The Neighborhoods of
Lowell
As the geographic center of the Middlesex North Registry of
Deeds District and the fourth largest city in Massachusetts, Lowell is
frequently the subject of articles written in this space. To better understand
Lowell real estate news, it is helpful to know the city’s geography,
particularly the identity and location of its neighborhoods.
Although the first English settlers arrived in this area in
1655, Lowell was not incorporated as a town until 1826. The region’s rivers –
the Concord and the Merrimack - brought those settlers here and are central to
understanding the city’s geography today.
The Merrimack River originates in the White Mountains and
flows south until it crosses the Massachusetts border where it turns east and
flows to the Atlantic Ocean. The Merrimack bisects Lowell from west to east. The
Concord River originates in the marshes at Concord, Massachusetts, and then
flows north until it joins the Merrimack. Within Lowell’s boundaries, the two
rivers form the letter “T” and help form some neighborhood boundaries.
At its founding, Lowell was much smaller geographically than
it is today. Through the nineteen and early twentieth centuries, the state
legislature annexed portions of Chelmsford, Dracut and Tewksbury to Lowell. By
1907, the city reached its current 14.5 square mile size.
To understand the layout of Lowell’s neighborhoods, it is
helpful to think of the city as the face of a clock. At the center is downtown
which initially contained only the textile mills and company-owned housing for
those who worked in the mills. However, many retail, commercial, financial and
religious buildings were soon added. In the 1980s, as businesses left the city
core, the upper floors of many downtown buildings were converted to housing
units making downtown a residential neighborhood as well as the city’s central
business district.
The entrepreneurs who conceived the great textile mills were
immediately joined by Irish immigrants who did the back-breaking work of
digging the canals and building the mills. The mill owners granted these
immigrants an acre of land just to the west of downtown to use for housing.
This neighborhood became known as The Acre. It has always been the entre point
for Lowell’s newest residents and it lies at the 9 o’clock position on our
imaginary clock.
To the south of downtown at the 6 o’clock position is a
cluster of neighborhoods and sub-neighborhoods that formed another part of
Lowell’s initial land grant. Known variously as Chapel Hill, Back Central,
Sacred Heart, the Flats, the Bleachery, the Grove, Swede Village, Wigginville
and South Lowell, this cluster is bordered to the east by the Concord River,
the west by River Meadow Brook (and the Lowell Connector) and to the south by
the Billerica line. Although it is now largely residential, there was once
considerable heavy industry along the banks of the Concord River, some of it
pre-dating the founding of Lowell.
Across the Merrimack and to the north of downtown at the 12
o’clock position lies Centralville which was annexed from Dracut in 1851 (with
a small addition in 1874). The proximity of this neighborhood – initially
called Central Village – to the mills on the south bank of the Merrimack made
this an attractive place for worker housing once the bridge across the
Merrimack was constructed on Bridge Street.
Also north of the Merrimack is Pawtucketville. It lies to
the west of Centralville and at the 10 o’clock position from downtown.
Pawtucketville, annexed from Dracut in 1874, was mostly farm and woodland although
it now is predominantly single family housing.
To the west of downtown and the Acre, at the 8 o’clock
position on our clock, is the Highlands, another of the city’s larger
residential neighborhoods. Initially part of Chelmsford, much of what is now
known as the “Lower Highlands” was part of the original 1826 Lowell grant.
(Draw a line form UMass Lowell South Campus to Cross Point to get an idea of
the original boundary). The rest of the Highlands including Middlesex Village
was annexed from Chelmsford in 1874.
Finally, the Belvidere neighborhood lies east of downtown at
the 3 o’clock position. Bounded by the Merrimack River to the north, the
Concord River to the west, Billerica to the south and Tewksbury to the east,
Belvidere joined Lowell in a succession of annexations in 1834, 1874, 1888 and
1906.
From its founding until the 1960s, most everyone in Lowell
may have worked in downtown, but residence, retail, recreation and worship all
took place within the same neighborhood making the city a series of independent
villages. The infrastructure and patterns of these separate places remain in
Lowell’s neighborhoods today. Analyzing contemporary real estate information is
more valuable when viewed through this historical lens.
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