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Lowell Museum

Buildings and structures in Lowell, MassachusettsEducation in Lowell, MassachusettsMuseums in Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Moses Kimball
Moses Kimball

The Lowell Museum, located in Lowell, Massachusetts, was founded by Moses Kimball in 1840, as an art exhibit hall and entertainment venue.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Lowell Museum (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Lowell Museum
Merrimack Street, Lowell The Acre

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 42.6457 ° E -71.3083 °
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Address

Hookslide Kelly's

Merrimack Street 19
01852 Lowell, The Acre
Massachusetts, United States
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Moses Kimball
Moses Kimball
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Rex Center

The Rex Center was an arena and entertainment center in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts, existing from 1933 to 1960. Entrepreneur and car dealer Charles Dancause created the Rex, which opened in 1933 in a renovated mill building, the old Prescott Division Plant of Mass Cotton Mills. The architect of the conversion was Harry Prescott Graves.Among the entertainments offered at the Rex was dining (the Rex Grille, which also offered floorshows), bars, a dancing ballroom, duckpin bowling (65 lanes), roller skating, pool (30 tables), and Turkish baths. There were five banquet halls; banquets, wedding receptions, and other events were held there. The Rex Center constituted an important part of Lowell social life in the mid 20th century; the Lowell Sun described it as "one of Lowell's landmark spots" and "the sports and dining showplace of Lowell".The Rex Arena in the center seated 1,000 or 2,000 and hosted boxing matches, and also wrestling matches (featuring appearances by Jim Londos, Ed "Strangler" Lewis, The French Angel, Man Mountain Dean, Dropkick Murphy, Bull Curry and many others), particularly after the older Crescent Rink on Hurd Street burned down. Semi-pro basketball games were played there, and the Harlem Globetrotters appeared there.The Rex Center burned down on June 25, 1960. The huge fire raged out of control for several hours, and of the more than 300 firefighters from Lowell and 14 other towns, sixteen were injured. The derelict building was torn down in 1971 and replaced with a parking lot. Wang Laboratories built a training center at the site in 1984, which in 1990 was purchased by Middlesex Community College and is now used as its Lowell campus.

The Bon Marché (Lowell)
The Bon Marché (Lowell)

The Bon Marché was a department store in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts, in business from 1878 to 1976.Frederic Mitchell founded a dry goods store in 1878 under the name "This is Mitchell's". His brother Charles Mitchell operated a shoe store. Both stores were on Merrimack Street. In 1887, Frederick and Charles combined their operation, under the name The Bon Marché.Of the building that became the Bon Marché store, the small righthand section was built around 1874 (before Bon Marché existed). The large central section was built in 1887 to house the new Bon Marché Dry Goods store. The addition on the left side (matching the original right side building) was built in 1927.In the manner of the day, wares were sold outside on the street. Customers included the workers of the city's many textile mills. The store was on Merrimack Street in the heart of the commercial district of what was then the prosperous and growing city of Lowell.Even in its early days, Bon Marché billed itself as the largest department store in New England. Their Rock Bottom Basement Store featured an actual rock, a large glacial erratic which the basement was built around. The store was an anchor of Lowell's mercantile downtown. Its fortunes declined with the city as the mills closed. The last day of business was January 10, 1976. The building was taken over by the Jordan Marsh chain, which itself became defunct in 1996; the building now houses the UMass Lowell bookstore and other businesses.

Pawtucket Canal
Pawtucket Canal

Completed in 1796, the Pawtucket Canal was originally built as a transportation canal to circumvent the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts. In the early 1820s it became a major component of the Lowell power canal system. with the founding of the textile industry at what became Lowell.The Pawtucket Falls are a mile long series of falls and rapids over which the Merrimack River drops 32 feet. The falls hampered the shipment of inland goods, mostly lumber, to the mouth of the Merrimack and Newburyport, Massachusetts. Newburyport was then one of the largest shipbuilding centers in New England, and a steady supply of wood from New Hampshire was critical to its industry. The original canal was built by wealthy Boston merchants who formed a limited liability corporation called the Proprietors of Locks and Canals, one of the first of its kind in the United States. However, within a decade of its construction the Middlesex Canal was completed, connecting the Merrimack directly with Boston, Massachusetts. Bringing goods directly to Boston was more advantageous for merchants, and the Pawtucket Canal fell out of favor for inland transport. The investors in the Boston Manufacturing Company having successfully built upon Francis Cabot Lowell and Paul Moody's work in building a successfully integrated cotton mill at Waltham, Massachusetts on the Charles River were looking for a site that offered more waterpower and the Pawtucket Falls offered what they needed. In 1821 they bought the Proprietors of Locks and Canals and with it the water rights of the Merrimack River upstream from the Pawtucket Falls. The Pawtucket Canal was deepened to become a power canal, and the first of 5.6 miles of canals in the soon to be named City of Lowell, Massachusetts. The first canal built off the Pawtucket Canal was the Merrimack Canal, which powered the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, thus starting the Lowell experiment, and the first planned industrial city in the United States. The canal is operated today by Boott Hydro, LLC.