page_title: History of Lowell, Massachusetts
section_title: City of Lowell
hierarchical_section_title: History of Lowell, Massachusetts / City of Lowell
caption_attribution_description: Father John's Medicine (partly obscured), Edmonds Historical Museum, Edmonds, Washington.
context_page_description: The history of Lowell, Massachusetts, is closely tied to its location along the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River, from being an important fishing ground for the Pennacook tribe to providing water power for the factories that formed the basis of the city's economy for a century. The city of Lowell was started in the 1820s as a money-making venture and social project referred to as "The Lowell Experiment", and quickly became the United States' largest textile center. However, within approximately a century, the decline and collapse of that industry in New England placed the city into a deep recession. Lowell's "rebirth", partially tied to Lowell National Historical Park, has made it a model for other former industrial towns, although the city continues to struggle with deindustrialization and suburbanization.
  Lowell is considered the "Cradle of the American Industrial Revolution", as it was the first large-scale factory town in the country.
context_section_description: Lowell was only the third Massachusetts community to be granted city government, after Boston and Salem.  The population at the time was 17,633, and soon, a court, jail, hospital, cemetery, library, and two town commons were established.  The first museums and theatres opened around 1840.  Lowell also began annexing neighboring areas, including Belvidere from Tewksbury in 1834, and Centralville from Dracut in 1851.  Daniel Ayer started the satellite city of Ayer's City in South Lowell in 1847, and in 1874, Pawtucketville and Middlesex Village were annexed from Dracut and Chelmsford respectively, bringing the city close to its present borders.
  By 1850, Lowell's population was 33,000, making it the second largest city in Massachusetts and America's largest industrial center. The 5.6 mile long canal system produced 10,000 horsepower, being provided to ten corporations with a total of forty mills. Ten thousand workers used an equal number of looms fed by 320,000 spindles. The mills were producing 50,000 miles of cloth annually. Other industries developed in Lowell as well: The Lowell Machine Shop and Father John's Medicine opened.  Tanneries, a bleachery, and service companies needed by the growing city were established. Moxie, an early soft drink, was invented in Lowell in the 1870s. Around 1880, Lowell became the first city in America to have telephone numbers.
  Lowell continued to be in the forefront of new industrial technology. In 1828, Paul Moody developed an early belt-driven power transfer system to supersede the unreliable gearwork that was utilized at the time. In 1830, Patrick Tracy Jackson commissioned work on the Boston and Lowell Railroad, one of the Oldest railroads in North America. It opened five years became independent in 1845, patent medicine factories like Hood's Sarsaparilla Laboratory later, making the Middlesex Canal obsolete. Soon, lines up the Merrimack to Nashua, downriver to Lawrence, and inland to Groton Junction, today known as Ayer (renamed after Lowell patent medicine tycoon Dr. James Cook Ayer), were constructed.
  Uriah A. Boyden installed his first turbine in the Appleton Mill in 1844, which was a major efficiency improvement over the old-fashioned waterwheel. The turbine was improved at Lowell again shortly thereafter by Englishman James B. Francis, chief engineer of Proprietors of Locks and Canals. Francis had begun his career with Locks and Canals working under George Washington Whistler, the father of painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and his improved turbine, known as the Francis Turbine, is still used with few changes today.
  Francis also designed the Francis Gate, a flood control mechanism that provides a means of sealing the canal system off from the Merrimack River, and completed the canal system by adding the Northern Canal and Moody Street Feeder, both designed to improve efficiency to the entire system. To further improve the amount of year-round, day and night water power Lowell needed, Francis, along with engineers from Lawrence, were involved with The Lake Company, a corporation involved in building dams in the Lakes Region of Central New Hampshire. These dams, constructed and improved mid-century, allowed the cities on the Merrimack River to store and release water from the Merrimack's source, including Lake Winnipesaukee.
  In the late 19th century, new technologies changed Lowell. The electric streetcar allowed the city to expand creating new neighborhoods on the outskirts. Tyler Park and Lynde Hill in Belvidere were home to many of Lowell's wealthiest residents, who could now live away from the noisy and polluted downtown industrial area. The prosperous city built a massive new Romanesque city hall made of granite with a clock tower that could be seen from the mill-yards. A new library with a hall dedicated to the Civil War, a post office, and ornate commercial buildings replaced the puritanical mid-century structures.
  Steam power was first used to supplement the fully developed hydropower sources in Lowell in the 1860s, and by the mid-1870s, it was the dominant energy sou
caption: Father John's Medicine
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