Lowell, Massachusetts (Part 21)

Part 21 - Lawrence - Summer 2008

I'm going to take a break from Lowell for a bit as promised, and talk about our sister city, Lawrence.

In case you didn't notice, my surname is Italian, yet I write a lot about roots in Lowell. As I said, I'm a serious mutt, but my Italian ancestry is by way of Lawrence, which, at one time, had a huge Sicilian population. Apparently a large percentage of Trecastagni in eastern Sicily came over to Lawrence to work the mills, my grandfather's parents included. While Italian Lawrencians largely moved to Methuen and then further up I-93 into Southern New Hampshire, replaced by Hispanics, largely from the Dominican Republic, Lawrence still holds The Feast of the Three Saints which I have admittedly never been to, annually. After World War II, Lawrence, like Lowell, had its traditional manufacturing industry largely abandon it. Today, Lawrence is the one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, and unfortunately tends to be more known for its arson and grand theft auto issues than its history. Then again, many people think the same of Lowell, and I hope my website has helped some of these people see a city that they previously were afraid of. Fun fact: Lawrence, at least on paper, is safer than Lowell :-)

How Lawrence, which according to my parents had a successful downtown and industrial base far later than Lowell ended up as like it is, is an interesting question. Both are about the same distance from Boston, although Lowell is closer to the high tech sections of 128 and 495. Instead, Lawrence is closer to the wealthy and surprisingly rural parts of Northern Essex county, and even directly borders ancient, wealthy, and famous for its prep school (and the IRS building for the Northeast!), Andover. Lawrence has about 70,000 residents to Lowell's 100,000, but is only slightly more than half the size of Lowell. In other words, Lawrence looks much more urban than Lowell, and additionally, is fully belted by expressways, giving it far, far better interstate access than Lowell. But - Lawrence's politicians and history are weaker. Even though Lawrence gets more state aid per capita than Lowell does, they don't have the cultural amenities like the National Historical Park and the sports teams, and seemingly, the civic pride, that Lowell has. Curious to learn more about the nearby city that I had spent very little time in growing up (and virtually no time in the past decade as my reasons to go went away), I took Jen to the State Heritage Park over the summer. Unfortunately, weather wise, it wasn't the nicest day...

History

After arriving at the State Park, we walked through this little park that is in the remnaints of an old industrial building of some sort. The large white building behind it is the large, tall building visible from 495. I forget what it's called...

Lowell was founded in the early 1820s, but even the Pawtucket Falls could only provide so much power. By the 1840s, Lowell was beginning to expand more by technological improvements to the existing factories than actual development of new mill sites, due to a maxing out of water power (called, and sold as, Mill Powers in Lowell). A group of investors, largely the same ones behind Lowell in fact, began planning new cities. One of these was to be built just a little downriver of Lowell, on land that at the time belonged to Methuen, Andover, and North Andover. The great thing about water is that it can be re-used for power as long as it can continue to fall. The Merrimack in Lowell drops from somewhere around 100 to 70 feet above sea level, meaning that there is a long way down left to go before the ocean at Newburyport. While there were no remaining large natural drops between Lowell and the estuary's beginnings somewhere around Haverhill, that's nothing a dam can't fix - enter Lawrence.

This new community was going to be named after Abbott Lawrence (who already, to the endless confusion of non-natives, had been instrumental in the construction of the Lawrence Mills in Lowell [And it doesn't help that the Everett and Malden Mills are in Lawrence, not those two Greater Boston cities!].) The investors incorporated the Essex Company to guide the planning and construction of the necessary infrastructure, similar to how the Proprietors of Locks and Canals designed Lowell and built and sold the mills, canals, and waterpower. Charged with leading this new city/enterprise as its benevolent dictator was a man by Charles Storrow, who is not the namesake of our favorite Boston parkway. Storrow seems to have made Lowell's equivalent, Kirk Boott, seem like a pretty open-minded guy. Lawrence, under Storrow, was very carefully planned out in a manner that was seen in most New England textile operations since Lowell, including Manchester, NH and Holyoke, MA.

Park headquarters and museum, in an old boardinghouse. Canal and millyard behind it.

The mills lined the river, below a massive dam. Lawrence's Great Stone Dam, which I found no good way to actually get a good look at, puts Lowell's Pawtucket Dam to shame and was considered an engineering marvel of its day. Behind the mills was a canal, parallel to the river, which provided direct-drive hydropower to raceways that ran through the mills and into the riverbed. This system was far more efficient than Lowell's meandering plans, providing the same 10,000 horsepower with a much shorter canal system. In fact, Lawrence originally had just one canal, the Northern Canal, and ultimately ended up with only a second, the equally creatively named Southern Canal. Across the canals from the mills were the boardinghouses, then Essex Street, which was the main commercial district. Behind that, a large common with a private residential area beyond that. This plan is still relatively visible in the modern city, except most of the boardinghouses, which were going out of style in favor of immigrant labor (much to Mr. Storrow's dismay even as he planned the city) were replaced with warehouses. The area around the Common, in my opinion a fantastic urban space that Lowell very much lacks, has since become tenement housing. In fact, my grandfather was raised in one of these buildings just blocks from the common (it's now a parking lot...). If you'd like to learn more about early Lawrence, I found this to be a great resource: Charles S. Storrow and the Making of Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1860. Another good site: Lawrence History Center.

Lawrence is nationally known for two events, neither pleasant. The first was the 1860 Pemberton Mill collapse and subsequent fire, when the substandard construction of an 1857 mill failed, killing over a hundred and injuring more. This building, the reconstructed Pemberton, is the only gable-rooved mill I've seen in Lawrence, and I don't believe there are any in Lowell. Unlike the early mills, which it is very similar to in layout, his one has far more ornate brickwork. The ultra-regular planning of the city is visible from this picture of the canal.

Remnants of some sort of gate. My guess is it controlls flow into turbine pits that are under the building behind it, or more likely, its predecessor. Lawrence has not been given the funding to maintain their canal system like Lowell has. While the layout, added density, and regularity of Lawrence in some ways make it Out-Lowell Lowell, I think that the fact that the city is 20 years newer, which in those days of rapid change was virtually an entire era (that of mill-girl labor and waterwheels), and the presence of buildings like this one, likely built after Lowell was in serious decline, makes it a decidedly less historic city - but in some ways more interesting to those from the far ... quainter ... Lowell.

The second national event in Lawrence is even more famous and probably more notorious than the Pemberton collapse. In January 1912, Lawrence's millworkers went on strike in what became known as the Bread and Roses Strike. It wasn't settled until March, on terms favorable to the strikers, but the strike was so serious there were fatalities, and some of the children of the strikers had to be sent to New York City. In the distance is the Everett Mill, involved in the strike. The lot in the foreground had obviously just become vacant, the demoltion was ongoing. Looks like it was some sort of warehouse.

Washington Mill. Like Lowell, there are attempts to convert some of these huge empty factories into housing. Wonder how they're doing since the downturn...

While Lawrence was involved in cotton manufactures, it was also involved in woolens - something that was a huge help during the civil war. At the very end of the 19th century, the American Woolen Company started here under Frederick Ayer, famous as well in Lowell, brother of Dr. James C. Ayer.

One of the fascinating things about the textile cities of Massachusetts is how they were all tied up in a few hands. Dr. J.C. Ayer is the patent medicine guy whos labs are now Ayer Lofts on Middle Street in Lowell. He also is the one who donated Winged Victory, in front of Lowell City Hall, and the namesake of the entire town of Ayer, Massachusetts! Fun fact: He died at only 60, and in a nuthouse. Frederick, on the other hand, was always more into textiles it seems. With his brother, he bought the Suffolk and Tremont Manufacturing companies in Lowell before founding the American Woolen Company in Lawrence. One of Frederick's daughters married William Madison Wood, Ayer's partner in the American Woolen Company, and the other married future General George S. Patton. Both brothers for a time lived on Pawtucket Street in Lowell, James at the Stone House at the foot of Fletcher, and Frederick at the Franco American School at School Street. Both are buried in Lowell Cemetery, James under the Lion, Frederick under the tall pillar. Daniel Ayer, developer of Ayer's City in Lowell, was a contemporary but I can't find the relation. Apparently, unlike the ridiculously prolific and connected Lawrence family (Abbott is the city, brother Amos and their father is Lawrence Academy in Groton, brother Luther was an early Lowell mayor, but fell into a wheel pit and died...), they are not considered Boston Brahmin, but they were from a very respected background, tracing back to John Ayer, one of 36 men involved in the 1640s founding of Lawrence's near-neighbor, Haverhill. The Brahmin are an interesting group to read about, so many important names so closely tied together. Francis Cabot Lowell was brother-in-law of Patrick Tracy Jackson, founder of the Boston and Lowell railroad. They were both business partners at Lowell and elsewhere of U.S. Congressman Nathan Appleton, whose daughter married Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It goes on and on. And people say there is no social mobility today!

The clocktower of the Ayer Mill, built early in the 20th century by the American Woolen Company and named for Frederick Ayer. Like many textile factories, it switched to shoes at some point. Unlike most Massachusetts shoe factories, this one is still in operation - this is where New Balance shoes are made. I think you can buy them at an outlet store here, too. This clock is a masterpiece - it's almost the diameter of Big Ben, making it one of the largest four-sided clocks in the world, and if you want to be real specific, I believe it is the largest, chiming, four-sided clock in North America. A little research says the Ferry Building in San Francisco may hold that position as well.

Crossing the Merrimack to South Lawrence, across South Union Street from the Ayer Mill is the equally impressive Wood Mill. Named for previously mentioned William Madison Wood, the son of Portuguese (Azores) immigrants. Wood was apparently born on Martha's Vinyard, then his family moved with the rest of Portugal to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Through a series of more and more impressive jobs, Wood found himself, according to at least one source, as the wealthiest man in America. And apparently after suffering a stroke, he committed suicide. At almost 1/3 of a mile long, the mill has 6 stories and is longer than the Empire State Building is tall. When it was built, it had a lobby, a large cafeteria... state of the art for a textile operation. I've read it was the largest mill in the world at the time of its construction. And yet, the Wood Mill is only half of what it used to be. What you see today used to be mirrored against the river with an identical structure, connected at the end of the building away from us by another building. When that half burned something like a half century ago, they left the empty space as a parking lot.

After numerous uses including a Honeywell plant, today, part of this building is being turned into eco-friendly luxury condos called "Monarch on the Merrimack." There is a new train station that goes to Boston just across the street from it, and the commute to 495 by car is seconds away. However, the project has ran into some issues, and I guess Sal, of Sal's Pizza, has bought up 1/6 of the building. The next mill complex downriver from here is the old Pacific Mills, today called Sal's Riverwalk. It's an impressive operation that he's made, putting in numerous companies, and a Salvatore's Restaurant - a really, really fancy Sal's with a function hall and everything. After that building comes 495 and that's the end of physically tiny Lawrence. As much as I like to complain about highway construction, after seeing what Sal did for that one, it makes you think if Lowell would be better off today if we somehow had better road access...

...but so much of Lawrence is in disrepair. This used to be the powerhouse for the Wood Mill. How do you repurpose this?

10/09 - you don't. It was imploded in October 2009 to expand Sal's Riverwalk: Eagle Tribune * Video

View from the Wood Mill back to the downtown side of the river. Time to go home...