The New Lowell Plan: Historical and Cultural Interpretations of a Deindustrial City

Diego Benites

“The Park is the city and the city is the Park” is a common phrase often used by National Park rangers to orient visitors to Lowell National Historical Park. It is a rather simple phrase, but it speaks to the relationship that the City of Lowell, Massachusetts has cultivated with the National Park Service during the city’s socioeconomic revitalization. During the industrial revolution Lowell was an industrial pioneer, and by 1860, it was the second largest city in Massachusetts.1 However, similar to other New England industrial cities in the early to mid-twentieth century, Lowell eventually felt the effects of deindustrialization. A socioeconomic crisis ensued with the city scrambling for a solution. Out of this crisis came a vision of an urban national park by the superintendent of Lowell Public schools, Dr. Patrick J. Mogan who believed that preserving the city’s cultural identity through a national park would be the key for its future.2 Creating this vision proved to be a formidable challenge. During the Park’s initial construction, it struggled to balance the interest of its stakeholders. Pressures to win outside investments–both social and economic–led to the Park selling a celebratory image of the city to attract visitors rather than prioritizing historical education. However, their recent embrace of new museological methodology has allowed Lowell NHP to create a new interpretation that still attracts visitors by curating an emotional experience while preserving its academic integrity. 

The Past and Urban Renewal 

To understand how and why the Park was created, it is important to contextualize the conditions that led to Mogan’s original vision. This requires an evaluation of how Lowell's economy went from thriving in the nineteenth century to disastrous in the twentieth century, which was largely to do with aging technology, and competition with the emerging industrial South. New England unions had successfully advocated for numerous labor reforms through state legislation and labor strikes such as the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, MA, which gave Lowellian workers a ten percent wage increase.3 These northern union successes were in stark contrast to union efforts in the South that were forcefully put down by local and state politicians through extreme measures such as the deployment of the National Guard during the 1934 United Textile Workers’ walkout.4 These labor reform successes in the North and defeats in the South created an environment where manufacturing became more economical in the South. By this period as well, Lowell’s water powered mills were also being eclipsed by the advent of steam engines, coal-fired furnaces, and electricity.5 There were no longer any technological advantages for hosting manufacturing in the city. This, accompanied by the rising labor costs, caused many manufacturers to invest elsewhere.6 These conditions would lead to numerous mills closing during the interwar period and a gradual economic decline within Lowell. 

During the interwar period, the gradual migration of manufacturing industries started to reach a catastrophic fever pitch. Between 1920 and 1940, Lowell lost 24,450 manufacturing jobs.7 The city was slowly losing its main source of economic capital and needed to find new means of reclaiming outside economic investments. Federal support in the 1930s and 1940s due to New Deal programs and the war-time economy offered a small morale boost and temporary economic relief, but Lowell’s time as an industrial hub was coming to an end. As historian Robert Forrant puts it: “the 1930s demolition of the ‘Lowell Machine Shop’ (in reality, an enormous manufacturing complex) both marked and symbolized the death spiral for the city’s mills.”8 Once World War II ended, the ravishing effects of deindustrialization began to accelerate.9 Local leaders were then charged with finding new ways of attracting new outside investments to the city to restimulate the local economy and, hopefully, address some social problems as well.  

Along with the massive rise of unemployment due to deindustrialization, Massachusetts also experienced a gradual increase in crime. From 1960 to 1972, the state went from a crime rate of roughly 800 to 3,500 crimes per 100,000 population (see fig. 1). The gradual loss of industrial jobs throughout the Commonwealth created an environment of uncertainty and instability. Therefore, the consequences of this economic crisis began to have a social impact that threatened the stability of Lowell's social order. Beginning in the 1960s, Lowell’s leaders initiated policies that would address the city’s economic troubles, believing that solving these issues would instill confidence in the social order. 

Finding a solution to the ongoing socioeconomic crisis proved to be a formidable undertaking for city leaders. To attract much needed outside investments, city leaders believed that Lowell needed to distance itself from its past. From the 1960s to the early 1970s, urban renewal was seen as a means for the city to both leave the past behind and receive economic support from the Federal Government via urban renewal. Lowell was not an outlier in this effort, but instead a microcosm of national trends. Throughout this forty-year period, local municipalities wanted to address what they considered urban decay or slums, resulting in massive urban redevelopment projects. Oftentimes the Federal Government incentivized municipalities through various pieces of legislation promising federal funds for various urban projects such as federal housing and interstate highways.10 By embracing these federal programs under the auspices of urban renewal, Lowell was physically letting go of its past, including its many working-class institutions. 

The urban renewal wrecking ball swung through Lowell, destroying many working class neighborhoods and displacing thousands of residents. Although these projects were devastating for the city’s working class, local politicians and media believed that these actions were necessary and praised these “forward thinking” projects. Local opinion columnist Charles Sampas, wrote in the city’s local newspaper, the Lowell Sun: 

And over there, the Mile of Mills has been decimated . . . only a few structures remain, and you say, Good Riddance! It’s about time Lowell started a new life with new industries, new leadership . . . The days of the Lords of the Loom are gone and along with them their way of thinking. No longer are they kicking people around. They have come unto their own.11 

Many in the city began to believe that Lowell’s old socio-economic system was gone and a new one needed to be created. Therefore, economic recovery became the priority for local politicians. To accomplish their economic recovery agenda, local leaders needed to find new forms of capital to replace their previous economic model. They were willing to do anything to achieve their goals, even if it came at the expense of the city’s working class. During its industrial age, Lowell’s economy was driven by outside investments from private investors that depended on working-class labor, but these investors left as the city was gradually deindustrializing. Urban renewal was seen as a way for Lowell to bring in much needed capital to stimulate the city’s economy and begin forging a new future that moved away from their past by leaving the working-class behind. 

This future vision for the city, however, catered almost entirely to middle-class suburbia rather than the urban working-class. Instead of manufacturing investors being the drivers of Lowell’s economy, city planners wanted to create a service-based economy that would incentivize middle-class families from surrounding neighborhoods to spend their money within the city. To do so, the city had to be accessible for traveling to and consist of centers for mass consumption. Consequently, the city began embracing urban renewal projects that would create new complexes like a central shopping plaza with accompanying downtown parking.12 With this new focus on reaching middle class Greater Lowell, the city’s consumer economy underwent drastic changes that would eventually jeopardize Lowell’s working-class identity. Locally owned businesses were soon replaced by big box stores like Sears Roebuck.13 These urban renewal projects were initially praised by local leaders and promised new economic activity. Local newspaper columnist, Frank Makarewicz wrote that “when it’s open for business, there will most likely be many shoppers from outlying communities who seldom got into Lowell who will be attracted to Plain street and into downtown Lowell.”14 Moreover, this rising optimism for Lowell’s recovery went beyond just new economic activity. Some believed that these projects could even reshape and grow the city’s resident population and thus create a new Lowellian identity based on middle class values. In the spirit of this new optimism, columnist Makarewicz wrote: “Perhaps Lowell’s population is growing with people who want to return from suburbia or maybe the vast potential of Lowell is being recognized by others who have come to the area from other areas to work in the neighboring plants.”15 The plan to capture the middle class market and bring them back into the city seemed to be working, or at least it gave that initial impression to some. 

Public perception of these urban renewal projects began to change after the destruction of Lowell’s French-Canadian neighborhood–often referred to as Little Canada—which was the result of the Northern Canal project. This project sought to repurpose the “...sub-standard and blighted residential…” land to build a new highway, expand the Lowell Technological Institute, and create more modern housing along the city’s Northern Canal.16 Originally public sentiment for this project was overwhelmingly supportive with many thinking that Lowell had struck gold, believing the city’s fortunes were finally changing (see fig. 2). Criticism of the project existed even during the early stages, but it was largely dismissed by the vast majority. On April 6th, 1962, the Lowell Sun reported that “...the only councilor whom we know of who has expressed anti-urban renewal sentiments is Mr. Carney… . Fortunately, there is every reason to believe that he represents a minority of one on this subject in the council.”17 This lack of an organized resistance allowed the city to pursue this project. At the time, the Lowell City Council's main objective was to secure the outside investments the city desperately needed to improve their socioeconomic status, and they did not care if it dramatically altered the way of life for working-class Lowellians. 

For those living in Little Canada, the Northern Canal project not only took away their homes but also attacked their community identity. In his 2023 memoir, Charlie Gargiulo reflects on his experience growing up in Little Canada in the late-1960s. Gargiulo wrote his memoir because he “wanted to make people FEEL the pain and tragedy that a person experiences when they are deemed so worthless that they can be forcibly displaced from their homes when they become inconvenient to the plans of the more powerful.”18 While attempting to reimagine Lowell as a middle-class hub, urban renewal advocates were pushing aside the working-class, causing the working-class to feel that their identity and values were inferior to the mainstream. This inturn created this pain and sense of loss for Lowell’s working-class. 

In the years leading up to the Northern Canal project, Lowell’s City Council was led by an emerging local faction known as the Pic-Six. Though this working-class populist group originally opposed many aspects of the city’s urban renewal programs, from the early to mid-1960s, the Pic-Six began to embrace and even expand these programs.19 Even the working-class’s supposed champions betrayed them because of the weight of the city’s economic troubles. However, signs of concern for the working-class soon began to emerge, which in later years would start the preservation movement eventually led by Patrick Mogan. In a 1963 article in the Lowell Sun, anti-Pic-Six City Council candidate George B. Murphy expressed “that the government should do more to aid those families and business concerns that are forced to re-locate as a result of planning or urban renewal.”20It is unclear whether Murphy actually felt this way or if he was using this rhetoric as a campaign strategy. Nonetheless, the mention of this issue during a city council election indicates that it held some degree of importance for the local electorate and reveals early signs of local concerns of urban renewal.  

By 1966, local media coverage of the Dutton Street row house demolition from the Northern Canal project seems to indicate that resistance to urban renewal came from preservationists and not the working-class. In July of 1966, the Lowell Sun published four different articles (two news reports and two opinion pieces) on the row houses’ demolition. Each article centers the anti-row houses’ demolition argument around historical preservation with calls for making the site into a local history museum.21 Historical preservation and appreciation grew in importance for Lowellians, creating local nostalgia for the city’s past. In one of the aforementioned articles, Lydia Howard–widow of the late city counselor, Woodbury Howard– wrote: “All these together symbolize the great days when Lowell, the first planned industrial community in America, drew admiring visitors from all over the world. What is left is a last reminder of the great significance of Lowell in the industrial history of America and of the world.”22In the midst of a socio-economic crisis, Lowell preservationists built a movement based on nostalgia. This new preservationist movement created a favorable environment for Patrick Mogan’s vision for Lowell to re-embrace its past in order to chart a new future. 

A Past Vision of the Future 

Up until this point, Lowell’s leaders saw their ongoing socio-economic crisis primarily through an economic lens. They believed that the city’s social problems (i.e. the rising crime rate) were just symptoms of a larger economic crisis created by the lack of outside industrial capital. If the city could only find new means for attaining new outside investments, then Lowell’s economy would bounce back, which in turn would boost Lowellians’ morale. This economic lens for viewing Lowell’s problems proved to be myopic and too narrow minded to address the issues of this struggling city. Although they believed they were acting out of the city’s best interests, urban renewal increasingly became more problematic, especially as it began to create an identity crisis for the city’s working class. 

Mogan emerged out of this environment to address these local issues and go on to earn the distinguished title as the “father of the National Park.” Instead of viewing Lowell’s ongoing public issues as an economic crisis with social consequences, Mogan chose to see these social issues as the product of losing working-class institutions from pressures to assimilate by the American mainstream culture. As a non-native Lowellian, Mogan pulled upon his experiences from growing up in the Irish-American community of Norwood, MA to identify what he believed was the root cause of the city’s struggles. In a 1987 interview with the American Folklife Center, Mogan recounted watching his hometown community’s ethnic working class identity slowly eroding away because the community had placed too much trust in mainstream institutions. Through his many years of reflection, Mogan explains, “the argument you would hear all along was that this was America, and America was one way of life, one single way of life, and diversity was an impediment, and not an aid to America.”23In order to achieve the American dream, Lowell’s mainstream institutions (i.e. urban renewal advocates in the city council and Lowell Sun) created a system in which the ethnic working-class were coerced into dissolving their community’s institutions for a homogenous American mainstream melting pot culture. These working-class communities were told that their previous identity was weighing Lowell down and that the only way the city could progress forward was by letting go of their ethnic working-class identity. 

As a result of these conditions, Mogan concluded that “what you had was people from ethnic communities were generally alienated and became disassociated by the institutions that were trying to make them something else.”24 The migration of the textile industry may have started this identity crisis, but from Mogan’s perspective, local leaders’ advocacy for urban renewal was actually intensifying the city’s struggles with identity. For example, while advocating for his vision, Mogan claims a child’s school is only a twenty-percent factor in determining their success with the home and neighborhood acting as the remaining eighty-percent.25 However, the pressures to assimilate forced Lowell’s numerous ethnic European groups to conform to a homogenous American identity, losing the eighty percent factor for childhood success. This conformity in turn led to the loss of ethnic communities’ importance for developing a person’s identity. With the loss of these ethnic communities’ social institutions from the mainstream catering to suburbia came the loss of working-class norms and social foundations. Mogan believed he needed to remind the city of the importance of their cultural identity in order to help them reclaim the confidence and trust that they had lost in themselves. 

Although Mogan was only speaking on the conditions present in Massachusetts, specifically in Norwood and Lowell, his observations regarding the deterioration of social institutions and growing sense of anomie was apparent throughout the United States. Though the socioeconomic disparity was especially apparent within deindustrializing Massachusetts, the nation as a whole was in the midst of a similar crisis. From the late 1960s up until the early 1980s, Americans across the country were beginning to lose trust in their institutions, leading to an overwhelming feeling that the country was falling apart and that the American dream was becoming a nightmare. This time was marked by numerous acts of political violence, and political scandals, such as American involvement in Vietnam and Watergate, all while the Cold War sat in the backdrop. And to make matters worse, by the mid-1970s the country was enduring a severe economic recession, which was exacerbated by energy shortages, inflation, stagnation, and high unemployment.26 The country seemed to be falling apart at the seams, creating this sense of alienation and ennui that Mogan locally observed and President Jimmy Carter dubbed “a crisis of confidence” in his July 1979 televised Oval Office address. 

Carter crafted a similar vision to Mogan based upon the past that would address this socio-economic crisis: “All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.”27 For both men, the poor state of the economy was emblematic of the loss of a socio-cultural identity, and to rebuild this identity, people needed to look back into the past to relearn their once firmly held cultural values that would guide them into the future. 

Mogan's interest with Lowell’s past and advocacy for remembering it are products of this national crisis of confidence phenomenon that was creating a new national nostalgia. Before deindustrialization, Lowell was seen as a place of new beginnings and opportunities for people. Historian Robert Forrant writes that “as the nineteenth century progressed, [ethnic Europeans and French-Canadian] immigrants poured into Lowell’s factories….”28 During the city’s heyday, the factories gave immigrants stability and also the hope of the American Dream.29 However, this optimism for the future went away once the factories left the city. 

Though this may seem like a local issue, the loss of confidence in the American Dream began to be seen on a national scale through an ethnic revival movement among white Americans. In the late 1960s and 1970s, cultural nationalism spread throughout the country, starting with the black power movement.30 As American ethnics lost their trust in the American Dream, they began embracing this cultural nationalism to spark a new ethnic revival. Prior to this embrace, these ethnics had strived to assimilate to the nation’s WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) culture. Due to this ethnic revivalism, white ethnics began embracing their cultural heritage and rebelling against pressures to assimilate.31 As optimism began to dwindle in the American Dream, these American ethnics began following Morgan's argument by embracing their heritage. 

The disillusionment of American optimism was not exclusive to white ethnics and began presenting itself in mainstream American culture as well. Starting in the earlier twentieth century and up until the end of the 1960s, Americans were looking towards the future with an optimistic view of what tomorrow would bring. This wave of futurist optimism manifested itself in American culture through new aesthetic styles, like the Art Deco movement, and admiration for new technological innovations. However, social unrest of the 1960s counterculture movements and failures in Vietnam caused the country to lose their faith in an idyllic future, causing them to turn their focus backwards towards the country’s “glory days.”32 

Coinciding with their leaders' advocacy to re-examine their history, Americans began to cultivate a new lens of looking at their past. However this was not the first time Americans cultivated a nostalgic view of the past to cope and escape from ongoing social issues (e.g. the colonial revival period during the turn of the 20th-century), but these new interactions with the past were different than those in previous periods.33Instead of memorialized histories created from instructive, reflective, and visual efforts, Americans drifted towards an interpretation of the past that “encouraged emotional, as opposed to informational, production of historical knowledge….It became as much about feeling, as about thinking, about being inside the past instead of looking upon it.”34Instead of just learning about past events, Americans now wanted to relive them. They saw the past through nostalgic lenses because they wanted to shield themselves from present issues and return to what they believed were simpler and better times. However, Carter and Mogan wanted to do something different with the past. They wanted to use it to remind people of who they were and still could be. To effectively implement this new plan and establish some credibility, they needed outside support (i.e. preservationists and Congress). 

The peak of this nostalgia culture climaxed in the late-1970s as the country approached its Bicentennial, yet emerging signs of this new relationship with the past can be seen as far back as the mid-1960s with the end of urban renewal. Though the 1966 preservationist resistance to urban renewal seemed to be a grassroots local movement for Lowellians, in actuality it was just one example of a national preservation movement brought on by these national trends. The demolition of ethnic communities like Little Canada for highways and public transportation created a national sense of crisis. As a result of this crisis, Congress established the National Register of Historic Places through the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.35 A society can remember its past without preserving relics, but the passage of this act signifies that these tangible structures were essential for mid-twentieth century American nostalgia. The desire to have an emotional rendition of history rather than an informative interpretation required the possession of tangible artifacts from the past to create a sense of place for the public. Hence Mogan would need to preserve relics of Lowell’s industrial foundations to generate the emotional response in Lowellians needed for them to re-embrace its cultural identity. Consequently, the shift towards emotionally based public historical interpretations led to significant forced changes within the public history discipline. 

History and Nostalgia 

Although the 1966 act helped fuel American nostalgia and supplied a sense of comfort during uncertain times, it also had unforeseen impacts on the public history discipline and thus to the historical and cultural interpretation at Lowell NHP during its original development. The public history field can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, but the origins of the current public history movement, which attempts to bridge the public-academic gap, dwell within the cultural context of the 1970s. 36 The nation’s economic woes took a toll on academia, and recently graduated history PhDs were entering into a shrinking job market. As a response to the lack of academic positions, many of these graduates began entering into the public history field. The National Historic Preservation Act created an abundance of new jobs for these graduates. This movement became so prevalent that academic institutions responded by creating new graduate level public history and archives programs.37 For virtually the first time, academically trained historians were entering into public history. While assuming these new positions, these historians brought in new perspectives that would influence public history sites historical interpretations.  

This new make-up of public history personnel forced the field to create a clear definition of the field's purpose and how it should interpret history. One aspect of this definitional debate was determining which term should be emphasized: “public” or “history”. Those who emphasized “public" took a reflective approach on their work by constantly evaluating new narratives, questions, and practices to answer a larger question: Who do I work for? Supporters of “history” argued that by emphasizing scholarly work, the audiences and stakeholders of the exhibit will be forced to confront their fears and values evident in the past, which in turn can help open up conversation and debate.38 The other aspect is determining whether public historians are facilitators or communicators of history.39 A consensus on the field’s definition has not yet been established and continues to shift over time. 

During the time of the Park's creation, public historians tended to emphasize the “public” aspect of the field. The historians that were entering the field believed they were involved in “popular” history in which they were only answerable to their audience and were no longer restricted by the scholarly research norms of academia. Therefore, they were emboldened to create a new social history. Public historian Cathy Stanton argues, 

Much of this philosophy was linked with the impact of various leftist causes–feminism, civil rights movements, environmentalism, anticolonial struggles–of the 1960s and 1970s….Within the historical field, this social climate was influential in sparking a ‘new social history’ focused on ‘ordinary’ and often nonprivileged subjects–workers, women, immigrants, ethnic and racial minorities–rather than on the traditional ‘great men’ and momentous events.40  

Their goal was to raise the public consciousness of how ordinary people’s lives and choices interact with larger political and economic forces in hopes of fostering social and economic justice.41 These public historians wanted to create an emotional experience for their visitors, and it was assumed that within the ongoing nostalgia, visitors would be receptive to it because they wanted an emotional experience. However, this historical interpretation was not the kind of emotional experience that visitors particularly wanted. Americans wanted to escape into the past to cope with the current ongoing issues of the present, but this social history had people use the past to confront present day issues. While believing that they were working for social justice, these historians were creating a product that opposed their actual audience's interest. 

Mogan firmly believed that what audiences actually wanted was a celebratory history that would allow them to admire the working-class while giving working-class descendents a new sense of cultural pride. While creating his own vision of the park, Mogan claimed to have discovered that “Lowell was a living exhibit on the process and consequences of the American industrial revolution.”42 Mogan wanted to nurture this living exhibit by creating a national park that would be, in his words, an “educational laboratory.” He believed that the city would become a destination where visitors would provide locals the affirmation and assurance that their cultural identity mattered.43 This new model perpetuates the idea that remembering the past is only useful when the people of the present find it enjoyable. This ideology also does not leave room for conversations dealing with more controversial topics of history that public historians were advocating to discuss such as race, class, and gender. It creates the notion that the past must always be a narrative of success and triumph because the present day audience has to find it palatable. Because of this perspective, Mogan stood in opposition to the emerging new social historians and felt that their depictions of history were “morbid.”44In order for this National Park to work, the audience had to buy into it. This required Lowellians to craft a certain image of the city that audiences would find appealing. Displaying scenes of ethnic conflict and past abuses and wrongs created a high degree of probability that audiences would not buy into the city and thus Lowellians would not be assured that their cultural values matter. For Mogan, this was not a risk worth taking and the best cause of action was to create a celebratory history of the city. 

There were potential benefits to Mogan’s celebratory perspective of how the past should be treated and remembered. While advocating for the park, Mogan’s non-profit organization, Human Services Corporation, wrote that the park would address major needs of the area such as, “economic diversification and expansion; both will add to the tax base and employment opportunities.”45 Making the city into a tourist destination would bring in the much needed outside investments that urban renewal was supposed to while simultaneously working towards Mogan’s most important goal of recultivating a local cultural identity. This creates important questions to be answered: did the potential benefits of this plan outweigh concerns over creating a celebratory history? Did Lowellians embrace Mogan’s National Park because they thought it would fix a social problem or because they thought it would fix an economic problem? 

The Tsongas Years 

The answer to these questions lay within the actions of native Lowellian Paul Tsongas. During the 95th Congress, Tsongas represented the Massachusetts Fifth Congressional district that encompassed Lowell. Even more than Mogan did, Tsongas believed the city needed to craft a certain image, and he used this image to finally acquire the much needed outside investments that would revitalize Lowell’s economy. Tsongas constantly pushed for this image of the city by using a political rhetoric that emphasized and embellished the importance of Lowell as a national cultural site, even at one point comparing the city to other national sites like Yellowstone, Gettysburg, and the Lincoln Memorial.46 Tsongas was essentially a salesman and his product was a celebratory vision of the city of Lowell. 

Unlike Mogan who was creating an image primarily for Lowellians, Tsongas was selling an image for institutions (e.g. Federal Government and private enterprise) to funnel economic capital into the city. Tsongas succeeded in this endeavor even before the Parks formal establishment by Congress. While debating the Park's authorizing bill on the House floor, Tsongas boasted that the city had secured $50 million from private investors and ended his speech by thanking the Massachusetts State government for $23 million.47 Just as the Pic-Six and the Lowell Sun had in the 1960s, Tsongas sold the city to outside entities in hopes that it would revitalize Lowell. Lowell National Historical Park’s authorizing bill H.R. 11662, which was sponsored by Tsongas, appropriated $18.5 million for land acquisitions and development and an additional $21.5 million for programming.48 Urban renewal of the 1960s was originally how Lowellians thought they would receive economic investment by the Federal Government for the city, but Tsongas proved that historical preservation was the big business that would generate the investment that the city was seeking. 

The similarities between urban renewal and Tsongas’ federal funds appeals for historical preservation was not lost on some legislators in Congress. Within his oppositional statement in House Report 95-1023 from the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs regarding the establishment of the Lowell National Historical Park, Congressman Keith Sebelius argues that authorizing the bill could potentially force the Federal Government to bear a financial burden for the management of a city’s downtown area. He goes on to claim: “This legislation cannot be permitted to be construed or utilized as a quasi or indirect effort for otherwise desirable urban renewal under the guise of a legitimate, nationally significant historic preservation effort. ”49 Sebelius ends his statement with a sharp jab against Tsongas’ goals of creating a streamline of federal funds into Lowell: “This legislation, in its implementation, must not be permitted to become a bottomless ‘goodie bag’ of financial assistance for the non-public benefit of local interests in Lowell.”50 Revitalizing the city’s cultural identity was only a secondary goal for Tsongas. His primary goal was the same as the Pic-Six City Councilmen and “Lord of the Looms” of yesteryear: get outside investment into Lowell by any means necessary. Under the guise of historical preservation, Tsongas found a “bottomless ‘goodie bag’” of outside investment. To acquire this “goodie bag” Tsongas successfully sold the Park–even during the anti-preservationist tenure of Reagans’ Secretary of the Interior, James Watt–as a means of new government incentives and tax-breaks to private businessmen.51 The Park proved to be Lowell’s successful attempt at getting the Federal government to help channel both public and private investment into the city. 

While initially developing the Park’s structure, Tsongas ensured that he consolidated power to have unmatched authority. Tsongas leveraged his power to ensure that the Park’s main priority was for the city’s economic redevelopment, making historical preservation and interpretation a mere secondary objective. After the Park’s 1978 authorization legislation was passed, the National Park Service moved to acquire the Suffolk/Wannalancit Mill complex and situate it as the Park’s main interpretive site. However, Tsongas disagreed with this decision, believing the Boott Mill complex should be the main interpretive site because of its downtown location which could serve as an anchor for economic activity. Consequently, Tsongas went to the Park’s Acting Superintendent, Jim Brown, and threatened to take away financial funds for building acquisitions if Brown did not comply.52 Economic development had taken precedence over historical interpretation and influenced the earliest decision of the Park’s development. Mogan would later concede defeat to these economic pressures, believing that the NPS had merely just created a physical structure void of a synthetic and meaningful historical understanding.53 

Even though Mogan's original vision was lost, Tsongas’ economic vision for the Park was still alive but needed action in order to be fully implemented. For the Park to fulfill what Tsongas believed was its intended purpose, he needed to find ways to get the private sector’s support. Tsongas understood that solely relying on federal funds to craft an image for Lowell’s economic redevelopment would not entirely solve the city’s economic issues. The Lowell Sun reported that while delivering a speech to a local luncheon of 200 people, Tsongas argued that “‘The public sector has done all it can. If the right attitude is not developed here in terms of the private sector, the implications for Lowell are serious and the implications for the nation are much more serious.’”54 After securing the federal funds, Tsongas needed to find ways to gain the confidence of private investors by crafting a friendly image of the city. 

To garner this support, Tsongas believed that the only way would be to sell himself as a member of the private sector. From this logic, Tsongas formed a non-profit fund-raising corporation–The Lowell Plan, Inc.. Lawrence Ansin, former President of both the Lowell Plan Inc. and Joan Fabrics Corporation, explained that the purpose of this organization was to sell the Lowell community as a great place to work and live in a 1981 interview with the Park’s newspaper periodical, “Milling Around”.55 By using the Lowell Plan, Tsongas was creating an image of the city that investors would have confidence in. This plan did see some success, even earning what was seen as a huge win at the time with the relocation of Wang Laboratories to Lowell.56 

Lowell, Disney, and Public History 

The implementation of this strategy for Lowell’s socioeconomic redevelopment also came at the expense of the working class. However, Tsongas’ economic priorities did not directly affect the working class of the 1970s, but instead the memory of the working class during Lowell’s industrial heyday that he was supposed to be preserving. Robert Weible, the Park’s first chief historian, wrote that “by the turn of the century, though, economic development trumped education.”57 The Park’s historical and cultural interpretation had crumpled under economic pressure and the manufactured necessity to craft a friendly image to outsiders. By the time of Cathy Stanton’s ethnography of the Park in the early 2000s, the Park had created a historical interpretation that was reduced to a celebratory narrative of multiculturalism and a reinvented local identity.58 Lowell had decided that the economic benefits of this historical interpretation had outweighed anything else. 

However, Lowell is not the only public history site that had created an interpretation that prioritized visitor satisfaction rather than an accurate and responsible history. During the nation’s Bicentennial celebrations, the Boston 200–the city’s Bicentennial planning committee–created a controversial exhibit which prioritized visitor’s emotional enjoyment. Although it received popular praise, historians criticized the exhibit as a sanitized interpretation with “Disney” qualities.59 A similar phenomenon was found in a 1997 ethnographic study of Colonial Williamsburg where the museum was criticized for being the “Republican Disneyland.”60 The American nostalgia culture now requires there to be an emotional experience like one has at Disneyland because that is the only way of appealing to visitors. Without doing so, public historians would be interpreting to an empty room. If public history sites are restrained by only interpreting history to solicit an emotional response, then is there any place for accurate and responsible historical interpretation? Should public history go extinct or do the benefits of the industry outweigh the consequences? The answers to these questions have changed over time, and it requires an examination of both the local social impact of the Park and the evolution of its historical interpretive practices. 

Even though the Park seemed to come up short with its original historical interpretation, it is not to say that all of it was a complete failure. In his 2013 reflection on the creation of the park, Robert Weible argued that the Park did bring in a wave of energy during a dark time in Lowell’s history that helped rebuild the city’s diminished self-esteem.61In a way, aspects of Mogan’s original vision were still somewhat accomplished. During a crisis of confidence in their institutions, the National Park helped instill trust and stability for those paralyzed by a sense of alienation. Perhaps the benefits of creating a “Disneyfied” celebratory image of Lowell for economic development actually did outweigh the responsibility to create an accurate historical interpretation. 

The “Disneyfication” of public history may seem to indicate that the field of public history has lost its integrity–or never had it. However, recent museological theories argue that it is possible to create a public historical interpretation that creates an emotional experience to attract visitors while being accurate and responsible. These new museological theories have grown out of a recent paradigm shift that has changed the methodology used for exhibit curation. Ongoing demands for public history sites to improve its visitor experience and increase visitation with shrinking resources has led to a museological paradigm shift towards creating visitor-centric exhibits.62Instead of creating a collection-driven interpretation that is focused on growth, care, and study of its collections, museums have shifted to an outward approach that aims to provide an educational service to the public.63 First signs of this paradigm shift can be seen with the social public historians of the 1970s, but their implementation of creating a visitor-centric interpretation had key flaws that led to its failure and allowed it to be co-opted by a celebratory image used to sell Lowell to outside investors. 

Public historians of the 1970s failings stemmed from a lack of understanding regarding the debate over the definition and purpose of public history. While emphasizing the “public” aspect of the field, these historians were asking “who do I work for?” when they really should have been asking “who do I work with?” Museums are active participants in social transformation, which impacts a person’s thinking of the world and how they should act within it.64 The public historians of the 1970s were telling people what they should be thinking and acting in the world instead of showing them. Showing visitors would require allowing them to also be active participants instead of spectators to social transformations. This allows the public to maintain an emotional experience while giving public historians more authority to resist the economic pressures calling for a celebratory image. 

Allowing the public to feel that they are active participants requires a shared historical authority.65 However, sharing historical authority can create tensions between the public and public historians on what an exhibit should encapsulate. These tensions are unavoidable, but they are manageable by use of the conceptual museological triangle. This theory consists of public history stakeholders–visitors, museum personnel, and historians and academics that hold an equal voice in the construction of a historical interpretation.66 This system of managing stakeholder interest creates a system of checks and balances that allows visitors to feel like active participants–creating the desired emotional experience–while being able to withstand economic pressures that can create a misguided interpretation. The recent implementation of these museological theories has shifted the interpretative practices of Lowell NHP. 

In 2017 and 2018, Lowell NHP began a strategic planning process to reevaluate its current interpretative practices. This reevaluation of its interpretation led to the creation of a new exhibit titled One City, Many Cultures which aims at interpreting the cultural history of Lowell.67 During the exhibit’s development, Lowell implemented the museological triangle to craft the exhibits interpretation by hosting community roundtable discussions consisting of both local residents and academics from UMass Lowell.68 Park personnel shared creative authority to include the public during its creation, allowing the public to feel that they are also active participants in social transformations. 

Sharing historical authority, however, led to the emergence of unavoidable tensions between stakeholders, creating a challenge of balancing the interest of each stakeholder while preserving important objectives. For instance, Lowell NHP required the exhibit to align with current state and national curricular standards for grades 2, 4, 6, and 8 to meet the programming needs of the Tsongas Industrial History Center–an education partnership between Lowell NHP and UMass Lowell School of education.69 Reaching these requirements through conventional museological and curatorial practices meant the exclusion of the public to be considered important.70 While describing the exhibit’s development process, Lowell NHP Chief of Interpretation and Education Kevin Coffee wrote: “While the process and extent of co-creation were primarily defined by national park staff, those extents were challenged at several junctures and redefined co-creatively with stakeholders.”71 These tensions allowed for the inclusion of socially complex topics such as misanthropy, xenophobia, and other socio-political asymmetry that otherwise would not have been considered.72Instead of ignoring the public’s input for their own personal objectives, the Park took in criticism to create an exhibit that the public could emotionally identify with while still preserving educational outcomes agreed upon by UMass Lowell. 

Conclusion 

In his administrative history of Boston National Historical Park, Lost on the Freedom Trail, Seth Bruggeman describes Boston NHP as “...a chronicle of loss.”73 One could also describe Lowell's socio-economic state during the second half of the twentieth century and the creation of its national park as a chronicle of loss. After the textile industry had left and the city was faced with the ramifications of deindustrialization, Lowellians were lost within a socio-economic state that caused a loss of trust in its institutions. To make matters worse, its leaders were embracing an economic recovery plan that in actuality threatened the city’s ethnic working class identity. Granted, the nation as a whole at the time could be described as lost. Americans had lost their trust in institutions and their long-held values and beliefs. During this time of uncertainty and anomie, people looked to the past for a sense of nostalgia to cope with their present day woes. In Lowell some like Paul Tsongas took advantage of this nostalgia to sell a manufactured celebratory image of the city in hopes that it would stimulate the local economy. However, this is only the first half of Lowell's social revitalization story. Although the first half can be characterized as a story of loss, the second is a story of optimism and redemption. Lowell NHP’s embrace of new museological practices allows it to create a responsible history that shares its historical authority to allow the public to participate with them in interpreting the city’s cultural identity. 

Endnotes

1 Robert Forant, "The Rise, Fall and (Possible) Resurrection of Lowell, Massachusetts." Historical Journal of Massachusetts 50, no. 1 (Summer 2022): 110. https://go.exlibris.link/DN1lvMnv.

2 Robert Weible, "Visions and Reality: Reconsidering the Creation and Development of Lowell's National Park, 1966-1992." The Public Historian 33, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 69. doi:https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2011.33.2.67. 

3 David Koistinen, Confronting Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016), 23, and Paul Marion, Mill Power: The Origin and Impact of Lowell National Historical Park (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 14.

4 Koistinen, Confronting Decline, 79. 

5 Forant, "The Rise, Fall and (Possible) Resurrection of Lowell, Massachusetts." , 110. 

6Ibid., 113. 

7Ibid., 113.

8 Forant, "The Rise, Fall and (Possible) Resurrection of Lowell, Massachusetts." 113. 

9 Weible, "Visions and Reality”, 73. 

10 Forrant, “The Rise, Fall, and (Possible) Resurrection of Lowell”, 118-119.

11 Charles G. Sampas, “Sampascoopies”, Lowell Sun, January 8, 1965, p. 5. The quote is cited in Forrant, "The Rise, Fall and (Possible) Resurrection of Lowell, Massachusetts.", 118, and also in Mehmed Ali, “To Save a City: From Urban Renewal to Historic Preservation in Lowell, Massachusetts: 1920 to 1978” (Ph.D. diss, University of Connecticut, 2006), 100.

12 Lowell Sun, April 6,1962, p.6.

13 Frank E. Makarewicz, “The Changing Face of Lowell” Lowell Sun, August 20, 1964, p. 7. 14Ibid. 

15 Lowell Sun, April 6, 1962, p.6. 

16 Northern Canal Renewal: Final Project Report Part I (Lowell: Lowell Housing Authority, 1961), accessed on November 27th, 2004, https://archive.org/details/NCZFPR/page/n9/mode/2up, 5-7.

17 Lowell Sun, April 6,1962, p.6. 

18 Charlie Gargiulo, Legends of Little Canada: Aunt Rose, Harvey’s Bookland, and my Captain Jack, (Amesbury: Loom Press, 2023), 177.

19 Ali, “To Save a City: From Urban Renewal to Historic Preservation in Lowell, Massachusetts: 1920 to 1978,” 15. 20 Lowell Sun, October 21, 1963, p.27. 

20 Missing

21 Lydia Howard, “Should the Dutton St. ‘Row Houses’ Be Saved?”, Lowell Sun, July 3, 1966, p. 65; “Row Houses Subject of Study Act of Industrial Statesmanship”, Lowell Sun, July 15, 1966, p. 30; Sara K. Cantor, “Save the Old ‘Row Houses”, Lowell Sun, July 6, 1966, p. 6; Peter Barnes, “For History’s Sake” Lowell Sun, July 10, 1966, p. 30.22 Howard, “Should the Dutton St. ‘Row Houses’ Be Saved?” 

22 Missing

23 Patrick Mogan and Paul Marion, interview by Doug DeNatale, Lowell Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1987/042), Box 4, Folder 76, Page 2, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, August 27, 1987, 2.

24 Patrick Mogan and Paul Marion, interview by Doug DeNatale, Lowell Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1987/042), Box 4, Folder 76, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, August 27, 1987, 4. For this statistic, Mogan makes reference to James S. Coleman et. al., Equality of Education Opportunity (Washington D.C.: National Center for Educational Statistics, 1966).

25 Ibid., 3. 

26 Denise D. Meringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), xvi.

27“Crisis of Confidence,” PBS American Experience, accessed October 12, 2024, 

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carter-crisis/. 

28 Forrant, “The Rise, Fall and (Possible) Resurrection of Lowell, Massachusetts”, 110. 

29 Lawrence R. Samuel, The American Dream: A Cultural History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012), 202.30 Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 80. 

30 Missing

31 Ibid., 83. 

32 M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s (Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books, 2017), 2. 

33 Rymsza-Pawlowska, History Comes Alive, 3-4.

34 Ibid, 5. 

35 Meringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks, 165.

36 Ibid., xviii. 

37 Cathy Stanton, The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 10. 

38 Meringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks, xxv.

39 Ibid., xxii 

40 Stanton, The Lowell Experiment, 11. 

41 Stanton, The Lowell Experiment, 12.

42 Patrick Mogan and Paul Marion, interview by Doug DeNatale, Lowell Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1987/042), Box 4, Folder 76, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, August 27, 1987, 4. 43 Ibid., 4. 

43 Missing

44 Stanton, The Lowell Experiment, 87.

45 Patrick J. Mogan et al., Lowell Urban Park Development Program (Lowell: Human Services Corporation, 1974) 35. 

46 95 Cong., H8478 (daily ed. April 3, 1978) (Statement of Rep. Tsongas).

47 Ibid. 

48H.R. Rep. No. 95-1023, at 21 (1978) 

49 H.R. Rep. No. 95-1023, at 24 (1978).

50 Ibid. 

51 Weible, "Visions and Reality”, 82.  

52 Stanton, The Lowell Experiment, 122-123.

53 Weible, "Visions and Reality”, 91. 

54 Marjorie Howard, “Get Involved in Urban Park, Tsongas Tells Service Clubs”, Lowell Sun, December 26th, 1978. 

55 “The Lowell Plan”, Milling Around: Lowell National Historical Park, February 1981.

56 Stanton, The Lowell Experiment, 118-119. 

57 Weible, “Visions and Reality”, 91. 

58 Stanton, The Lowell Experiment, xiv. 

59 Rymsza-Pawlowska, History Comes Alive, 174.

60 Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 220. 

61 Weible, “Visions and Reality”, 92. 

62 Teresa Bergman, Exhibiting Patriotism: Creating and Contesting Interpretations of American Historic Sites (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2013) 21.

63 Ibid., 19. 

64 Kevin Coffee, Museums and Social Responsibility: A Theory of Social Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2023), 5. 

65 Bergman, Exhibiting Patriotism, 21.

66 Ibid., 19. 

67One City, Many Culture: A New Exhibit for the Mogan Cultural Center (Lowell: Lowell National Historical Park, 2021) accessed on October 13th, 2024, https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/upload/071521_Project_Brief.pdf. 1-2. 68 Marlon Pitter, "“One City, Many Cultures” Showcases the Experiences of Lowell’s Immigrant Communities," UMass Lowell | UMass Lowell, last modified October 2, 2023, https://www.uml.edu/news/stories/2023/one-city-many-cultures.aspx. 

68 Missing

69 One City, Many Cultures, 5.

70 Coffee, Museum and Social Responsibility, 148. 

71 Ibid., 148. 

72 Ibid., 149. 

73 Seth Bruggeman, Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), 6.

Fig. 1 Robert Patrician et. al, 1975 Massachusetts Crime Rates: What the Figures Do and Don’t Tell Us (Boston: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Committee on Criminal Justice Statistical Analysis Center, 1977) 64. 

Fig. 2 Political cartoon of the Lowell Northern Canal urban renewal project published April 6, 1962 in the Lowell Sun (Newspaper Archive).

Bibliography 

95 Cong., H8478, daily ed. April 3, 1978. 

Ali, Mehmed. “To Save a City: From Urban Renewal to Historic Preservation in Lowell, Massachusetts: 1920 to 1978”. Ph.D. diss, University of Connecticut, 2006. Barnes, Peter. “For History’s Sake” Lowell Sun, July 10, 1966, p. 30. 

Bergman, Teresa. Exhibiting Patriotism: Creating and Contesting Interpretations of American Historic Sites. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2013. 

Bruggeman, Seth. Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022. 

Cantor, Sara K. “Save the Old ‘Row Houses”, Lowell Sun, July 6, 1966, p. 6. Coffee, Kevin. Museums and Social Responsibility: A Theory of Social Responsibility. New York: Routledge, 2023. 

Coleman, James S. et. al., Equality of Education Opportunity. Washington: National Center for Educational Statistics, 1966. 

“Crisis of Confidence,” PBS American Experience, accessed October 12, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carter-crisis/. 

DeNatale, Douglas. Audio Tape Logs - Douglas DeNatale, Lowell Folklife Project collection. 1987. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1987042_04_076/. Forrant, Robert. "The Rise, Fall and (Possible) Resurrection of Lowell, Massachusetts." Historical Journal of Massachusetts 50, no. 1 (Summer 2022): 106-147. 

https://go.exlibris.link/DN1lvMnv. 

Gargiulo, Charles. Legends of Little Canada: Aunt Rose, Harvey’s Bookland, and my Captain Jack. Amesbury, Loom Press, 2023. 

Handler, Richard and Eric Gable. The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. 

Howard, Lydia. “Should the Dutton St. ‘Row Houses’ Be Saved?”, Lowell Sun, July 3, 1966, p. 65. 

Howard, Marjorie. “Get Involved in Urban Park, Tsongas Tells Service Clubs”, Lowell Sun, December 26th, 1978. 

H.R. Rep. No. 95-1023, at 21, 1978. 

Koistinen, David. Confronting Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. Lowell Sun, April 6, 1962, p.6. 

Lowell Sun, October 21, 1963, p.27. 

Makarewicz, Frank E. “The Changing Face of Lowell” Lowell Sun, August 20, 1964, p. 7. Marion, Paul. Mill Power: The Origin and Impact of Lowell National Historical Park. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Benites 29 

Meringolo, Denise D. Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012. 

Mogan, Patrick J.et al., Lowell Urban Park Development Program. Lowell: Human Services Corporation, 1974. 

Northern Canal Renewal: Final Project Report Part I. Lowell: Lowell Housing Authority, 1961. accessed on November 27th, 2004, 

https://archive.org/details/NCZFPR/page/n9/mode/2up. 

One City, Many Culture: A New Exhibit for the Mogan Cultural Center. Lowell: Lowell National Historical Park, 2021. accessed on October 13th, 2024, 

https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/upload/071521_Project_Brief.pdf. 

Patrician, Robert et. al. 1975 Massachusetts Crime Rates: What the Figures Do and Don’t Tell Us. Boston: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Committee on Criminal Justice Statistical Analysis Center, 1977. 

Pitter, Marlon. “‘One City, Many Cultures’ Showcases the Experiences of Lowell’s Immigrant Communities,” UMass Lowell | UMass Lowell, last modified October 2, 2023, https://www.uml.edu/news/stories/2023/one-city-many-cultures.aspx. 

“Row Houses Subject of Study Act of Industrial Statesmanship”, Lowell Sun, July 15, 1966, p. 30. 

Rymsza-Pawlowska, M. J. History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s. Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books, 2017. 

Sampas, Charles G. “Sampascoopies”, Lowell Sun, January 8, 1965, p. 5. 

Samuel, Lawrence R. The American Dream: A Cultural History. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012. 

Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: The Free Press, 2001. 

Stanton, Cathy. The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. 

“The Lowell Plan”, Milling Around: Lowell National Historical Park, February 1981. Weible, Robert. "Visions and Reality: Reconsidering the Creation and Development of Lowell's National Park, 1966-1992." The Public Historian 33, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 67-93. doi:https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2011.33.2.67.