Detail of 512 Central Street, home of the Portuguese-American Civic League.
Lowell’s Back Central neighborhood encompasses one of the city’s most remarkably intact and diverse architectural legacies. Due in part to its geographic location, its various rates of settlement, and the different time periods in which real estate development occurred, this neighborhood includes an impressive variety of residential, commercial, religious and institutional buildings in a range of 19th and early-20th century styles and materials. Its urban character is exhibited in the several heavily commercial areas, the many narrow alleyways, and a density of dwellings, along with public squares, small parks and numerous residential gardens.
The Portuguese community made significant contributions to the neighborhood’s architectural legacy as they settled there in large numbers, initially between the 1890s and the early 1920s, and then in a second wave in the 1960s into the 1980s. Their reshaping of the physical and cultural character of Back Central is evident in such notable structures as St. Anthony’s Church and Rectory, as well as in the adaptive reuse of existing buildings for clubs and commercial establishments. In addition, their refashioning of the neighborhood to express the culture of their native lands may be seen in more subtle features such as memorials, parks, residential gardens and arbors and in the emblematic and religious imagery found on the exteriors of dwellings.
The black and white image in the banner above is Central Street looking north in 1928. City Engineers Collection, #1499-464, Center for Lowell History.
All contemporary photographs by Marie Frank and Gray Fitzsimons unless otherwise noted.
We would particularly like to thank Richard Howe, Jr., Register of Deeds, for his unstinting help with registry records, UML History major Sibelle Grise for the painstaking work with census records, and the staff at the Center for Lowell History, especially Nicole Tantum, Digital Archivist, for their help and support.