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Wannalancit Mills

Cotton mills in the United StatesMiddlesex Community College (Massachusetts)Textile mills in Lowell, MassachusettsUniversity of Massachusetts Lowell
Wannalancit Mills University of Massachusetts Lowell DSC00092
Wannalancit Mills University of Massachusetts Lowell DSC00092

The Wannalancit Mills (formerly the Suffolk Mills) in Lowell, Massachusetts is an early American cotton mill, parts of which date to the 1830s at the earliest. Its namesake is a corruption of Wonalancet, a sachem or sagamore of the Penacook Native American tribe. Today the complex is home to office space, conference center, and university research facilities.

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

Wannalancit Mills
Dalton Court, Lowell Centralville

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N 42.649598 ° E -71.316698 °
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University of Massachusetts Lowell

Dalton Court
01850 Lowell, Centralville
Massachusetts, United States
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uml.edu

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Wannalancit Mills University of Massachusetts Lowell DSC00092
Wannalancit Mills University of Massachusetts Lowell DSC00092
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Lowell Power Canal System and Pawtucket Gatehouse
Lowell Power Canal System and Pawtucket Gatehouse

The Lowell Power Canal System is the largest power canal system in the United States, at 5.6 miles in length. It is operating through six major canals on two levels, controlled by numerous gates. The system was begun in the 1790s, beginning its life as a transportation canal called the Pawtucket Canal, which was constructed to get logs from New Hampshire down the Merrimack River to shipbuilding centers at Newburyport, Massachusetts, bypassing the 30-plus-foot drop of the Pawtucket Falls. In the early 1820s, Associates of the recently deceased Francis Cabot Lowell bought up the old Pawtucket Canal in what was then East Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Within a few years, the new industrial center that became Lowell was using canals feeding off a widened and deepened Pawtucket Canal as a direct power source for their textile mills. The first of these canals was the Merrimack Canal, which powered the Merrimack Manufacturing Company. The repurposing of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals allowed the Associates to sell water power to other companies, starting with the Hamilton Canal, leading to the explosive growth of the town, and then shortly thereafter, city, of Lowell. By the late 1840s, Lowell's canal system was producing as much power as possible. However, the Chief Engineer of Locks and Canals, an Englishman by the name of James B. Francis devised the Northern Canal and the Moody Street Feeder, to increase the capacity of, and availability of water to various parts of, the whole system. The Pawtucket Gatehouse was constructed to control flow from behind the Pawtucket Dam into the Northern Canal. The dam itself, which was built twenty years earlier, was lengthened at that time, diverting the entire Merrimack (during periods of lower flow) into the two canal system entrances above it. It is a stone dam topped with wooden flashboards – a system still used on this dam today. The level of the water is regulated by the flashboards and the metal pins that hold them back. When there is too much water going over the top of the dam, the pins bend backwards, releasing the boards, and the outflow of the dam is increased. The Gatehouse contains ten wooden gates that control the flow of the Merrimack into the canal. Originally, they were opened by a Francis Turbine, also an invention of James B. Francis. Today, the Gatehouse is controlled electrically and remotely by Boott Hydroelectric, who is partially a continuation of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals, and who operates a 24-megawatt hydroplant on the Northern Canal. The Canal System and the Gatehouse were designated a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the ASCE in 1984 and a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the ASME in 1985 and are part of Lowell National Historical Park. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and declared a National Historic Landmark the next year.

St. Joseph's Convent and School
St. Joseph's Convent and School

St. Joseph's Convent and School is a historic convent and school at 517 Moody Street in Lowell, Massachusetts. The school is a three-story brick building built in 1883. Its Italianate styling includes an extended wooden cornice decorated with brackets. The convent, built in 1911, is a modestly-ornmanented Colonial Revival three story brick building. Most of the interiors of the buildings were significantly altered over the course of the 20th century, losing most of their historical integrity; however, a 2001 rehabilitation has reintroduced interior styling in keeping with the age and style of the buildings.The parish of St. Joseph was established in 1868 by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, to cater to the religious needs of the burgeoning French-Canadian Catholic population that was one of the significant demographic groups working in Lowell's mills. The school was established by the diocese in 1883 to provide French-language education to the children of these immigrants, with nuns of the Grey Nuns of the Cross as teachers. The nuns initially lived in a house on the property. By the 1890s enrollments had increased such that more space was needed, and the Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic College for Boys was built on Merrimack Street, and this school was devoted to girls. The convent was built in 1911 to provide increased space for housing of the nuns teaching at these facilities. The St. Joseph's school eventually spawned three other Catholic schools in Lowell. However, by the 1980s enrollments had declined, and the school was closed in 1993. The buildings have been rehabilitated by a local nonprofit organization. The buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.