Walk to the Rourke Bridge - July 2007
Last June, Jen and I walked from downtown, down Bridge Street to Centralville, then along the riverbank there and then along the VFW into Pawtucketville. From there, we walked all the way to the Rourke Bridge, back up Middlesex Street, and then Broadway. Total distance: Over 7 miles.
Near the beginning of our walk, we pass through Kerouac park. Named after the city's most famous (infamous?) son, this parcel of land that before my time used to have a large warehouse on it now has tablets, arranged in the shape of a cross, with Kerouac writings on them.
Doctor Sax is the only Kerouac book I ever read. It takes place in Lowell during the Great Flood of 1936. This passage begins the book, and talks about how Kerouac was born in Centralville, but grew up in Pawtucketville - a decidedly French Canadian section of the city. Admittedly, I didn't quite get the book, but I understood that the villain was from the only place a Lowell area demon could be from - Dracut.
The somewhat legendary Paradise Diner on Bridge Street - in the shadow of the Boott Mills. I ate here once, ordered the requisite Boott Mill Sandwich, ate half of it, and wanted to die. It's a breakfast sandwich, complete with whole potatoes, on a very greasy roll.
We began walking across the Bridge Street Bridge. Looking back, the remnants of some old building has been incorporated into the wall at the Mass Mills complex. The sand-covered concrete walkway below it is a future extension of the Riverwalk. The sand, of course, is left over from earlier flooding.
Some kid staring down into the water of the Merrimack. This shot is from the Bridge Street Bridge, and looks upriver. The Lawrence Mills and the Aiken Street Bridge are visible in the distance.
A downriver view. The Mass Mills, the blue chimney of Saints Medical Center, then the Hunt's Falls Bridge - the most downriver bridge.
A closer view of the shoreline. A view of the Mass Mills and a glimpse of the hospital.
I went this way last year and put up the pictures way back on page 1. However, that was in March. This is the end of June. It's strange to see how wild and dense New England can look on a riverbank. I haven't been back since, but after the flooding, the city was ordered to trim some of the trees away from the river, to facilitate levee construction if it is necessary in the future. It was done after this photo was taken. The view from the highway above this walkway to downtown has really improved...and I'm not a jungle person anyhow.
The kid a few pictures up is in all red - I'm no gang expert, but I've heard that has something to do with the Bloods. The Crips, the other famous national gang us yuppies hear about, tagged this walkway - or someone pretending to be them did. My understanding is that they're bigger in Lawrence and the Bloods are bigger in Lowell...
There's some Tigerlilies growing down here.
A view of UMass Lowell's Fox Hall etc from the dead-end walkway. It suddenly ends at Beaver Brook, then you have to backtrack to scramble up onto the VFW Highway. Lot of ... interesting? ... people down here.
Southwick Hall, UMass Lowell's North Campus. One issue with writing in stone is it's pretty permanent, hence the "LOWELL TEXTILE INSTITUTE" text. When this was Lowell Tech, this building was designed to look industrial, like a mill. South Campus' Coburn Hall, which is a few pictures down, was a teaching school, and was apparently modeled after Lowell High.
Lots of wooden triple decker homes on University Ave, near North Campus.
After passing the campus and the School Street Bridge, we continued along the riverfront roads (Varnum Avenue then Pawtucket Boulevard). This old house has clearly seen better days, but what a strange gate...
This property is used for fairs. The condo towers in the distance are new. They also were not cheap. The views of the Merrimack must be excellent. We took no pictures, but there's a parkway just off frame to the left that fronts the river. We're above the Pawtucket Dam, so there's a lot of water backed up here making the river unusually wide and calm.
The Rourke Bridge - our turnaround point. This "temporary" bridge was built in 1983. Rather, I think we borrowed it from the army in 1983. It has had some improvements made to it since then - the metal pillars were encased in concrete, and the deck is no longer freaky, see through, rattling metal grates. This must be the longest bridge in Lowell by a considerable margin. There are talks about replacing it again, but I also heard mumblings of that being tied to a re-thinking about the abandoned MA-213 project. This side of the Merrimack has zero highway access, and traffic at this bridge can be awful, as everybody on this bank needs to cross it to get to either Route 3 or 495. 213 would've solved this problem, but, it was never built. Part of it was, through Methuen, encircling Lawrence. It was supposed to continue past where it ends at I-93 and come through Dracut, by the Lowell-Dracut State Forest, and then cross the river here, connecting to Route 3 by Drum Hill. Lowell is far too large of a city to not have a ring road. Today, north/south traffic in Lowell across the bridges is awful, and east/west traffic in Dracut, along 113 and Lakeview Ave, is likewise awful. I'm usually not one to advocate more highways, but this one was a miss.
I love this picture. Again, Jen took most of these. Although I'm assuming these caged walkways were built to prevent suicides, somebody pried one of them off. I'm not sure I want to know why...
A look upriver to the mills and water tower in North Chelmsford. North Chelmsford, which is really just an old industrial part of Chelmsford although it seems nearly autonomous, seems to keep their smokestacks up as cell phone towers or something. Then again, because of their round construction and extreme height, they're hard to take down and are often left up long after buildings are gone. I'm not sure what is in many of the North Chelmsford mills today. A restaurant...a rug store...
The double wide tracks under the Rourke Bridge on their way to North Chelmsford. At North Chelmsford, only one of the tracks continues up to Tyngsboro, and Nashua beyond that. Old pictures of the Tyngsboro Bridge show two lines running underneath it, and my understanding is that there's a good chance that re-introducing Nashua-to-Boston commuter rail service (Boston service currently ends near downtown Lowell) would mean re-laying those tracks.
We turned at the end of the bridge onto Middlesex Street. Upper Middlesex Street in "Middlesex Village". I guess a generation before mine, this actually wasn't a major commercial street and was just a bunch of houses. The kind that people live in - not pave the yards then turn them into offices houses. Suburbanization strikes again...
We split off of Middlesex Street at Pawtucket Street. Lowell, as I mentioned pages ago, has no at-grade train crossings (except one by Sacred Heart on Meadowcroft Street, but who's counting?). The Vugaropulos Bridge carries Pawtucket Street over the tracks, seperating Middlesex Village from what I guess is technically the far end of the Acre. The bridge name is Greek enough...
We split off again onto Broadway. I'm assuming this is a UMass Softball game. Hard to see at this resolution, the yellow cupola of Lowell General Hospital is visible across the river.
This parking lot is owned by UMass, but is a common place for people to learn how to drive on weekends. They just finished demolishing the old GE plant that was behind it - and left up just that chimney. I want to say I vaguely remember there being another GE building where this parking lot is as well.
Coburn Hall on South Campus. As I said, this used to be the old State Normal School, which I guess is old-fashioned for a teacher's college. The design was apparently influenced by Lowell High.
Close-in housing in the Acre, near the (badly, badly rusted) bridge over the Pawtucket Canal and the Francis Gate.
A side-view of City Hall from Dummer Street, next to the Hellenic American Academy, at the end of Broadway.
Corey Sciuto (e-mail)
2007