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Some of you may be familiar with the story of Normand Brissette. He was a young man from Lowell who left high school to enlist in the Navy during World War Two. Assigned as the gunner/radio operator on a two-seat, carrier-based dive bomber, his plane was shot down just of…
Read More »Thank you to everyone who last night attended or wanted to attend (but could not) the book launch for ‘Mill Power: The Origin and Impact of Lowell National Historical Park.” We had a big crowd at the National Park Visitor Center. UTEC provided the food. Park staff made all the…
Read More »White tips on the close-cropped sloping lawns of the Common this morning before the sun is full up. Trees coming to total change, some of them most of the way there. Saturated crimson crown near the corner of Thorndike and Highland. Big honking candy-corn orange maple blasts color near the…
Read More »From its founding in 1915, the International Institute of Lowell has helped countless immigrants who arrived in Lowell in too many ways to list. Recently, an enormous cache of documentary records dating from the earliest days of the Institute were uncovered. Institute staff and historians from UMass Lowell are now…
Read More »My book “Mill Power: The Origin and Impact of Lowell National Historical Park” begins with a chapter that offers the reader historical background for the late 20th-century story about to be told. I wanted to provide context for readers unfamiliar with Lowell and to set the stage for the enormous…
Read More »For those able to attend the Lowell Plan’s annual breakfast yesterday at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, a person would have to be pretty hard-hearted not to have come away feeling better about the city and more optimistic about what’s over the wooded horizon. The 300 people in…
Read More »About eighteen months ago I wrote about a special permit request on the docket for the Lowell Planning Board for the property at 658 Andover Street – the historic-minded would know it as the Worcester House. The plan to put at least 5 homes and possibly a “road” into the…
Read More »Historian Julie Mofford shared the following which is based on letters sent home by a Lowell mill girl from 1861 to 1865 “You work in Lowell!” exclaimed our daughter-in-law’s father, Chuck Grover. “Why, my great-grandfather had a good friend who worked in the textile mills there. I inherited a stack…
Read More »From the archive ~ a reminder that two of Lowell’s most magnificent buildings Lowell City Hall and the Pollard Memorial Library are built in the “Richardsonian Romanesque” style created by Henry Hobson Richardson… “American’s First Architect” born this day September 29, 1838. MassMoments reminds that Henry Hobson Richardson was born…
Read More »Congratulations to UMass Lowell which teamed up this past week with Queen’s College Belfast for a world-class history conference at the Inn & Conference Center. Called “The Irish in Massachusetts: Historical Significance, Lasting Legacy,” the conference began on Wednesday night and ended Saturday morning with a tour of St. Patrick’s…
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