50 North Street

Picture of 50 North Street, light gray, two story house with attic.

  • Historic Name: None
  • Uses: Single-family home with apartments
  • Date of Construction: Circa 1850s
  • Style/Form: Greek Revival
  • Architect/Builder: Unknown
  • Foundation: Rubble stone
  • Wall/Trim: Vinyl siding
  • Roof: Gable roof
  • Major Alterations: Most notable are new vinyl windows and shutters; and vinyl siding; two 20th century additions to the rear
  • Condition: Good
  • Included in Hengen survey? No
  • Related oral interview? No
  • Portuguese owned? Yes (1915)
  • 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 1850s in the Greek Revival style. It is one of many similar antebellum Greek Revival dwellings built prior to the Civil War in the Chapel Hill neighborhood. It originally had an attached one-story L-section in the rear. In 1915, soon after Azorean immigrant Manuel A. Bettencourt purchased the dwelling, he raised the roof on the house and rebuilt the L-section, creating a two-story addition with a flat roof. This resulted in three 5-room apartments. Another two-story addition, which was also likely built by Bettencourt extends off the rear of L-section of the house and has a shed roof.

History

Although this single-family, wood-frame house does not appear on the 1850 Sidney & Neff map of Lowell, a building is noted as standing on the lot acquired in 1851 by Bernard McLaughlin. McLaughlin was one of Lowell’s early Irish property holders on Chapel Hill. In 1855, however, he sold the North Street property to John Cosgrove, an Irish grocery store owner and real estate dealer who held a number of tenements and dwellings in the city that he rented. Cosgrove, who lived in the same building on Merrimack Street where he ran his grocery business, probably rented the house on North Street. In 1872 he sold it to James Gray, a soap maker.

Gray and his family resided in the house until he sold it in 1884 to John Lennon, another Irish property holder and a liquor dealer who lived in the affluent Highlands neighborhood. Lennon also owned a number of multi-family homes and tenements in Lowell. Lennon rented the North Street property to various working-class women and men. In 1903, auctioneer Henry Keyes sold the house to Michael and Ellen Gallagher for $942 (about $33,000 today). With his brother, Martin, Michael Gallagher operated a tailoring shop downtown at 104 Central Street and lived for a number of years in the Acre neighborhood on Dummer Street before moving to Back Central and residing on Gorham Street. After purchasing the house on North Street he moved there with his wife, Ellen, and their three children. Gallagher was one of many Irish who owned their homes in the Back Central neighborhood. By 1910, at age 65, Gallagher was employed as a laborer (through political patronage) in the city’s Board of Health. His wife, “Nellie,” age 49, was working as a weaver in a cotton mill. Gallagher died in 1915 and his wife sold the family home to Manuel A. Bettencourt.

Born in 1882 on the Azorean island of Graciosa, Bettencourt immigrated to the United States in 1906 and settled in Lowell where he worked as a weaver in a woolen mill. In 1906 he married Marianna Veiga, who was also from Graciosa. Together they purchased the house on North Street, moving there in the summer of 1915. Bettencourt then rebuilt part of the original house, raising the roof and reconstructing the one-story L-Section, adding an extra story. In doing so he expanded the house to accommodate three, 5-room apartments. Bettencourt rented these apartments to a number of Portuguese and Polish families. He had worked his way up from weaver to machinist, retiring from the Merrimack Mills. Bettencourt died in 1951. After his death, Thaddeus W. Stys, the son of Polish immigrants who married one of Bettencourt’s daughters, Madeline, acquired the North Street house. In more recent years the house has been owned by Albino C. Picanso, who purchased the house from Stys in 1962, followed by Maria and José Silva.

Sources

  • Sidney & Neff Map of Lowell, 1850.
  • Lowell Atlases, 1882, 1879, 1906, 1924 & 1936.
  • Federal Census, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1920 & 1930.
  • Lowell city directories, 1894, 1906, 1916, 1926, 1936 &1950.
  • “Sales Conducted by Keyes on Saturday,” Lowell Sun, October 19, 1903.
  • Obituary of Manuel A. Bettencourt, Lowell Sun, December 30, 1951.
  • “Real Estate Matters,” Lowell Sun, September 25, 1915.
  • Property deed, Snow to McLaughlin, January 18, 1851, book 69, pages 521-523, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, McLaughlin to Cosgrove, May 8, 1855, book 90, pages 352-354, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Cosgrove to Gray, January 4, 1872, book 84, pages 55-57, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Gray to Lennon, November 25, 1884, book 171, pages 13-15, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Lennon to Gallagher, November 18, 1903, book 360, pages 98-99, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Gallagher to Bettencourt, August 2, 1915, book 542, pages 222-223, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Stys to Picanso, August 21, 1962, book 1658, page 353, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.