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Show 2 TheSaltLake Tribune TRAVELSunday, August 3, 1997 Lowell Is No Run-of-the-Mill Tourist Town days a week in the mills andlived in ‘cramped boarding houses. BY NAEDINE JOY HAZELL THE HARTFORD COURANT LOWELL, Mass. — Astourist e mistaken impression went abroad that a paradise of work hadat last been found. Romantic spots go, this oneisn’t pretty. It's gritty and haunting — a ghost town with crumbling textile com wrote to a friend in 1881 of the Working People Exhibit, just off the Boarding House Park green, This exhibit is near the Boott Museum.Otherhistoric ex- vidual exhibits that together hibits dot thecity. The girls came for manydiffer- workers and the hundredsofindi- chronicle the birth andlife of the Industrial Revolution in America The Boott Cotton Mill Museum is among the most comprehensive gratedinto the city. friends who had cometo work in the mills. ing People Exhibit, the Suffolk A nearby exhibit showsthe life patterns of four formermillgirls, Mill Turbine Exhibit and the new- Michael McAndrews/The Hertford Courant Ranger Marc Ducharmeclosesa gate to the Guard Locks at Frances Gate Park, Lowell, Mass. ly opened American Textile History Museum are within a dozen blocks of each other. They areei- therin or near a downtown where abandoned storefronts are only oneor two streets from chicretail shops, bookstores and restaurants in renovated historic buildings. It all is dominated by the red facial expressions. Within seconds, you feel the in- water powerfor new mills. ter credit at the companystore. sistent thwack-thwack of the sive. By mid-century, Lowell had six miles of canals that powered 10 tory Museum includes many re- looms make its way up through the floor and into the center of your body. On plaques around the weave room are quotes from mill work- brick mills that drew waves of workers to Lowell. “One by one, the gates swallow ers — those wholived with the deadening noise, accidents and bers. . . . And they are one with health problems for decades and wereglad of the work; those who them. Officials, craftsmen, scrub- ills] thunder, one with the ”’ George Chapman wroteof stayed long enough to save some theidails dance to the rhythm of money and moveon; and the others for whom the Lowell mills werejust the way it was. the mills. Chapman’s poem is inside the entrance to the Boott Cotton Mills Museum, a two-floor exhibit that Lowell becamethe center of the industrial universe in the early 1800s. It was in the right place at the right time. It was next to the uses photographs, video inter- views with former mill workers, interactive exhibits, film and art Merrimack River when water to tell the story of the Industrial aouge fabric in a year to wrap twice around the world’s equator) are crumbling and vacant. A century earlier, there was no quiet on the canals, Mill work was hard — workers often toiled 14 hours a day on with an emphasis on the industry’s growth in Lowell. Thecity’s populationin the early 1800s was about 2,500. That was before there were any mills. By the mid-1800s, the population had boomedto 33,000. ES! ILYA'S TRAVEL 1-886-478-0808 rou. Free Moy Fr: AAP, Sat NA(CHT) $832 BOSTON yp CHICAGO Ae" InDIANAPLS S152 ROME $566" week, and in cash, instead of barPPeeTeee ye rey err Hervieuxsays on one of the muse- sl as um videos. “The room was so as Vegas ETT TOM Unts STO bane long, you couldn't see the end but you are always thinking you are a lucky one because you have 800-OER5323 - a job.” Although signs warnvisitors to use the earplugs given them at the museum entrance, try taking one wonder mill workers communi- China Highlights 16 Days Tour|| _ 9 Days cated through hand signals and $ 2,499. ca China Focus 11 Days | China Panorama 20 Days Fine Ding & Hotels with special i pushoeentertainment Yangtze River Cruise 20 Days Beg arafora Kong" SarPree Cia———— Gy Packages -— Be Sus A BETTER WAY TO TRAVEL $11.00 CASH BACK SUN. Pal - FRL AM 97.00 casH BACK FRL Pat. SUN. AM Daly! Mighty! 7 Days A Week! AM Wed. Orem/Provo sq WENDOVER ’97 SPECIAL Call for departure times and reeervations $7 2nd person MONDAY. NIGHT: ONLY! 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Roy Clork, Lennon St/now Sister, #990 Andypapenon Wil ams, Rado City AS _8 DAY PACKAGES $506 $647 Civil Wer, when womenreturned home to help run farms because the men wenttofight. ing the Art of Hoopealey? Departures from Salt Lake City S405 (includes air & 7-day car) days for even less money. That transition was accelerated by the Tetecom Maui W i ki ki Departures trom Salt Lake City ‘The Yankee women, who had $3,499 975-0202 icsuv Open MceCaaes Wssy)eee he sh omee tts) History without boring textbooks lobbied for 10-hour work days $3,499 Set amiast the spectacular mountain scenery oF] Ogcien Valley in Eden, Spacious condoswith full reek’. > Sleeps 410. g*Golf} Vilisgell Cody, Wyoming Smrmstm gai Sept. 16 10 cays) ONS clams ond, Negara fete, Loe, Now, — =a CRAFT Festal « ASIA TOUR: & FICKET SPECIALIST weaving, it’s deafening. It’s little BRR RR RR andeven organizeda strike, were being replaced by Irish immigrants who would workthe longer SANJUAN en $400 weyork ii EASTERN TRAVEL 27%: 2906 S. State Ste. 102 (888) 234-3061 466-8811 or two out while in the weave room. Even withoutall 100 looms one of them now.” many of whom workedin various mills all their lives or became men between ages 15 and 30. They were drawn by the freedom of living on their own, earning time, the salary was paid every feed newcanals that provided the from drying out the cotton). But, unlike most other work at the burne said in 1984. “T feel like writers, teachers, boardinghouse Operators and activists in the women’s suffrage movement. By mid-century, the work force was changing. Thefirst to come werethe“mill girls” — New England farm wo- their own money and enjoying port goods by barge and usedit to “The first time they open the Lowell's mills produced with the long history of textiles, nailed shut to prevent the air nal that had been used to trans- doors, it scares you. The noise ” former mill worker Paul Today, the National Park Service offers boat tours along the canals, narrow quiet canyons between imperiousfive-story prick buildings. Most oftheoi j created historical scenes before and after the mill era and hasmillions of fabric samples, makingit the national museumin this field. Besides fabric, the museum has hundreds of spinning wheels, loomsandother items associated their feet in humid and suffocating conditions (the windows were through the And then, major mill complexes and employed more than 10,000 workers. The new American Textile His- In 1821, a group of Boston investors bought an old Lowell ca- country’sfirst mills. thereit is: the weave room. The town’s growth was explo- power was the only way to run the Revolution andthe mills. Just inside, visitors hear a rumble that growslouderas they pass SS ELKO 0'NITE. . 9th $25 DISNEYLAND closings represented more than the end of an era. “I've seen television shows aboutthe death of the mills and the ghosts that haunt them,” former mill worker Victor Sher- bonnets that their stingy fathers would not, or to experiencecity culture, or keep an eye on boy- ~ In addition to Boott, the Work- nos And whether they loved or hat- ed the mills (or both), mill work was their lives. And the mills’ ent reasons. Some wanied to escape farm life, others to buy the gowns and of the half-dozen exhibits in and around the Lowell National Historical Park, whosesites are inte- ay guarded their turf, cultures and neighborhoods, worked side by side at the mills, unified by commoninterests and the unions. Larcom’s observations are part Its attraction lies in the stories Nii? mTThe inmigrants who ho jealoushly ment,” formermili girl Lucy Lar- told by dozens of former mill Mauitrom They were followed by Freach Canadians, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese, Swedes, Lithuanians, Ar- time, which were doomed to be sadly blurred by disappoint- ergy, clangs and clashesof revolution. It’s a place where history happened and hundredsof thousands of lives were changed. It is moving and intriguing, but it is not theme-park pretty. Waikiki trom 1855, the census counted 10,000 Trish at the Acre. young women came from a distance with rose-colored pictures in their mind of labor turned pas- mills instead of tumbleweeds. Butthe streets echo with the en- lobby. Lowell’s founders had eavisioned an ail-Yankee workforce, but circumstances altered the lan. 1831, some 500 Irish families lived in the city on vacant land called Paddy Camp and later New Dublin and the Acre. By cultural experiences, some for thefirst time. But there was a high price to pay. They worked long hours six Train * . en1 250 South Asnerica Jen 0 6 - tor 17 Gaye Biraall, Argention, Chill, Perv RT alt, fret clase hotels, 19 meals. Complete sights incl the Iquaseu Felle Machu Plochu. Cusco, amd more Mexican Gaje 3 ond 4 day cruises on ROCK 44,450 trom 1245 |
