Ryan W. Owen, Writer and Photographer
‘Thrown from Machine at Harpin Curve in Tyngsboro’ ‘The bursting of one of the front tires on the Isotta car, entered in the automobile race to be held Monday over the Merrimack Valley course, came near resulting in the death of Al Poole, the driver, and Coot, the mechanician. The accident occurred about 5.15 o’clock […]
Read MoreIn the early spring of 1973, if you were to drive west along Chelmsford‘s Route 110, just beyond the Lowell city line, you wouldn’t get far before you came across a large clearing outside your driver’s side window. Masses of steel would be shooting skyward, well back on a newly-cleared 12-acre parcel of land. There […]
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McDonald’s captures imaginations. These days, it’s hard to travel a strip of suburban road, even in New England, without seeing those golden arches rising from the commercial landscape. McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Lowell during the summer of ’65, on Rogers Street – near the Tewksbury line.
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Late on a Thursday afternoon on June 3, 1926, every available firefighting resource raced to Pollard’s Department Store on Merrimack Street in Downtown Lowell. All of Lowell’s fire department was joined by men and equipment sent from Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut and Lawrence in the fight to save Pollard’s from a raging fire. Pollard’s, also known […]
Read MoreReading newspapers from the morning after the Titanic sank is almost like reading the first page of an alternate history novel. The first few words are familiar: The next are shocking: The Lowell Sun, the Boston Evening Transcript, and the Lewiston Evening Journal all reported similar headlines in their April 15, 1912 editions. Just imagine, […]
Read MoreIf you’ve spent any time in Downtown Lowell, you’ve surely passed Page’s Clock in Kearney Square on Merrimack Street. The clock, refurbished in the 1990’s, has been a Downtown Lowell landmark since the D.L. Page Company moved its operations into the nearby building at 16-18 Merrimack Street in May 1913. As its advertisements claimed, the […]
Read MoreSeen from any approach to Boston, the Prudential Tower has figured prominently into Boston’s skyline since its construction in the early 1960’s. And, with 52 floors, the Pru stands as Boston’s second-tallest building, just behind the John Hancock Tower‘s sixty. The Tower, completed in 1964, rises 749 feet, or, with its radio mast (pictured atop […]
Read MoreIn those long ago days before cellphones, speed dialing, and stored numbers, folks like Tommy Tutone telephoned girls like ‘Jenny’ by actually dialing 867-5309. If he was a modern type, he may have even punched the number into the telephone’s touchtone keypad, an innovation that was several years old by the time the song was […]
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Do you remember the Green Ridge Turkey Farm? Who can forget the giant turkey that once stared out across the Daniel Webster Highway from its perch atop that iconic sign?
Read MoreMaybe you’ve come through Billerica. On the northern approach, near the North Billerica commuter rail station, lies the site of the John Rogers homestead, marked by a sign erected by the Massachusetts Tercentenary Commission in 1930. The sign memorializes an event that happened even longer ago on today’s Billerica Avenue. Early in Billerica’s history, during the […]
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Forgotten New England 