Place Information
|
Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 105,167. It is the fourth largest city in the state. It and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County. Founded as a planned manufacturing center for textiles along the Merrimack River northwest of Boston, it was a thriving industrial center during the 19th century, attracting many immigrants and migrant workers to its mills. With the decline of its manufacturing in the 20th century, the city fell into deep hard times but has begun to rebound in recent decades. The former mill district along the river is partially restored and composes part of the Lowell National Historical Park. History
The site of Lowell, the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord rivers, was a rendezvous point for the Pennacook Indians in pre-Columbian times. In the 17th century before King Phillip's War, the Christian Indian village of Wamesit occupied the site, and was part of East Chelmsford, which was settled in 1655. Lowell was a planned city; its site was chosen for the water power made available by the rapid descent of its rivers, as shown by the presence of Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack and the Wamesit Falls on the Concord River. It was officially incorporated as a town in 1826, and became a city in 1836, named after Francis Cabot Lowell. A member of two prominent Massachusetts families, Francis Cabot Lowell traveled to Manchester, England to study its mill system for possible reproduction back home. He was forbidden to make any sketches of the looms in use, so it is believed that he resorted to memorizing their construction. By the 1850s, Lowell was the second largest city in New England, with nearly six miles of canals - the largest power canal system in the world - running her factories. It is considered by many to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the United States.
As an important industrial town, Lowell soon became a magnet for immigration. Lowell's population swelled rapidly with a flood of immigrants from Canada, particularly Quebec and New Brunswick, from Northern England, Ireland, and later from Poland, Greece, and other parts of central and eastern Europe. This ethnic diversity lent to Lowell a unique cultural identity. The city and its industries declined severely during the Great Depression of the 1930s (though signs of decline can be seen as early as the 1890s), and were not saved by a short-lived revival due to World War II. The textile companies moved south, where labor costs were cheaper, and jobs in Lowell became scarce. The infrastructure and architecture of Lowell began to suffer, as mills were repurposed as warehouses and canals were less scrupulously maintained. As the economic fortunes of the city suffered, so did the quality of life in the city.
The large number of Roman Catholic immigrants to the city made the Catholic Church a powerful force in Lowell's cultural life, with many churches and church organizations, Catholic schools such as Keith Academy and the Franco-American School, and two Catholic hospitals (now merged as Saints' Medical Center). The Greek Orthodox Church, too, played a significant part in enriching the communities of Lowell. Lowell's economy became dependent upon smaller scale industries and the retail stores of the downtown shopping district, as well as its new role as part of Boston's growing suburban sprawl. The rise of the shopping malls in the 1960s and 1970s encouraged the major retailers to leave their downtown stores for climate-controlled complexes which were more attractive to shoppers in New England's winter weather, and there was a precipitous decline in pedestrian presence in the city. Also, the sometimes excessively forward-looking thought of the post-war years was extremely damaging to the fabric of the city. Beginning before World War II, Lowell became the first city to make use of newly available Federal urban renewal funds. The city took - largely by eminent domain - and demolished the crowded and dilapidated Greek section of Lowell's very poor Acre neighborhood. This was a tightly knit and well-established immigrant community. In the place of the old wooden tenements and shops, a suburban-style brick housing development was constructed - many of the Greeks never returned. This de-urbanization process accelerated after the War, again most noticeably in the Acre, in the French-Canadian section. Entire blocks of Triple Decker housing were torn down and entire streets, most noticeably Moody Street (familiar to Kerouac readers) were cut off or totally de-mapped to "calm" traffic. Meanwhile, many Victorian buildings downtown were radically altered to be more "modern"; in some cases permanently. Stone ornamentation was removed, cast iron and brick storefronts and facades were replaced with plastic and aluminium, windows were resized or removed. Many structures were torn down to make way for more parking.
In 1975, the Lowell Technological Institute, an engineering college (originally the Lowell Textile Institute from 1928 to 1953, and the Lowell Textile School from 1895 to 1932), merged with Lowell State College (originally the Massachusetts State Normal School at Lowell), a state college which had traditionally specialized in teacher education, to form the University of Lowell (which was renamed the University of Massachusetts at Lowell in 1991). The University was well placed to serve as an engine for the growth of the new technology industries in the Merrimack Valley region.
Lowell's economic growth in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s was also driven by the success of Wang Laboratories, for which it served as the international headquarters until the late 1980s. With the transition to microcomputers (personal computers) in the mid to late 1980s, the market for Wang's minicomputers collapsed, while a leadership transition from the founder, Dr. An Wang, to his son Fred Wang, made the company unable to adapt to changing market conditions, and Wang Industries folded during the economic recession of the late 1980s.
However, Lowell's prosperity grew throughout the 1990s and its reputation has improved dramatically. The resurgence of the area's technology industry and the growth of new service industries have once again revitalized the downtown, while the increasingly more diverse ethnic fabric of the city gives it great cultural depth. The public and private funds that have been invested in Lowell in the past few decades have been paying off greatly. Today, Lowell has a large Franco-American population, most of whom are French-Canadians who migrated down from Quebec and Northern Maine, and a large Irish-American population. There is a very large and thriving new generation of Cambodians who have put down roots there after escaping Pol Pot, as well as Laotians, Vietnamese, and Hispanics, particularly Puerto Ricans (roughly 15 percent of the population). It offers Lowell High School, a campus of the University of Massachusetts, a branch of Middlesex Community College, several theaters, many popular restaurants, small live music clubs, an American Hockey League affiliate team now called the Lowell Devils (whose home ice is the Tsongas Arena), and a minor league baseball team called The Lowell Spinners (whose home field, LeLacheur Park, was designed by the architecture firm HOK Sport). Lowell's musical influence is largely felt through the Lowell Folk Festival, the largest festival of its kind in the U.S., and the School of Music at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. The Lowell Folk Festival got its start in 1990 after Lowell hosted the National Folk Festival from 1987 to 1989. The music school is best known for its reconstruction of George Antheil's Ballet Mechanique, which was premiered in 1999 on the University campus. Research Tips
|
