To celebrate Annie’s work in and around Lowell, we’ve launched the 100 Posters Project. We are currently in the process of distributing 100 posters to local businesses, nonprofits and government agencies that now occupy buildings or have addresses on streets that Annie photographed one-hundred years ago. Our goal is to show how Lowell neighborhoods appeared in Annie’s time in relation to Lowell today.
Amy Dalton, property manager at Lowell Housing Authority with Poster #6
About the 100 Posters Project
Poster 6 of 100
The Record of a City: Dangerous galleries!
“Suffolk St: frame tenements occupied by Greeks, Irish, Jews. Dangerous galleries overhanging the canal from Broadway Bridge,” circa 1909
Today, this canal is picturesque. It carries no reminders of its days as an open sewer system flowing below rickety tenements. In approximately 1909, this photo was used to illustrate a chapter critical of housing conditions in The Record of a City: A Social Survey of Lowell, Massachusetts by Reverend George Kenngott. This image is from an original print stored at Harvard Art Museums. We believe Annie Powell was the photographer and wrote the caption noted above.
Americans may not have recognized Annie’s British vernacular and her use of the word “galleries” as opposed to describe what in American vernacular might be called “balconies.” Annie was one of three British-born photographers in Lowell in 1909, and we identify her images through the handwriting and the language that she used.
The tenements pictured were torn down during 1960s-era redevelopment. Check out vlogs on the collection, why we link them to Annie Powell, and another similar poster in the project.
Today these unsafe structures have been replaced by beautiful units managed by the Lowell Housing Authority. The poster hangs at the Authority’s Mercier Center, 21 Salem St. See photo down below of Amy Dalton with Poster #6. Thank you Amy and Lowell Housing Authority for participating in this project!
Source: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College, 3.2002.47.1