The Printer’s Building
By: Ariel Amasifuén
Technocopia Makerspace has been in downtown Worcester’s historic Printer’s Building since 2015. The Printer’s Building is filled with dozens of wonderful groups big and small, and we’d love to take some time to talk about our building’s history and a couple of our wonderful neighbors!
According to Davis Publications, “In the early 1920s, three printing companies combined forces to build The Printers Building. They believed it would be more efficient to have binders and printers in the same facility and products could shift between the floors. The Printers Building was also one of only two buildings designed to withstand the weight of heavy presses.” Included among the printing companies was David Press, which eventually became David Publications as we know them today, and they are the building owners who continue to work within the Printer’s Building! The building underwent a fair amount of renovations that was completed in 2020. After that, The Printer’s Building was officially added to the National Register of Historic Buildings.
Image Copyright to ArtsWorcester via Discover Central MA
Nowadays, the building is a hub for cultural and artistic organizations. We have tenants like ArtsWorcester, who are on the first floor. They are a contemporary art gallery that specifically works to exhibit the work of individual local artists with as many lowered barriers as possible. They allow anyone to become a member to display their work, which allows people to submit any of their art regardless of medium, skillset or background to their open member shows. There are also more competitive exhibitions with prizes, and events to allow members to sell their original art and prints. All exhibits are free to view by the public, which makes it possible to really engage with our local arts and culture scene in a very accessible way! A number of our members are also ArtsWorcester members, and it’s been so incredibly wonderful to be in the same building as them!
As mentioned above, we also have original tenants and building owners Davis Publications on the second floor. They now focus on creating art education curricula to bring museums to students in classrooms. They run programming for early childhood education to highschool education, as well as Professional Development resources. As the building owners, they do a lot to build up a culture of supporting the arts within the tenants. It’s made it so that we’ve built up our own small community, and it’s something we appreciate a great deal!
Image via Davis Publication’s article “Never a Dull Day: A Tribute to Wyatt Wade“. Photograph by Tom Fiorelli.
Image Copyright to the Southeast Asian Coalition via their website
On the fifth floor we have our neighbors at SEAC, the Southeast Asian Coalition. They do a widespread amount of cultural work from youth & elder education, youth programming, resources for immigrant families, economic development for small businesses and more. They are truly and incredible group doing such amazing work in our city, and it’s always so exciting seeing another group like Technocopia that has a lot of member of the public that interface with our organizations directly. Being able to provide services like theirs is so beneficial, and we are honored to have them as our neighbors!
On the seventh floor is Crocodile River Music, and they are a really incredible group of people that focus on bringing the music, arts, and culture of Africa to New England. They lead public music events like drum circles, talent shows, and musical performances, and do a number of educational workshops for schools and community organizations around the region. Their studio is absolutely breathtaking, and as a special treat for Technocopia, because we are on the floor right below them, we get to hear them from above. I often will get excited working at the makerspace and getting to dance a bit in my seat while I listen to their music.
Image via Crocodile River Music’s Youtube Video “Ni Ma Dialla – Crocodile River Music“.
Technocopia is on the sixth floor, and we have been here since 2015. We rented a portion of the sixth floor until 2018, when we fully took over the sixth floor. During the large-scale Printers Building Renovation, Technocopia members lived through the adventure of having their bays 6 feet away from plastic for walls and windows due to the amount of renovation work that had to happen. It was a bit of a tumultuous time, but the finalized work made the windows so much more wonderful to look out of, and really updated the look and feel of the space.
We’re so grateful to the owner’s of the Printer’s Building for making it such a pointed mission to provide rental discounts to groups that focus in the arts and culture sector, which has allowed the building to become a hub for groups like us! I hope that if you end up checking out the Printer’s Building that you get to check more of the groups in here out. There are so many other people in this space, including a radio station and photographers, the business improvement district, and more! It’s been so much fun working alongside so many incredible groups!