Buildings

City Hall, Lowell, Mass

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Lowell City Hall, photographed around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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City Hall in 2015:

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There aren’t many centrally-planned cities in New England. Most grew over time out of 17th century Puritan settlements, but the city of Lowell was different. Planned from the start as an industrial center, Lowell was one of the leading manufacturing cities in the country for much of the 19th century, and toward the close of the century its prosperity led to the construction of a new city hall.  It was dedicated in 1893, and represents the Romanesque style of architecture that was common in late 19th century America, especially in government buildings and churches.  At the time, the city was the third largest in the state, after Boston and Worcester, with an economy based largely on the textile industry.

The city reached its peak of prosperity soon after the first photo was taken, but by the 1920s the factories began to close as industries relocated to other parts of the country.  Today, there isn’t much manufacturing left in the city, but the population has rebounded to pre-World War I levels, with many of the former factories being redeveloped and reused for housing and commercial space.  City Hall is still in use, and is relatively unchanged from over a century ago.  It forms the centerpiece of the City Hall Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is just a few blocks away from the Lowell National Historical Park, where many of the historic factory buildings have been preserved as museums.

County Jail, Lowell, Mass

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The Middlesex County Jail on Thorndike Street in Lowell, around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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It’s hard to find too many buildings with a more unusual combination of uses, but this building has seen it all over the past 159 years.  Opened as a jail in 1856, it could house just over 100 inmates, most of whom were serving relatively short sentences for minor crimes.  Architecturally, it is an early example of Romanesque Revival, a style that was popularized several decades later by Henry Hobson Richardson, and can be seen in many public buildings of the late 19th century.  The building was in use as a jail until 1919, when dwindling numbers of inmates meant the county couldn’t justify keeping it open.

Concerned that they might once again need it, Middlesex County held off on selling it until 1926, when the Catholic Church purchased it and converted it into a prep school, Keith Academy.  Since the interior layout of a jail is generally not effective for schools, the entire building was gutted in the conversion to Keith Academy, leaving the exterior mostly untouched but completely changing everything else.  The school closed in 1970, and the building later underwent another conversion, to condominiums.  Today, it houses 56 condominium units, and although the jail turned school turned housing complex has gone through a lot of changes in over a century and a half, from the outside it doesn’t look much different from when the first inmates arrived in 1856.

Main Street, Laconia, NH

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Looking north on Main Street in Laconia at the intersection of Pleasant Street, probably in 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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Main Street in 2015:

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As far as I can tell, only one building from the first scene survives today: the brick building on the left side of Main Street, just to the right of the center in both photos.  As was the case in many other parts of the country during the 1960s, a number of Laconia’s historic downtown buildings were destroyed as part of an urban renewal project.  However, the most prominent building in the first scene, the Eagle Hotel, was gone before then.  It enjoyed a prominent location right at the intersection of Main and Pleasant Streets, and was just a block away from the railroad station.  Around the time that the first photo was taken, it was one of Laconia’s most popular hotels (and, at $2.50 a day, one of its most expensive as well).  By the 1950s, the former hotel had been demolished and replaced by Woolworth’s, as seen in some of the pre-urban renewal photos featured on this Weirs Beach website.  Today, the site is occupied by a one story brick building with commercial storefronts.  This might be the same building that Woolworth’s was once in, but if so it has been heavily modified over the years.

Part of the urban renewal projects involved changing some of the traffic patterns in downtown Laconia.  Today, Main Street south of here (behind the photographer) is a narrow, single lane one way street that carries northbound traffic.  The buildings on the left-hand side of the street in that section extend about 40 feet closer to the center of the road than the pre-renewal buildings did.  In this scene, the road is as wide as it was a century ago, but it still has just one way northbound traffic, with angled on-street parking taking up what was once the southbound travel lane.  Pleasant Street is now one way, southbound, and any traffic on the street must circle around the former Woolworth’s site and head back north on Main Street.

Although the first scene is mostly deserted, there are a few interesting things going on.  The man on the far left appears to be a street sweeper; he is pushing what looks like a large, wheeled canvas bag while holding a broom and probably a pick.  He is looking at the ground, and it seems like he is about to walk into the path of the oncoming trolley.  The trolley has a handbill on the front, advertising for “Adrift in New York,” which would be showing at the Moulton Opera House on Tuesday, September 17.  The Library of Congress estimates that the this photo was taken in 1908, but September 17 fell on a Tuesday in 1907, so the photo was probably taken in early to mid September of that year.  Plays weren’t the only form of entertainment that was available at the Moulton Opera House, though; a sign on the sidewalk reads “Don’t Fail to See the Great Moving Pictures Tonight.”  The “moving pictures” would have been early silent films, most of which were not preserved and have long since been lost to history.  Likewise, the trolleys have been lost to history; the Laconia Street Railway shut down in 1925 amid growing competition from cars and buses.

Library and Baptist Church, Meredith, NH

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The Benjamin M. Smith Memorial Library and the Baptist Church, at the corner of Main Street and High Street in Meredith, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The buildings in 2015:

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Meredith’s public library is one of two buildings in the town that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  It opened in 1901, and like many other public libraries of the era it was donated by a wealthy philanthropist, Benjamin M. Smith of Beverly, Massachusetts.  He had once lived in Meredith, and had the library built in memory of his parents, John and Mary Smith. Over the past century, the Main Street facade has been virtually unchanged, although in 1988 a large addition was put on to the building to the right.  This addition block the view of the Baptist Church from this angle, except for the top of the spire.  The church is actually much older than the library; it was built in 1834, and today it continues to be used by the First Baptist Church of Meredith.

Main Street, Plymouth, NH (1)

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The east side of Main Street in Plymouth, seen from the corner of Court Street around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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Main Street in 2015:

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The first photo shows a town center in transition. On the far left is an old house, which probably dates to the early 1800s.  This was likely one of many that once lined Main Street, but over time they were replaced with brick commercial blocks, like the 1898 Rollins Building that appears in the center of both photos.  Eventually, the house would be demolished and replaced by more commercial storefronts, which today make up the bulk of the east side of Main Street in the downtown area.  The days were also numbered for the Pemigewasset House, the hotel seen in the distance on the right side of the photo.  It was built in 1863 and burned down in early 1909, probably less than a year after the photo was taken.

Aside from the transition from residential to commercial buildings on Main Street, we also see changes in transportation.  The wood-framed commercial block just to the right of the Rollins Building has a sign out front that reads “Automobiles Stop Here for Gasolene,” and there is at least one car in the scene, on the far right.  However, the photo also includes several horse-drawn carriages that would have had no use for the “gasolene,” and would have instead used the watering trough in the middle of the street in the center of the photo.

Today, all of the buildings are gone except for the Rollins Building.  When the first photo was taken, the left storefront was the Fred W. Brown drugstore, which according to the sign on the left side of the building offered “Lowney’s Chocolate Bonbons.”  The storefront to the right was a market, and tables of produce can be seen under the awning.  More than a century later, the building is still used as a grocery store, the Chase Street Market.

Church and Courthouse, Plymouth NH

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The Congregational Church and Courthouse in Plymouth, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The buildings in 2018:

Plymouth was founded in 1763, and just a year later the first church was established.  The church building in the first photo was the congregation’s third building, and was completed in 1837.  It was built right next to the courthouse, which at the time was a brick Greek Revival style building with pillars at the front entrance and a cupola on the roof.  This building had been built in 1823 to replace the original county courthouse, but was demolished by 1890, when the courthouse in the first photo was built.  The original 1774 courthouse can actually be seen in the first photo – it is the one story wooden building directly behind and to the right of the courthouse.  It had been moved there in the 1870s to use as a public library, and it remains there today.

Today, the buildings are partially obscured by trees, so it is hard to tell that the present-day church isn’t the same one. The 1837 church burned in 1983, and was rebuilt on the same foundation.  The 1890 courthouse is still there, but its use has changed.  Other than the tower now being enclosed, the exterior does not appear to have changed much over the past century, but the historic building is now the Plymouth town hall, and the grounds now include monuments to veterans of wars that had not yet been fought when the first photo was taken.