Lowell through time

About these pictures

Every picture here is in the public domain or carries an open statement from the library that holds it (“no known restrictions,” the Public Domain Mark or CC0). Each caption gives the picture’s own title, as the library catalogs it or as it is printed under the plate, and the date as cataloged; “about” marks a date the catalog gives as approximate. We have not added identifications or history of our own: where a picture says more about Lowell or about the house, it will be said in the history pages, with its source.

The 1892 pictures are plates from the album Lowell on the Merrimack: an Art Souvenir, scanned by UMass Lowell’s Center for Lowell History; the 1904 pictures are pages of Views of Lowell and Vicinity, from the Library of Congress copy; the stereographs are from the New York Public Library’s Robert N. Dennis collection. Some pictures are shown cropped to the printed photograph; none has been retouched. Where we later add an AI-enhanced version, it will say so, and its enlarged view will offer “Compare with the original”; the original remains the record.

More of Lowell: Lowell in stone, Belvidere, year by year, Belvidere Hill: the neighbors and the Research Library. If you have an old photograph of Lowell or Belvidere, we would love to hear from you.