Lowell Locks and Canals Historic District
| Lowell Locks and Canals Historic District | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| National Register of Historic Places | |||
| National Historic Landmark District | |||
 Map of the sewer system from 1975 |
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| location | Lowell , Massachusetts , United States | ||
| Coordinates | 42 ° 38 '44 " N , 71 ° 19' 12" W | ||
| surface | 125 acres (50.6 ha ) | ||
| Built | 1796-1848 | ||
| NRHP number | 76001972 | ||
| Data | |||
| The NRHP added | August 13, 1976 | ||
| As NHLD declared | 22nd December 1977 | ||
As the Lowell Locks and Canals Historic District , the system of headwaters of the city of Lowell in the state of Massachusetts in the United States has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976 . The canals were built between the late 18th and mid 19th centuries to allow ships to pass waterfalls, hydropower factories, and generate electricity. Since 1977 the area has been registered as a National Historic Landmark District .
Part of the Historic District
The registered district includes all canals of the system, the oldest of which was laid out in 1796 and the most recent in 1846, as well as the production facilities of various companies connected to them and the water management systems connected to the canals. These components are listed in the following table.
channels
| Construction date | designation | image | Max. width | Max. depth | length | description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1796 | Pawtucket Canal |
|
100 ft (30.5 m) | 8 ft (2.4 m) | 7,850 ft (2,392.7 m) | The Pawtucket Canal was the first of today's canal system and initially served as a ship bypassing the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River . In 1822 it was redesigned as an inlet to the Merrimack Canal , which powered the mills of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company . With the help of a lock , the approximately 2.5 m deep canal overcomes a height difference of almost 4 m before it is connected to the Concord River via another lock . |
| 1822 | Merrimack Canal |
|
50 ft (15.2 m) | 10 ft (3 m) | 2,580 ft (786.4 m) | This canal was built specifically to provide hydropower to the Merrimack Manufacturing Company and the Lowell Manufacturing Company , so it had a drop of over nine meters at the drive wheels. |
| 1826 | Hamilton Canal |
|
100 ft (30.5 m) | 10 ft (3 m) | 1,936 ft (590.1 m) | The canal draws its water from the Pawtucket Canal and has a drop of 4 m to supply two connected factories with hydropower. It then flows back into the Pawtucket Canal . |
| 1828 | Lowell Canal | 30 ft (9.1 m) | 10 ft (3 m) | 500 ft (152.4 m) | This section served exclusively to supply the Lowell Manufacturing Company and reached a drop height of 4 m above the drive wheels. | |
| 1831-1832 | Western Canal |
|
55 ft (16.8 m) | 9 ft (2.7 m) | 4,964 ft (1,513 m) | The Western Canal served with a drop of 4 m of water supply of three textile factories and ordered at the beginning through a lock, so that ships could reach the production building. However, this was backfilled in the 1840s. The canal was initially fed by the Pawtucket Canal and emptied into the Lawrence Canal , which supplied the Lawrence Mill over a height of 5.5 m and finally flowed into the Merrimack River. With the construction of the Northern Canal in 1847, the upper Western Canal became a pure tributary of this new section, from 1848 it also supplied the water for the Moody Street Feeder . |
| 1835 | Eastern Canal |
|
65 ft (19.8 m) | 8 ft (2.4 m) | 2,037 ft (620.9 m) | The Eastern Canal was built to supply three additional factories. It draws its water from the Pawtucket or Merrimack Canal , reaches a height of 5 m above the drive wheels and flows into the Concord or Merrimack River. |
| 1835 | Northern Canal |
|
100 ft (30.5 m) | 21 ft (6.4 m) | 4,373 ft (1,332.9 m) | The Northern Canal served as a further inlet to the Pawtucket Canal . |
| 1835 | Moody Street Feeder |
|
30 ft (9.1 m) | 10 ft (3 m) | 1,418 ft (432.2 m) | The Moody Street Feeder was built together with the Northern Canal and diverted water from the Western Canal into the Merrimack Canal , on the one hand to meet the increasing demand of the Merrimack Manufacturing Corporation and on the other hand to supply more water to the Eastern Canal . |
| 1846 | Boott Penstock | This short supply line was used to direct additional water from the Merrimack Canal into the Eastern Canal . It was enlarged twice. |
Production facilities
Hamilton Manufacturing Company
The Hamilton Manufacturing Company opened in 1826 as the second large textile mill in Lowell to operate. Their machines were powered by the water of the Hamilton Canal and in 1839 they produced sheets of fabric with a total length of 4,572 km. In 1890 the annual production volume had increased to 36,576 km. Production ceased after the Second World War and only one of the first buildings remains. The remaining buildings on the site date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Appleton Company
The company was founded in 1828 and manufactured shirt fabrics, bed linen and drills . In 1839 the company produced sheets of fabric with a total length of 4,572 km, which was the capacity of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company. In 1890 the production volume was more than 18,000 km. Operations ceased in the 1920s, but ten of the old turbines still exist today, the two oldest of which were built in 1901.
Lowell Manufacturing Company
The Lowell Manufacturing Company also started operations in 1828 to manufacture so-called Osnaburg fabrics (a coarse fabric named after the German city of Osnabrück ) and hand-woven carpets. In 1842 the factory received the first power chair , and in 1848 the entire business was converted to the manufacture of carpets. In 1914 operations were relocated to Thompsonville, Connecticut .
Suffolk Manufacturing Company
The Suffolk Manufacturing Company was founded in 1831 and, like the Appleton Company, manufactured shirt fabrics, bed linen and drills. During the Civil War, the company suffered from poor management and finally in 1871, together with the Tremont Mills opposite, it was owned by Frederick Ayer and his brother, who merged the two parts and continued to operate as Suffolk and Tremont Mills . However, in the 1930s the company had to go out of business.
Lawrence Manufacturing Company
The Lawrence Manufacturing Company, named after the Boston entrepreneurial family of the same name, was founded in 1831 by William Appleton and Benjamin J. Nichols and in 1848 produced printed fabrics, bed linen and shirt fabrics with a total length of more than 12,000 km. In 1864 production was expanded to include tricotage and knitwear , and in 1885 the company's machine park comprised 2,360 looms. Weekly production this year was 388 km of lengths of fabric and 300,000 units of knitwear. The water turbines connected to the canal system generated a physical output of 3500 HP , which was supplemented from the end of the 19th century by steam turbines with an output of 2700 HP.
Boott Mills
The Boott Mills were founded in 1835 by Abbott and Nathan Lawrence and John A. Lowell and named after the entrepreneur Kirk Boott, who also worked in Lowell . In 1848 the company produced 9,600 km of drill, fine shirt fabrics and other printed fabrics and in 1884 had 3,875 looms. The original buildings are preserved to this day, as are younger buildings from the 1860s.
Massachusetts Mills
The Massachusetts Mills was the last large newly established textile mill in Lowell and began operations in 1839 under Abbott Lawrence and John A. Lowell. In 1848, production was 22,860 km of lengths of fabric, which was maintained on this scale into the 1940s, before the company was dissolved and integrated into another location of the group. The former production halls are now rented to a large number of companies.
Water management systems
The Historic District includes a large number of water management systems that were primarily required to regulate the flow rates and to catch floating objects such as driftwood. Particularly noteworthy is the 1850 finished case gate Great gate , which by James B. Francis has been designed and consists of 26 square timbers, which are 8 m long and 40 cm wide each. It is still operational today and was only lowered twice in its history (1856 and 1936) to prevent impending flooding.
Historical meaning
Lowell's location on the right bank of the Merrimack River was the first of two major factors in the city's development into one of the first industrial centers in the United States. The second factor was the group of entrepreneurs around Nathan Appleton and Patrick Tracy Jackson , who initially built the first modern factory in the United States in Waltham together with Francis Cabot Lowell and other personalities with the Waltham Manufacturing Company . Lowell died in 1817, but the others sought a new company capable of making finer fabrics than Waltham's. As a location for the Merrimack Manufacturing Company , they chose what was then East Chelmsford and now Lowell, which was named after their deceased business partner, due to its favorable location for the supply of hydropower.
At that time, however, control of the river was held by the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on Merrimack River , founded in 1792 by means of a charter , who had built a 2.7 km long canal around the Pawtucket Falls to make the river navigable at this point and to connect the towns on the upper reaches of Newburyport with the Atlantic Ocean . The Middlesex Canal opened in 1803, however, opened a direct connection from the Merrimack River to Boston , so that the Pawtucket Canal hardly used a ship, which in turn brought its operator into financial difficulties. In the fall of 1821, Kirk Boott, spokesman for the board of the Appleton Group, bought farmland and farmland on both sides of the river and also acquired a majority stake in the canal operating company. As early as December of the same year, due to his activities, the price of land had risen from $ 20 to $ 4,300 per acre , but the entrepreneurs already owned the most valuable properties and also had control of the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals , who were on their board from that point on Boott, Appleton and Jackson were represented.
Gradually, the canal system was expanded and other companies settled. The ideal supply of hydropower and other infrastructure attracted the large textile manufacturers from smaller rivers in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts to northern New England , which made Lowell the " Manchester of America" in the eyes of some historians .
The textile industry in Lowell had its peak in 1918 with a total annual production of more than 73 million US dollars (today approx. 1,237,000,000 dollars or 2,984,000,000 euros). Fall River , however, had replaced Lowell as the leading textile center as early as 1890 , and more and more companies moved from the city to other cities or went out of business. This went hand in hand with more favorable production conditions at other locations due to the start of electrification, as well as lower wages and shorter transport routes.
See also
- List of entries on the National Register of Historic Places in Lowell
- List of National Historic Landmarks in Massachusetts
literature
- George R. Adams: National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form. (PDF) United States Department of the Interior , National Park Service , June 1977, accessed February 25, 2018 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Massachusetts. National Park Service , accessed August 11, 2019.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 10.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 11.
- ↑ cf. Adams, p. 11 f.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 12.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 13.
- ↑ cf. Adams, p. 13 f.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 14.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 15.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 16.
- ↑ cf. Adams, p. 18.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 37.
- ↑ a b cf. Adams, p. 32.
- ↑ cf. Adams, p. 38.