Greg at The New Englander posted pictures from yesterday’s “peace walk” and remembrance of victims on Grand Street in the Lower Highlands. See his photos here. I don’t have any information about contributions or donations in memory of Corinna Oeur. If one of our readers has information, please share it in…
The ruined Spanish-Gothic interior of the United Artists Theater in Detroit. The cinema was built in 1928 by C Howard Crane, and finally closed in 1974. Something for everyone in Lowell to keep in mind as the struggle to save the city continues. Seeing the decaying theaters and churches it makes you think…
Every year Verizon delivers about forty of fifty telephone books to the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds where I work. Sixteen years ago when I first started working at the courthouse these books were gobbled up by both court and registry employees the day they arrived. Now they sit in…
Lowell is best known for its role in the Industrial Revolution, but the first English settlers arrived at the confluence of the Merrimack and the Concord Rivers in the mid-1600s. They found the area fully inhabited by indigenous people who had lived here for centuries. In the following essay, Jim…
Standing on the City’s old Armory site with about 60 other people at 2 p.m., I couldn’t help thinking that Armory Park was being put to use for another kind of conflict, even war in the broadest sense—a war against violence like the war against poverty championed by Rev Dr…
Pawtucket Dam on the Merrimack River, Lowell Massachusetts (Corey Sciuto, May 2006) In her article “Planning for the future to save pieces of history” – Globe correspondent Taryn Plumb features Lowell’s Pawtucket Dam on the Merrimack River. This historic dam was recently designated by Preservation Massachusetts as “endangered.” The Pawtucket Dam, meanwhile, faces…
Mimi at www.leftinlowell.com posted yesterday about the shootings and killing at the New Year’s Eve party on Grand Street. The Lower Highlands Neighborhood Group is asking concerned people to gather at 2 p.m. at Armory Park, just off the Lord Overpass at Westford and Grand streets, to honor the victims and to push…
While watching the Gator Bowl and now Rose Bowl on TV and occasionally checking Breaking News on the Sun site and the home page of boston.com, I’ve been reading “Irish Thunder’ by Bob Halloran, a vivid account of Micky Ward’s struggles and success. Parts of the book describing life in…
Check this discussion thread from 2002 on Jacques L’Heureux’s Franco-American Connection website for the cultural significance of New Year’s Day among French Canadians. And why is New Year’s Day an official holiday in Massachusetts? Here’s the Lowell connection from worcester.bettysgenealogy.org : New Year’s Day, however, was not an American holiday. It…
I’ve never seen a copy of the newspaper written and published in the late 1920s and early ’30s by Jack Kerouac’s father, Leo Kerouac, when he owned Spotlight Print, a small printing business downtown that got washed out in the 1936 Flood. Called The Spotlight, the newspaper had items about local entertainment…