Bancroft Trust Building

The Dodge Block forms the right side of the building. Its upper floors have windows set in segmented-arch openings, with stone blocks setting of the corners and keystone, and there is a band of rectangular panels above the top floor. The building has a rounded corner with an entrance at the angle. It was built in 1869 for Thomas Dodge, a prominent lawyer and inventor, whose office space occupied much of the second level. Each of the upper floors apparently had a single residential unit, although subsequent alterations to the interior mean its original layout is not known. It was also originally capped by a mansard roof, but it and the fifth floor under it were destroyed in a 1971 fire.[2]

The Sawyer Building forms the left half of the building. It has a stylistically more complex five-bay facade, with a single storefront on the ground floor, and an entrance to the upper floors to its right, near the center of the combined buildings. Above the storefront, windows are grouped in pairs with tall stone lintels and thinner sills. The fourth-floor windows have segmented-arch openings headed by bricks, and there is a band of corbelling above. The entrance is flanked by stone pilasters and topped by a narrow stone portico with scrolled brackets. This building was built in 1882 for Stephen Sawyer, a local businessman who subdivided his house lot to build it. Like the Dodge Block, it was also built for retail space on the ground floor and residential spaces above.[2]

By 1920, the Worcester Common had become almost exclusively office and retail space. The two buildings, originally separated by a narrow alleyway, were combined into single structure internally, bound together by filling in the alley with the present entrance bay. It was named after the Bancroft Trust Company, its principal occupant between 1922 and 1936.[2]