutored there while a student at Clark. The Boys' Clun fulfilled an important function in the run-down neigborhood.

I was a regular at the Lincoln Square Boys Club 1961-1967 (during my grammar school years). I think all of my school friends were members for one or more years: Mark Shea, Larry Burtchell, Danny Michaud, Johnny Murphy, Jeff Crowley, Peter Kelleher, Ricky Koontz, and Richard Shattuck. Your swimming ability determined your social rank. It seemed like a thousand steps from the locker room down to the swimming pool shower room. Dick LaHair taught thousands of boys to swim with incessant bobbing drills and by throwing coins in the water for boys to retrieve and keep. I have not forgotten tool safety rules I learned in the wood shop making spice racks 45 years ago. To this day, I cannot eat red licorice, because I once purchased a dollar of Boys Club red licorice and got sick eating it all. Sometimes my Dad picked me up in front of the Boys Club on his way home from work, but I lived only a mile away and preferred to walk home along Highland Street or Institute Road. I attended summer day camp (“POPS”) the year the program started (1962?) when there were only four small groups of boys. The summer program was popular and quickly caught on and grew. The summer program included occasional overnight sleepovers with hundreds of us trying to be quiet in the gym. The Boys Club had access to property on Sunderland Road and bussed us there in the summer for half-days playing softball and building forts. During bus rides we sang “I’m Henry the Eighth” and “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”