The Lowell Sun landmark sign replaced one from 1893

Much to unpack in an Annie Powell photo

Image courtesy Lowell Historical Society

With the recent news that the Lowell Sun illuminated sign is being restored as a city landmark, I thought it would be interesting to have a visual look at the Sun’s earliest days when against all odds, it challenged a field of nine dailies.

The poster version of the above Annie Powell’s 1893 image on Kearney Square, part of the Chasing Annie Powell 100 Posters Project, is hosted by Opticks Ltd. on the same site (through August, it is temporarily in a group show at Dracut Access Television). A second poster of an 1893 Annie Powell image, the old City Hall which was two blocks away on Merrimack Street, is hosted by Enterprise Bank.

Funded by $60,000 from the City of Lowell, a restoration team is at work on the Sun sign that is currently placed on the ten-story building. The original sign, on a three-story building on the same site, dates to about a year after the 1932 death of the paper’s founder and publisher, John H. Harrington. He was born in 1854, and at age 10, he worked in a local mill to help support the family before learning the printing business and starting the daily paper on September 1, 1892. In the enlargement shown below, we see him standing in front of his new building on Nov. 18, 1893.

Over time, Harrington’s exemplary product, political connections, civic leadership, and aggressive marketing forced out the competition, yet in the early months of Harrington’s tenure, the visual record shows hard work ahead. He may have owned the building, but with minimal staff he conducted business from the least desirable space on the top floor. In the photo, we can see how he banked on rents from the first two floors with tenants such as Putnam’s Dining Rooms, The Spa confectionary store, and Glidden Hairdressing Rooms.

This enlargement shows John H. Harrington, founder and publisher of the Lowell Sun, posing outside his building. He was a man of principles, for instance, refusing lucrative ads for alcohol because he believed in temperance. The woman looking in the window may be his wife, the former Annie Lennon. A double exposure and/or slow shutter speed suggesting two spectral legs walking in the middle of the street was a regular Annie Powell trope, seen in this photo taken on Suffolk and Market Streets.

Signs for tenants on the first and second floors include Putnam’s Dining Rooms, The Spa confectionary store, and Glidden Hairdressing Rooms.

Enlargements of the image show other fascinating details, including what appears to be a Black shoeshine operator hard at work.

My colleague, Brad MacGowan, was able to date the photo as close to Nov. 18, 1893 by noticing the “STRIKE OVER AT COLLINSVILLE MILLS” headline in the third floor window (shown here with added contrast). The strike over wages and possibly safety conditions at the textile mill in Dracut lasted many months.

Verso of the 1893 image, with memories from 46 years later.

The versos (reverse sides) of old photographs rarely give information, but in this case we are lucky to have a memory 46 years later from the original city editor, William J.G. Meyers (1868–1953). In this transcription of his handwriting, “Mrs. Costello” is Mary Harrington Costello (1881-1955) who managed the newspaper following her father’s death:

Old building of the Lowell Sun, Lowell, Mass., soon after the Daily Sun was started, of which I was the first city editor and in fact for its first year almost the entire new staff.

This picture probably was made early in 1893 and John H. Harrington may be seen standing on the corner -- (Prescott & Merrimack Sts).

Picture given to me after Harrington's death (1936? 1932) by his daughter, Mrs. Costello, whom I remember as a little girl coming into the Sun office with her mother.

When the Sun started in Sept. 1 1892 there were 9 other newspapers printed in Lowell. Editorial room was on the third floor. Electric cars were in use only a few years, confidence in telephones was always questionable and electric lights were rudimentary as compared with those of today (1939).

From Wm J. G. Meyers, West Haven, Conn.

Bernie Zelitch is founder and executive director of by Annie Powell charitable nonprofit. Formerly an investigative journalist, he is a songwriter, historian, and member of the Photographic Historical Society of New England board of directors.