 In 1902 a fire burned three acres () of downtown Waterbury west of Waterbury Green.The city, at the height of the industrial prosperity its brassmakers had led, was easily able to rebuild.Eminent citizens of the city had also seen in the process the opportunity to rethink and reshape the city's downtown, as their counterparts had done six decades earlier when they had created the Green out of a swampy remnant of the original town common.