There was no Lowell City Council meeting this week due to the summer schedule so today I’ll catch up on a variety of topics. To begin, a couple of items in last week’s newsletter warrant further comment:

In recounting the council’s discussion of a replacement project for sidewalks and streetside trees on Barasford Ave, I mistakenly thought that the longtime cement sidewalks had already been replaced with hot top, but a reader who lives in the neighborhood informed me that the cement sidewalk segments are still there but there was an intent to replace them with hot top. Consequently, preserving the existing cement, or even replacing it with new cement, shouldn’t be as onerous or costly a task as tearing up and replacing (my imagined) brand new hot top.

Last week I also wrote about how the city council welcomed representatives from the Urban Economic Forum to the city as part of that entity’s designation of Lowell as the first “Frontrunner City” in the United States. In response to this news, UMass Lowell History Professor Bob Forrant posted a thoughtful comment that while acknowledging progress made in the city in recent years, cautioned against an overly rosy picture painted by city officials who, in their orientation presentations to the Urban Economic Forum delegation, left out some of the great challenges faced by many city residents. Since Bob has spent decades researching and writing about Lowell’s economy during the past fifty years, his views are important to consider so I’ve reposted his comment in its entirety here:

Bob Forrant comment on the city’s Frontrunner designation:

Not utopia yet. Progress, yes. I am throwing a bit of well-intentioned shade on this week’s cheerleading for the city, as it showed itself off to lots of outsiders. Having practiced, analyzed, and written about economic development since the 1980s, I’ve something to say. I am asking for soul-searching around the question of who the progress benefited, because there has been progress. It would be dumb to deny that fact.

This is an election year: Lowell voters need to peek behind the curtain and ask the question: Progress for whom?

On Wednesday, a high-level delegation from the Urban Economy Forum (UEF) spent time getting to know the people and places that make Lowell special. My two cents. Did they meet thoughtful critics? Too much back-slapping and cheerleading is not useful. Did anyone count the empty storefronts in the downtown and our neighborhoods for our visitors? Poverty figures offered? Restaurant and other small business closures cited? I don’t know I was not there – – just asking.

Since 1983, over one billion dollars has been invested in an area comprising the city’s downtown historic district. Starting in the late 1970s and 1980s, economic developers and think tanks from around the world sent delegations to study the Lowell way, the ‘Lowell Miracle’ many called it. However, the health, income, education, and housing disparities that existed at the start of the miracle remain, over fifty years later.

There is no magic bullet to make the bad stuff disappear. But we cannot seriously rebuild without acknowledging that the bad stuff exists. The city tried and failed through urban renewal to bulldoze the neighborhoods it did not care for away.
Approximately 15% of Lowell, MA, residents had an income below the poverty level in 2023, which was 30.2% greater than the poverty level of 10.4% across the entire state of Massachusetts. 6.5% of residents have income below 50% of the poverty rate in 2023, compared to 5.1% in the state. Poverty remains a distinct challenge. In 2020 Lowell ranked 284 out of 299 MA communities in per capita income at $23,136. For median household income that year, Lowell stood at 298 out of 313 communities analyzed.

There is no doubt that the needle has moved in a positive direction; as the slogan suggests, “there is a lot to like about Lowell.” However, we are talking about fifty years or so of history and over a billion dollars in investment! Time to perhaps pick up the pace?

If we proceed at the pace of development Lowell has had over the past fifty or so years, it will remain terrific for developers, people with money already, and UMass Lowell. It will not change the dynamics of the city when it comes to poverty, food insecurity, inequality, and access to affordable housing without a purposeful focus on these issues. Homelessness, low wages for many, and a lack of affordable housing are not much different from what they were in the 1970s. Historical facts.

UMass Lowell needs to focus as much energy on human social and economic development as it does on technology and defense. Its sustainability programs are exemplary, but its awful, black-top parking lots belie progress. All the programs in the world and the billions invested in infrastructure and bringing firms to the city are meaningless for long-time Lowellians, absent a purposeful effort to both expand AND share the economic pie more equitably.

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One of the many ways in which Bob Forrant contributes to the Lowell community is by sharing his knowledge of the city’s history through talks, walks, and TV programs. In fact, Bob frequently collaborated with me on my Lowell Walks downtown walking tours and holds the record for the largest crowd ever – 226 people for his Abolitionism in Lowell Walk.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lowell Walks, it was something I started back in 2015 to bring people into the downtown and share some of the city’s history with them. The walks all took place on summertime Saturday mornings, and all started from the National Park Visitor Center on Market Street. I recruited people with particular knowledge (like Bob Forrant) of that week’s topic to lead the tours, which turned out to be quite popular, averaging 100 people per walk.

Below is the lineup for the first three years of Lowell Walks, showing the title of the tour, the name of the tour guide, and the number of people who participated:

2015

1.     Public Art with Paul Marion & Rosemary Noon (107)
2.     Literary Lowell & Pollard Library with Sean Thibodeau (76)
3.     Triumphs of Preservation with Fred Faust (81)
4.     Hamilton Canal District with Allison Lamey (129)
5.     Inside Lowell High School with Brian Martin (86)
6.     Trains & Trolleys in Lowell with Christopher Hayes (120)
7.     Irish in the Acre with Dave McKean (125)
8.     Abolitionists in Lowell with Bob Forrant (119)
9.     Natural Lowell with Jane Calvin (75)
10.  Green Buildings in Lowell with Jay Mason (43)
11.  Artists Past & Present with Jim Dyment (86)
12.  Renewing the Acre with Dave Ouellette (105)
13.  Lowell Monuments with Dick Howe (167)

2016

1.     Preservation Success Stories with Fred Faust (110)
2.     Hamilton Canal Update with Craig Thomas (105)
3.     Irish in the Acre with Dave McKean (115)
4.     Literary Lowell with Sean Thibodeau (105)
5.     Upper Merrimack Street with Yun-Ju Choi (88)
6.     Major Downtown Fires with Jason Strunk (98)
7.     Public Art Collection with Paul Marion & Rosemary Noon (70)
8.     Greeks in the Acre with Steve Panagiotakos (109)
9.     East Merrimack Street with Dick Howe (90)
10.  Lowell National Historical Park with Celeste Bernardo (135)

2017

1.     Western Canal with Dick Howe (150)
2.     Abolitionism with Bob Forrant & Emily Yunes (226)
3.     Churches, Art & Architecture with Dave McKean & Rosemary Noon (111)
4.     Lowell Poems with Paul Marion (84)
5.     Kerouac Downtown with Sean Thibodeau & Roger Brunelle (96)
6.     Lowell Fires with Jason Strunk (98)
7.     Northern Canal Urban Renewal with Chris Hayes & Aurora Erickson (90)
8.     Hamilton Canal with Claire Ricker (110)
9.     Public Health with Sue Levine & Clare Gunther (50)
10.  Mill Girls of Lowell with Tess Shatzer (105)

Life got in the way in 2018 and 2019, so the number of walks were greatly curtailed. In 2020, I partnered with Lowell National Historical Park to relaunch the walks. We had an aggressive schedule of nearly 30 walks stretching from March to November, but then Covid struck, and we only got the first walk in before the rest were canceled by the pandemic. While there have been a few random walks since then, the original Lowell Walks never resumed.

People often ask me if I ever plan to resume Lowell Walks. The answer to that question is complicated. I don’t plan to restart the in person walks program, however, I am bringing Lowell Walks to YouTube. In fact, some are already there, albeit in small snippets, it being easier to master the production process on a five-minute video rather than an hour-long episode (although those will come later).

My initial topic was Lowell Cemetery and some of the notable people buried there. Thus far, I have completed seven videos, all three to five minutes long, and expect to add a few each week going forward.

Here are the first seven videos:

• Moses Greeley Parker – a local doctor who also invented the telephone number.
• James C. Ayer – founded the largest pharmaceutical company in the world in the mid-1800s.
• Clara Bonney – a young mother whose cemetery monument is said to be haunted.
• William Clark – a young Civil War veteran who had a unique connection to the death of Abraham Lincoln.
• Edith Nourse Rogers – represented Lowell in Congress from 1925 to her death in 1960.
• Freeman Ballard Shedd – gained incredible wealth through the sale of cologne and then became one of Lowell’s most generous philanthropists.
• Louisa Maria Wells – a mill worker who judiciously saved a lifetime of income to be used for a magnificent cemetery monument.

All these videos can be found on my YouTube channel. If you watch and enjoy these videos, please subscribe to my channel and click the “notifications bell” to get timely notice of new episodes.

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Speaking of Lowell Cemetery, this fall’s tours will be held on Saturday, September 20, 2025, and on Sunday, September 21, 2025, both at 10 am from the Knapp Avenue entrance.

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In my June 22, 2025, newsletter, I took advantage of no council meeting that week to tell the stores of several dozen of the more than 80 parks and public green spaces in the city. One of the parks covered that day was the North Common about which I wrote:

North Common – 413 Fletcher Street – 7.69 acres – swimming pool; 2 basketball courts; 1 softball field; 2 handball courts; playground; community garden; amphitheater. This land was purchased by the city of Lowell in 1845 from the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals along with the South Common. Together, they were the first public parks in Lowell and were referred to as “the lungs of the city.”

This generated a helpful email from the family of Peter Tsirovasiles, a 21-year-old soldier from Lowell who was killed by hostile fire on June 2, 1966, while serving as a medic in the US Army in Vietnam. In the email, the family shared with me that there was a monument to Private Tsirovasiles on the North Common.

I actually knew that from prior research, but this email exchange tapped into a bigger issue: Lowell Sun articles from June 1967, indicate that the entire North Common and not just the monument that bears his name was to be dedicated to Tsirovasiles. Here’s the headline and excerpts from the newspaper’s June 1, 1967, edition:

Dedicate North Common to Vietnam Hero Sunday

“Congressman F. Bradford More will be the principal speaker Sunday at the dedication ceremonies at the North Common. The park will formally be dedicated as the Peter V. Tsirovasiles Memorial Park in honor of this young hero who gave his life in Vietnam going to the aid of his wounded comrades.”

That sure sounds like we should be calling this place Tsirovasiles Park rather than the North Common, just as we call the former Highland Park by the name Callery Park in honor of another young man killed in the Vietnam War.

However, to be certain of this, we would have to check the wording of the city council motion and the minutes of the meeting when this was voted on. I’ll try to do that next time I’m at City Hall.

Finally, this “Tsirovasiles Park v. North Common” confusion illustrates a tendency we have in this city to dedicate things to people but then fail to keep a clear record of what was dedicated and why. That’s one of the motives for my Parks of Lowell post from several weeks ago which was part of an ongoing effort to reconstruct the record for the many memorials in the city, a record that from my investigation fails to exist elsewhere.

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I had intended to make this newsletter Part II of my Parks of Lowell series but instead posted that as a separate blog post on richardhowe.com. You can see this new installment HERE, while Part I (from June 22) is available HERE. I expect Part III to be completed and published in the coming weeks.

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Louise Peloquin provides a close-up view of the route through Paris of this year’s Tour de France bicycle race.

Leo Racicot wrote about his initial meeting with Julia Child and the friendship that resulted.

Emilie-Noelle Provost contributed her monthly “Living Madly” column.

Bernie Zelitch and Kurt Phaneuf explored how Al’s Lunch, a small diner in the heart of Little Canada, connected writer Jack Kerouac and photographer Annie Powell.