MosaicGloucester

The Tarr and Wonson Paint Factory began manufacturing the first copper, bottom paint in 1863 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Now the paint factory is home to Ocean Alliance. Iain Kerr told me all about the organization and its innovative Snotbot.

Local legend Howard Blackburn ran a saloon in the building that is now Halibut Point. In 2015, Joseph Favazza, 95 years old at the time, told how as a boy he sold mackerel to Blackburn so he could make money to go to the movies. Blackburn told him to put the fish in the sink, then slid two dimes across the table. “I never knew who Howard Blackburn was, but I’ll never forget the man with no fingers.”

As a young girl, Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken always thought her mother was a nurse, since she dressed in white clothing when she went off to work. It was only later that she realized that her mom was working packing fish.

Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute studies our ocean right down the street from MosaicGloucester. At the Gloucester Biotechnology Academy, young people learn skills like extracting DNA, preparing them for possible careers in the biotech industry.

Salvatore Favazza instructed a Charlestown sculptor to create the original St. Peter’s sculpture (replaced with a fiberglass replica on its 90th birthday, in 2017).