The old Ayer Mill building on the Merrimack River in Lawrence
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Old cities can be brought back, if not to their boom times, at least to more stability and even a modicum of prosperity. An example to watch is Lawrence, Mass., an old mill town on the Merrimack River. Even with the effects of the pandemic, the city is much better off than it was a decade ago, when Boston Magazine called it “City of the Damned” – a center of rising crime and poverty. (I spent some time there back in the fall of 1968, when I was teaching high school next door, in North Andover, Mass. It was a downer then but it still had a fair number of mills operating and was far from the disaster it became by 1990.)
A group called the Lawrence Partnership has been a key to the city’s economic and social revival. This includes a bunch of business and other community leaders formed in 2014 to “stimulate economic development and improve the quality of life” in Lawrence. This group has helped strengthen the city’s finances, cut crime, improve education and lure new business. COVID has made things more difficult, of course, but the city’s leaders are pressing on.
Lessons for cities in southeastern New England? Hit this link to learn more.
In the 1912 Lawrence textile strike, Massachusetts National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets surround a parade of strikers.
In Lawrence, the bizarre High Service Water Tower (1895), also called Tower Hill Water Tower, named an American Water Landmark in 1979 by the American Water Works Association
