Lowell Links is about allowing the residents of Lowell, Massachusetts to realize the positive attributes the city already has to offer, beyond the Hamilton historic and commercial district, by reconfiguring a knot of roadway infrastructure and transforming underutilized spaces to connect sites that are important to the wider community. Our group approached investigating the site through the lens of vacancy after noticing the stark contrast across main streets like Fletcher, Dutton, and Thorndike Street. Points of interest scattered across Lowell, beyond the vicinity of the National Historic Park, have become increasingly isolated with the prioritization of the automobile, particularly at the Lord Overpass.
The project stitches these communities together by introducing small-scale interventions in underutilized spaces to give identity and purpose to these otherwise banal lots, creating a continuous park experience for the pedestrian. Large-scale interventions or adaptations help compliment existing programs and create new destinations along these strips, prioritizing the pedestrians of a future Lowell.
(Photo above taken by Alex MacLean in 1979. For more photography of the surrounding city, visit Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth.)
Published in Retrospecta 40
In 2018, the city of Lowell decided to fill and level the Lord Overpass in a five(1) phased (2) traffic (3) management (4) plan (5). In order to build the intersection, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts gave the City of Lowell a $15 Million transportation grant. With a significant reduction in traffic due to the pandemic, construction on the new intersection continues and is set to be completed by 2023.