Lowell: A Jack Kerouac Destination City?

Steve Edington
Past President of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac

On May 13, 2026, the Lowell Sun carried a front-page article about Representative Lori Trahan’s tour of the proposed Jack Kerouac Center for Lowell at the former St. Jean Baptiste Church. She was accompanied by Sylvia Cunha, Director of Marketing and Business Development for the Jack Kerouac Estate, and David Ouelette, who has deeply been involved in the effort to create the Kerouac Center on this site.

These are some of my thoughts on this exciting possibility, drawing on my thirty-plus years of involvement in the Kerouac scene in Lowell:

These are quotes from three websites of museums or centers that honor the literary, artistic, or musical legacies of those for whom they were created:

“The James Joyce Center [Dublin, Ireland] is a museum and cultural institution which promotes the life, literature, and legacy of one of the world’s greatest writers, James Joyce.”

“The Beatles Story is a museum in Liverpool, England…The museum was recognized as one of the best tourist attractions of the United Kingdom in 2015.”

“As one of the largest literary museums in the United States dedicated to a single author, the National [John] Steinbeck Center [in Salinas, California] began as an initiative to create a forum for his writings and one that would inspire successful literary and educational programming.”

There are other similar locales I could cite, but I’ll keep it to these.  I have visited the Steinbeck Center several times and come away marveling at how it so wonderfully captures Steinbeck’s life and literary legacy.

Lowell, Massachusetts now has an opportunity to join these ranks with the creation of a Jack Kerouac Center in the former St. Jean Baptiste Church. Over the past few decades Kerouac has achieved comparable recognition as those of the people cited here when it comes to his literary and cultural impact world-wide. Lowell is now poised to become a destination city for Kerouac aficionados and scholars from around the world, in ways that would rival Dublin, Liverpool, and Salinas when it comes to the literary and cultural legacies of their “hometown heroes.”

My involvement, and one-time presidency, of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac (LCK) has allowed me to witness the ever-growing attraction of Lowell for devotees of Kerouac, as demonstrated by the attendance at our annual Kerouac Festivals in October. This fall we will host our 38^th annual gathering of “Kerouac Pilgrims” from around the country and world.

The prospect of a Kerouac Center will take our (LCK’s) efforts to an even higher level when it comes to the Kerouac presence in Lowell. The year-round draw of such a Center, the Kerouac-themed material at the Center for Lowell History that reflect his French-Canadian ancestry, the Kerouac Studies program at UMass Lowell, along with the annual LCK Festivals, will put Jack Kerouac at the forefront of the many fine attributes that attract people to Lowell.

Background: In 2022 the Jack Kerouac Foundation was created for the purpose of obtaining the former St. Jean Baptiste Church for conversion into a Jack Kerouac Center. Kerouac was an altar boy at SJB, and his Funeral Mass was celebrated there when he passed away in 1969. The property was owned by Lowell developer, Brian McGowan. In May of 2025 country singer and songwriter Zach Bryan purchased the building for the Kerouac Foundation/Estate. This past March Mr. Bryan also purchased the original “scroll” manuscripts of Kerouac’s novels On the Road and The Dharma Bums along with three Kerouac letters at Christie’s Auction in New York. The Center will become a home for these documents when its preparations are completed.

These preparations are the next crucial steps. The building has been purchased. The documents that will become the centerpieces of its exhibits have been secured.

More work is yet to come! This work includes generating the funds that will allow for the extensive, and necessary, restoration of SJB so the Kerouac Center can become a reality.

With the financial challenges the City of Lowell faces, fully funding the restoration needed for a Kerouac Center is beyond their resources. I get that. At the same time, however, I hope Lowell’s city leaders can understand just how much a Jack Kerouac Center will contribute to the vitality and well-being of Lowell, even as the community leaders of the cities mentioned here did.

Whatever support the city can provide will most certainly rebound to the greater good of Lowell. It will take some dedicated networking to fund the creation of this Center. I hope the city can be a part of such a networking process.

For those wishing to contribute to this effort, here’s the link:

https://jackkerouaccenter.com/pages/donate.

This year is the Lowell Bicentennial. It’s a time for looking back at Lowell’s rich history, and a time for looking ahead to what is yet to come. The creation of a Kerouac Center to highlight Jack Kerouac’s world-wide literary and cultural legacy can be a vital and exciting piece of Lowell’s future.

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Steve Edington is a past President and current Treasurer of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. He is the author of three Kerouac themed books, including his latest one, The Gospel According to Jack—Tracking Kerouac in My Life. He is also the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, New Hampshire.