Lowell Massachusetts History & Facts

Lowell is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. With Cambridge, Lowell is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of the last census, and the third most populous in the Boston metropolitan statistical area. The city also is part of a smaller Massachusetts statistical area, called Greater Lowell, and of New England's Merrimack Valley region.

Incorporated in 1826 to serve as a mill town, Lowell was named after Francis Cabot Lowell, a local figure in the Industrial Revolution. The city became known as the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution because of its textile mills and factories. Many of Lowell's historic manufacturing sites were later preserved by the National Park Service to create Lowell National Historical Park. During the Cambodian genocide (1975–1979), the city took in an influx of refugees, leading to a Cambodia Town and America's second largest Cambodian-American population.

Lowell is home to two institutions of higher education. UMass Lowell, part of the University of Massachusetts system, has three campuses in the city. Middlesex Community College's two campuses are in Lowell and in the town of Bedford, Massachusetts. Arts facilities in the city include the Whistler House Museum of Art, the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, and Sampas Pavilion. In sports, the city has a long tradition of boxing, hosting the annual New England Golden Gloves boxing tournament. The city has a baseball stadium, Edward A. LeLacheur Park, and a multipurpose indoor sports arena, the Tsongas Center, both of which have hosted collegiate and minor-league professional sports teams.

Founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles, Lowell is located along the rapids of the Merrimack River, 25 mi (40 km) northwest of Boston in what was once the farming community of East Chelmsford, Massachusetts. The so-called Boston Associates, including Nathan Appleton and Patrick Tracy Jackson of the Boston Manufacturing Company, named the new mill town after their visionary leader, Francis Cabot Lowell, who had died five years before its 1823 incorporation. As Lowell's population grew, it acquired land from neighboring towns, and diversified into a full-fledged urban center. Many of the men who composed the labor force for constructing the canals and factories had immigrated from Ireland, escaping the poverty and Great Famine of the 1830s and 1840s. The mill workers, young single women called Mill Girls, generally came from the farm families of New England.

Lowell is located at 42°38′22″N 71°18′53″W (42.639444, −71.314722). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 14.5 square miles (38 km2) of which 13.8 square miles (36 km2) is land and 0.8 square miles (2.1 km2) (5.23%) is water.

Famous Peoples From Lowell Massachusetts

Michael Charles Chiklis

(born August 30, 1963) is an American actor, television director, television producer and musician. For his role as Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Detective Vic Mackey on the FX police drama The Shield, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2002, and was nominated in 2003. He also played Commissioner Tony Scali on the ABC police drama The Commish, The Thing in two Fantastic Four films, and Jim Powell on the ABC science-fiction comedy-drama No Ordinary Family. Additionally, he co-starred as Vincent Savino in the CBS crime drama Vegas. He also portrayed Curly Howard in the biopic film The Three Stooges. In 2014 Chiklis joined the cast of American Horror Story for its fourth season, American Horror Story: Freak Show. The following year he was cast as Nathaniel Barnes, in the second season of Gotham, as a series regular.

Chiklis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. His mother, Katherine (née Vousboukis), is a hospital administrative aide, and his father, Charlie Chiklis, runs a hair/beauty salon. Chiklis has been described as having inherited his acting ability from his mother. His father is a second-generation Greek American (his paternal ancestors came from Lesbos), and his mother is of Greek and Irish descent. Chiklis grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and began entertaining his family with celebrity imitations when he was 5 years old. As a child, Chiklis appeared in regional theater productions and became a member of the Actors' Equity Association at age 13. In the ninth grade, he portrayed Hawkeye Pierce in Andover High School's production of M*A*S*H. He graduated from Boston University College of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

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