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Last week I mentioned the on-going rehab on Andover Street in Lowell. It had all the aspects of a “This Old House” project. Well, the inside scoop comes today in a front-page story in the Lowell SUN courtesy of life-style guru extraordinaire Nancye Tuttle. “All they wanted was a new kitchen and garage for their 19-room, 1875 Victorian manse at 396 Andover Street.”  Thanks to the Saabs for caring and preserving this historic Lowell manse and thanks to Nancye getting the story.

Read about how the project grew at http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_10235896

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Lowell and her neighborhoods are replete with historic homes . Many have been restored, reclaimed and revitalized in an on-going love-affair with preservation and a certain life-style. Of course, there have been losses - those hit by the wrecking ball - as seen by the destruction (after a fire) of the Butler Mansion on Andover Street. Well there’s a new project on Andover Street these days. The focus is on an historic “twin” - the former home of historic Lowell figure Freeman Ballard Shedd. For months I’ve expected to see Tommy Silva or Richard Trethewey or maybe even Norm Abram hard at work – but alas no sightings! At first it seemed to be a simple rehab but over the months a huge multi-story addition appeared along with what seems to be an elevator shaft. The stucco has been stripped, the front porch has disappeared and windows have been covered, uncovered and recovered. Lookie-loos like me can only marvel at the enormity of the task and hope that the home will be on a future house tour. I understand the owners have also purchased the former carriage house now a single family home. Stay tuned.

Note: Those of you who are aficionados of Lowell history will remember the duo of Freeman Ballard Shedd and Eli W. Hoyt as purveyors of Hoyt’s German cologne. For more information on Shedd, his businesses, his philanthropy and the magnificent “mirror image” Andover Street homes, check out the UML/Center for Lowell History website and read the Helen Desjarlais exhibit essay: “One Man’s Legacy.” http://libweb.uml.edu/clh/Mans/Mans3.Html

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Many readers of this blog have ties to the Old Sacred Heart Parish and the Grove, South Lowell, Wigginsville, Ayer City, the Bleachery and Swede Village areas of Lowell. A group of folks who attended the Sacred Heart School, played in the band, went to the Sacred Heart camp, joined the Scouts and grew-up in these neighborhoods are having their annual reunion. An old friend Father Edward Randall, OMI - now in residence at the Oblate House - in Tewksbury will be a special guest. If you’d like some information please e-mail me at sweeney133@comcast.net.

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UMass Lowell’s professor Bob Forrant, a frequent op-ed contributor to the Lowell Sun, was recently interviewed at length by The Valley Advocate, a weekly newspaper focused on the Springfield/Amherst/Northampton region. The topic of the interview: the economic decline of Springfield and what local government could have done to change the outcome. Forrant, who once labored as a machinist and union activist at American Bosch, one of Springfield’s largest manufacturing firms, cites the failure of local government to spot economic trends damaging to the regional economy and to head them off through the effective use of “industrial economic planning.” Instead of rapidly adapting to changing circumstances, Springfield’s governmental response was characterized by “naiveté, false hopes, weak leadership, and lazy policy making.”

Forrant contrasts Springfield’s inability to plan with the planning process recently utilized in Lowell as part of the Hamilton Canal development, a process economists might call a “virtuous circle of collaboration.”

[Lowell] insisted on an open set of conversations over months for people to talk about what they want to see in the city . . . It’s clear, as the project has been defined and redefined, that the input has really been used. It’s not a fake. I’m pleasantly surprised and encouraged by it. This is something Springfield will definitely need to do.

While Professor Forrant complements the planning process used in the Hamilton Canal project, one of the major shortcomings in Springfield is one that he’s frequently cited as plaguing Lowell and that’s the seeming inability of cities to generate well paying jobs for residents, jobs that were often union and blue collar but that propelled employees and their families well into the middle class. Tourism and entertainment are fine, but neither of them yield the types of jobs that allow a city’s middle class to flourish. There are many who say “manufacturing jobs are gone – get over it” but such sentiments represent a failure of imagination and intellectual laziness. Today in Lowell, many can name the latest restaurant to open, few can name the company that has created the latest well-paying job in the city.  If it was the other way around, we might be better off.

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Keeping with our theme of politics past, here’s an audio clip of a radio broadcast by Frederick J Doyle, a candidate for Lowell City Council from 1971 (although there’s a chance this might be from 1973).  Back then, candidates for council would purchase multiple minute blocks of radio time on Saturday, as close to the noon news as possible.  Legend is that Fred never needed notes; he just strode up to the microphone and let loose.  Doyle was always entertaining unless you were the target of one of his verbal broadsides.  In this clip, he goes after the then-editor of the Lowell Sun, Clement Costello, condemning the editor for his “perverted and distorted journalism” and announcing that he was not afraid of the ”aristocratic snobs and power-hungry individuals” who were running the city.  Fred’s still going strong these days.  If you bump into him, tell him it’s never too late to stage a comeback. 

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It was ten years ago this week that the Borden-run Prince Pasta plant in Lowell’s “Spaghettiville” closed.  According to the daily online Massachusetts history organization, Mass Moments, July 16 was the day that a tentative agreement to save the plant was announced.  In the agreement, Boston Macaroni would acquire the plant, but then Borden refused to allow the “Prince” name to be used and the buyer discovered that the manufacturing facility needed millions of dollars of repairs.  The deal fell through and 400 employees, mostly Lowell residents and mostly recent immigrants, were all put out of work.

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I recently came across a newspaper clipping from September 12, 1898 in which the Lowell Sun reported on the opening of the “New Court House” which would be the present Superior Court on Gorham Street in Lowell.  Although more than a century has passed, the story reads as though it were written today.  The tone, the voice, the attitude are all timeless, for the Sun, at least.  Here’s a sampling:

New Court Room is a Disappointment

The new court house on Gorham street, in the construction of which such an amount of money has been expended was formally opened for business this morning . . .

The finishing work on the building has been rushed through, in order that the opening might occur today, and hence there are many little details yet to be perfected.

In brief, the building is unnecessarily grand.  It impresses one as having cost an immense amount of money and yet the advantages are not proportionate to the expenditures. . . Upstairs is a disappointment.  The superior court room is a great disappointment to all. . . Some were inclined to believe that the court room was built smaller purposely to keep out the crowd of loungers that infests court rooms.  But the accommodations for the bar and press are also far too small . . .

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  How much of this same language will show up in 2012 in the story about the opening of the new Judicial Center?

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July 14 is Bastille Day, a national holiday in France.  It commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789.  The prison was torn down soon after that.  It is now the site of the Paris Opera House but the prison is recalled by a monument in the middle of a traffic circle.  The adjacent Metro (subway) stop is also named Bastille.  Back in June 2004, we took a family trip to France, visiting Paris and the Normandy invasion beaches.  Here are some images from Paris:

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We welcome the Center Cities Committee to the world of blogging about Lowell. Bill Lipchitz, Deputy Director of Community Teamwork, Inc., highly regarded community leader and longtime President of the Center Cities Committee has recently joined the Downtown Neighborhood Association on its site http://lowelldna.blogspot.com/  as a contributor. Lipchitz and the Center Cities stakeholders plan to use the blog as a companion to the CCC website. He notes

It is our intent to use this blog to expand our discussions beyond the weekly meetings and to generate interest and feedback in the ideas to make downtown an even better place to live, work and play. We encourage comments and suggestions, new ideas and ways to make positive change in the downtown

The Center Cities Committee program began in 1972 as a part of a Blue Ribbon Committee appointed by then City Manager Jim Sullivan and funded by a grant from the New England Regional Commission. A subcommittee was charged with developing and recommending economic development goals, plans and programs for the city.  Committee members included city planner Bruce Hahl, Model Cities Director Jack Tavares, NMAC Assistant Director Frank Keefe, Model Cities Education Director Pat Mogan and CTI Director of Planning Bill Lipchitz. It should be no surprise that among the committee recommendations were that funds be spent on planning the Urban National Park, developing a tax title program and creating the first downtown beautification program. Over these past thirty-six years the Committee - while always a “player” - has changed somewhat in form, function and focus.  It remains a partner and participant in the planning and revitalization of the Downtown. I urge you to learn more about the CCC’s history.  Check out their website at http://www.lowellcentercity.org . You may be a stakeholder yourself!

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There is a great deal of interest in the American Civil War. Books on the War number among the most written on a given subject. The causes and consequences are still debated as we approach its 150th anniversary - its Sesquicentennial. Even the name evokes ire and debate - the Civil War (the War of the Great Rebellion in official government records) versus the War of Northern Agression. Lowell and Greater Lowell played a significant part in the War through its soldiers, sailors, leaders, goods, services and philosophical discourse. Thus the Lowell Historical Society, the Pollard Memorial Library, the UML/Center for Lowell History, the Lowell Cemetery, the Hildreth Family Cemetery and other city burial grounds and the city itself are treasure troves of information, artifacts. monuments, grave sites, art, books, stories and tales about this national crisis.

Writers on this blog will be “talking” about the Civil War and its local connections, local repercussions and local “color” as we prepare to commemorate the Sesquicentennial to come. In keeping with Dick’s reference to the refurbished Cyclorama at Gettysburg and Sheila and Hazel’s reminder about the Philippoteaux pieces at the Pollard Memorial Library located on the second floor in the GAR/Memorial Hall, here’s the PML website description of the Hall and its art and its history:

Art at the Library

“Altogether a creditable building” boasted a local newspaper when Lowell’s Memorial Building opened in 1893. The structure was a handsome Richardsonian Romanesque structure, dedicated to the Civil War dead of Lowell. The Memorial Building housed the public library and a large public assembly hall. A disastrous fire in 1915 nearly destroyed this beautiful building, and left the Memorial Hall a blackened ruin. Immediately the city began to rebuild. Frederick W. Stickney, architect of the original structure, planned the reconstruction of Memorial Hall. The budget of $62,927 for the entire building did not permit the restoration of the elaborate coved ceiling, carved oak wainscoting, and massive chandelier of the original hall. Instead a more modest, and modern, design was chosen. The eight original leaded glass commemorative windows were reproduced, at a cost of $1,475. But instead of carved wood, the walls were stenciled and huge murals were installed. Marble and bronze memorial plaques were restored, adding the names of those Lowell men sacrificed in the Spanish-American War. The Hall’s major new embellishments, its three Civil War murals were a bargain. They depict three important experiences in the Civil War career of General U.S. Grant, and were painted by French-born artist Paul Phillipoteaux. Phillipoteaux is best known for his painting of the Cyclorama of Gettysburg, now permanently housed at the Gettysburg National Battlefield. The Memorial Hall canvases were painted for traveling carnival display and were purchased by the City of Lowell for a mere $1,500 from the Griffin Amusement Company.

Years passed, memories of the Civil War faded, and Memorial Hall was eclipsed by other large assembly halls and auditoria in the city. During the 1960s and 1970s, it was used as office space by the Lowell School Department. The rebirth of Lowell in the 1980s provided the impetus for the rehabilitation of many of her historic structures, including the Library’s Memorial Hall. With Federal and private funding the Memorial Hall was restored to its former glory, and served again as an assembly hall and meeting room, hosting art shows, lectures, book festivals and other programs.

The Library’s recent renovation and restoration finds Memorial Hall’s function changed again. Memorial Hall is now home of the Library’s Reference and Local History Department, bringing into vivid portraiture our mission and history as a center for knowledge and history in Lowell.

Check out the website for hours of operation and other information: http://www.pollardml.org/

More to come: Ladd and Whitney, Lowell and the U.S. Sanitary Commission, General Ben Butler, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox, Lowell Soldiers and Sailors in the Civil War, Memorials and Monuments, Lowell’s Industrial Production, War Finances much more. Stay tuned.

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