As we approach Monday’s celebration of Lowell’s 150th anniversary as a city, I pulled out a booklet I have from the 1926 Centennial Observance of Lowell’s incorporation as a town. The booklet contains many things, but most interesting to me was a brief survey of many of the city’s major buildings. Here’s what is said about City Hall back in 1926:

In her public buildings Lowell has made marked improvement especially during the latter half of our centennial year. The old City Hall, made famous by the presence of Abraham Lincoln, who visited Lowell in 1848, still stands, although the upper stories have been adapted to the use of private tenants, successors to the town and city governments which had met there continuously until 1893 when the city fathers moved into the new and imposing structure fronting on monument square whereon stands the granite shaft erected to the memory of the young patriots, Luther C. Ladd, Addison O. Whitney and [Charles] Taylor, members of the Sixth Mass. Volunteers, the first to fall in defense of the Union, while passing through Baltimore, Maryland, April 19, 1861.