15 Bassett Street

Home exterior Vernacular with Greek Revival elements with off-center entrance.
  • Historic Name: None
  • Uses: Single- and multi-family home
  • Date of Construction: Circa 1872
  • Style/Form: Vernacular with Greek Revival elements with off-center entrance
  • Architect/Builder: Unknown
  • Foundation: Rubble stone and concrete
  • Wall/Trim: Vinyl siding
  • Roof: Gable roof
  • Major Alterations: Most notable are new vinyl windows and shutters; and vinyl siding; and a new front entrance; small cottage to the rear was demolished circa 1940s
  • Condition: Good
  • Included in Hengen survey? No
  • Related oral interview? No
  • Portuguese owned? Yes (1917)
  • Recorded by: Gregory Gray Fitzsimons and Marie Frank
  • Organization: UMass Lowell
  • Date: July 2023

Description

This 2-1/2 story wood-frame house was constructed in the early 1870s and though later than the era of Greek Revival architecture, there are some slight Greek Revival elements. It has a gable roof with gable returns, symmetrical fenestration at the second-floor level, and an off-center from entrance. A small wood-frame cottage on this lot behind the two-family house was erected by 1882. It stood until the late 1930s and was the primary residence of the owners of the property. Until the 1930s, the two-family was rented to tenants by the property owners. It was torn down in the late 1930s or 1940s. The two-family house has been greatly altered with new vinyl windows, vinyl siding, and a new front entrance though in the same off-center locale.

History

During the mid-19th century one of the large landholders in the Chapel Hill neighborhood was James Meadowcroft (1817-1892). Born in Lancashire, England, where he learned the blacksmithing trade, Meadowcroft immigrated to the United States in the late 1830s. Initially he settled in New York City and then Trenton, New Jersey, where he engaged in metalwork with the well-known Peter Cooper (who fabricated the “Tom Thumb” steam locomotive for the fledgling Baltimore & Ohio Railroad). After a brief stint in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Meadowcroft moved to Lowell around 1842.

Upon settling in Lowell, Meadowcroft established the American Bolt Company (originally chartered as Smith & Meadowcroft) operating a factory along the Concord River off Lawrence Street. This company produced various kinds of metal fasteners, notably screws and bolts. His firm was successful and, during the Civil War, through his connections among iron producers, Meadowcroft speculated in pig iron, amassing a sizable fortune. He built an estate in South Lowell on Moore Street and in 1865 he withdrew from the company he founded. For the remainder of his life he speculated in real estate and lived as a “gentleman farmer.”

Among the many properties Meadowcroft bought and sold were lots in the vicinity of Whipple Street. One, on Bassett Street, he purchased in 1872 from Jesse N. Bassett, a carpenter born in Maine (see entry of 9-11 Bassett Street). It appears that Bassett constructed the wood-frame dwelling that soon had the address of 15 Bassett Street. From its completion around 1872, it was a two-family house. A few years later, a second dwelling was constructed on the lot to the rear of 15 Bassett. This appears to have been a small single-family cottage (it appears in the 1882 Lowell atlas). Meadowcroft likely rented the dwellings until 1874 when he sold the property to John Rodgers (1834-1903). Born in Ireland, Rodgers immigrated to the United States in 1850. He settled in Lowell and married Irish-born Margaret Freeman in 1854. Around the time Rodgers bought the house from Meadowcroft he was listed in the city directory as a rag collector. Rodgers and his wife would live at 15 Bassett Street for the remainder of their lives. They rented part of the house to other Irish working class families.

Upon John Rodgers’ death in 1903, his oldest daughter, Mary, born in Lowell in 1855, assumed ownership of the house. Widowed with five children, Mary Coyne worked as a weaver and rented out two other parts of the house. One tenant, Joseph H. Sullivan, was a bricklayer, born in England to Irish parents in 1871. Living with him was his wife, two years younger, also born in

England to Irish parents, and daughter, born in Lowell in 1905. In another apartment lived Mary Moore, a widow, age 57 in 1910, and two daughters, Margaret, age 24, and Fanny, age 34. The two daughters worked as wage earners in the textile industry.

In 1917, Luiz Freitas and his wife Maria, from Madeira, acquired the property. They had been living in a tenement on Charles Street while Luiz Freitas was employed in the Bigelow Carpet Mill on Market Street. After buying the Bassett Street property the Freitas family, which, by 1920 included Luiz, Maria, two sons and a daughter, lived in the cottage to the rear of No. 15 and rented the two-family house that fronted Bassett Street. Initially they rented to an Irish family but subsequently rented to Portuguese families. The Freitas family lived in the cottage for nearly 20 years before Luiz lost the property to the City of Lowell for back taxes in 1937.

Another family from Madeira, headed by Luis Oliveira, purchased the Bassett Street property. For some years Luis Oliveira also worked at the Bigelow Carpet Mill but after this company abandoned the mill on Market Street Oliveira found work as a carder in a cotton mill. Like the Freitas before them, the Oliveira family also lived in the rear cottage and rented No. 15 Bassett Street. At an unknown date, perhaps in the 1940s, Oliveira tore down the cottage. By 1950 he, his wife Maria, and one of their five children, lived in the two-family house, while renting half of it to Charles Freitas, his wife Cecil, and two children. The Oliveira family remained in the two-family house into the 1950s.

Raymond McLaughlin, a laboratory worker, subsequently bought the property on Bassett Street. He and his wife lived there into the 1960s and the house remained in the McLaughlin family into the early 2000s. In more recent years Anh Pham and Dune Nguyen acquired the property as a real estate investment.

Sources

  • Sidney and Neff Map of Lowell, 1850.
  • Lowell atlases, 1882, 1879, 1906, 1924 and 1936.
  • Lowell city directories, 1875-76, 1894, 1906, 1916, 1926, 1936 &1956 and 1966.
  • Federal census, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 and 1950.
  • Obituary of John G. Rodgers, Lowell Sun, January 27, 1903.
  • Obituary of James Meadowcroft,” Lowell Daily Courier, April 8, 1892.
  • Property deed, Meadowcroft to Rodgers, November 16, 1872, book 90, pages 138-139, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Coyne and Rodgers to Freitas, May 24, 1917, book 572, pages 154-155, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.