Talk:Lawrence, Massachusetts

oops

Oops -- Robert Frost was not born in Lawrence, Mass. He may be associated with New England, but he was born in San Francisco.

---

Some intersting things about Lawrence that I believe are true:

1. Lawrence was a planned industrial city built by a corporation set up for the production of woolen cloth, the Essex Company. It was meant to be a copy of the profitable cotton town of Lowell, Massachusetts some ten-odd miles up the Merrimack River.

2. Many of the investors in the Essex Company were typical of textile investors across New England at the time: members of relatively prominent shipping families looking to diversify their wealth after the highly profitable far east spice trade dried up.

3. Little capital investment was given toward making the mills more productive, e.g. so they could diversify into more profitable items like multi-colored cloths, etc. The failure to make capital investments was partially due to the desire of investors to pay themselves high dividends. Thus the mills competed in terms of price rather than superior quality/value, meaning they had to hold wages down in order to survive.

4. This led to the hiring first of single farm girls and then of even cheaper immigrant labor, including children down to the age of 10 or so.

5. Even with these cost saving measures, competition drove most New England woolen mills into bankruptcy in the 1890s. The American Woolen Company was set up to merge them all together and make them more efficient and to end competition, at least regionally. In other words, it was the classic monopolistic trust of the late 19th century that the Sherman anti-trust act set out to eliminate.

6. However, all the creation of the American Woolen Company did was to stretch out the twilight of low value woolen manufacturing for another 50 years. The savior for the Lawrence woolen industry was government orders for blankets in World War I and II. There was very little other demand for their goods at the prices they had to charge.

7. Lawrence has always struggled financially, not just recently. In earlier years this was because the textile mills were exempt from real estate taxes. Most of the rest of the real estate was tenement houses, mill housing (also exempt) and shops.

8. One silver lining: because its enormous mills were water powered, there is relatively little environmental contamination compared to its historical manufacturing significance.

Bibliography includes Dengler, Khalife and Skulski, "Lawrence Massachusetts" (Immigrant City Archives 1995) Roddy, "Mills, mansions, and mergers : the life of William M. Wood (1982)

Cbmccarthy 17:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)cbmccarthy

Regarding this silver lining, the Bolta factory on Canal Street was one of the nastiest superfund sites in the country. So, they got the environmental contamination topic covered. EraserGirl (talk) 21:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Neighborhoods?

As someone from Lowell, I'm interested in the parts of Lawrence. I know where Downtown Lawrence is, I know South Lawrence is a recognized neighborhood, and when I was little, we had friends in Tower Hill (but I can't tell you exactly where it is). I know Lawrence is a physically much smaller city, but maybe something like the neighborhoods information from the Lowell page would go nice here? Thanks, CSZero 14:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Lawrence, MA Seal.gif

Image:Lawrence, MA Seal.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 05:56, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Mill City??

Can someone please provide support that the nickname of Lawrence is "Mill City"? I lived there for my first 18 years and never heard that expression.

Cbmccarthy 14:36, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I went ahead and did it. I changed the nickname to the one I have always heard: Immigrant City.

01:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually when you live IN the city you don't use a nickname. It's only people who are trying to think up quaint nicknames who use one. EraserGirl (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

recent fires?

What pray tell does that section have to do with the article? Every 5 or 10 years there is a massive fire in Lawrence, this last one is no more important than any of the previous ones, and by far smaller than the fires in the 80s. EraserGirl (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, but it's a general condition of Wikipedia that what is a major local event (this fire made national news) becomes a section on a Wikipedia page. As time goes on, editors will need to have these discussions and remove things that never became generally important. The way I look at it, Wikipedia is not paper ( WP:PAPER ), and therefore, around the time of the fire and for months afterwards, it would be a common thing for people to come to the Lawrence page to read about. As it fizzles in notability in the grand scheme of Lawrence burning down, we can remove it. As you said, a city made of wood (or at least having wood floors soaked in oil) tends to have fires. Maybe it hurts the neutral point of view to highlight this one after it is no longer on everyone's mind. Or maybe we remove it because it takes up precious screen real-estate. CSZero (talk) 20:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps next time someone does a major addition, it should be removed. I don't feel strongly enough about it to do it today. EraserGirl (talk) 21:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree. This section is out of place and should be deleted, for the reasons you cite. Cbmccarthy (talk) 16:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

References

Unlike other area towns and cities, there are a lot of reference sources for Lawrence, and nearly none appear in the notes. Large portions of this article, though well written and most likely accurate have no notes or citations at all. It should be very simple to obtain a few books and cite the information in the article.

• Watson, Bruce. Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream
• Cole, Donald. Immigrant City: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921
• Desantis, Ronald. Lawrence Police Department (Images of America)
• Dorgan, Maurice. Lawrence yesterday and today: (1845-1918) a concise history of Lawrence Massachusetts - her industries and institutions; municipal statistics and a variety of information concerning the city
• n.a. Life and Times in Immigrant City: Memories of a Textile Town
• Schinto, Jeanne. Huddle Fever: Living in the Immigrant City
• Baker, Julie. The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912
• Cahn, William. Lawrence 1912 The Bread and Roses Strike
• Immigrant Archives. Lawrence, Massachusetts vol 1 (Images of America)
• Skulski, Ken. Lawrence, Massachusetts vol 2 (Images of America)
• Sandberg, Louise Brady. Lawrence in the Gilded Age (MA) (Images of America)

If you are near Lawrence, the Lawrence History Center/Immigrant City Archives and Museum at 6 Essex St. will have all of these, the Lawrence Public Library will have some of them, though they are probably not circulation items. EraserGirl (talk) 14:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Adding citations is a very good start, however Eartha and Ken's picture book isn't the best original source material, I am sure in the back there is a bibliography of THEIR source material, now THAT's the stuff we need. Thanks for the update, if you need further clarification about citation format beyond WP:CITE just holler. EraserGirl (talk) 16:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Immigrant City?

I would like to see a concrete reference for the origin of this term. I haven't seen a reference that predates the 1963 Dorgan book. Did HE make it up? certainly no one living IN the city, would refer to it that way, only when historians refer to it do I see it called that. EraserGirl (talk) 16:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it's kind of presumptuous to say what people living there do or don't say if you don't live there.

Anyway, doesn't the fact that the city's own archive is called "Immigrant City Archives" lend enough support that a nickname for Lawrence is the immigrant city? Plus all the books that use this title? I thought the point with Wikipedia is that you cite real books by real authors, rather than personal experience. These are real books. As for experience of residents, I can say for certain that when I learned about the history of Lawrence as a public school student there in the 1970s, we learned that its nickname is the immigrant city. Not in day to day usage necessarily, but certainly as a reference. I think there is enough support for immigrant city to move off the issue and focus on other things in the article.

By the way, thanks for referencing all the books that cover Lawrence.

Cbmccarthy (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

When I was in school in the 60's, the term was not in general usage, and most of the books with the word in the title post date that period. But I will grant that the city NOW has the appellation. I corresponded with the director of the archives about having someone there improve this article. I think that may eventually happen, I will forward my question about the term's genesis, perhaps it is one that was popular in Lawrence's heydey, 1845-1950 and then fell out of favor until the rise of interest in its heritage in the 80s. That happens. EraserGirl (talk) 22:14, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Improving this article

Because I live in New York and do not have access to specific books about Lawrence (except the ones I cited), I can't really improve on this article further. (I would add, however, that it has way more footnote citations already than a typical Wikipedia article).

I thought by adding an organizational framework around immigrant communities, I could inspire others to fill it in. I am sure a lot of people whose ancestors passed through Lawrence will also be interested to know where various immigrant communities were located. That is why I focused on churches, which often formed the geographic core of each community.

Can anyone build on the information that is already there? Cbmccarthy (talk) 16:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I can see your point about generating interest, anything is helpful, and until better, fuller information comes along, it will due as placeholders. However I strongly disagree with your assumption that this article has "has way more footnote citations already than a typical Wikipedia article" It has about as many as any "start class" article, but even so considering the the quality of the footnotes is less than desirable. I think in time it will grow, what we need is someone passionate with access to the proper sources. EraserGirl (talk) 22:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Possible Ad

I call the highlighted section that reads “sustainable luxury apartments” http://www.monarchlofts.com/ as a possible ad, anyone agree?