Lowell and the East Bank: the factory village on the east race

1837–1901

The east race got a mill village of its own, named for the mill city of Massachusetts: In 1837 Christopher W. Emrick platted Lowell on land bought from Coquillard along the east bank, and named it for Lowell, Massachusetts — the planned textile city that was then the wonder of American manufacturing. The compliment was also a program. Samuel Cottrell, holding the east-side power, was advertising lots of water power for sale by 1853, and Lowell grew as the east race's settlement until South Bend annexed it in 1866. The National Register's East Bank documentation reads the district's maturity off the Sanborn fire-insurance map of 1885, which shows nine industrial plants on the East Bank: Singer's cabinet works, the Knoblock Mills, the South Bend Woolen Company, the South Bend Toy Company, E. S. Reynolds's paper mill, two carriage manufacturers (Winkler and Seafers), and two lumber and log manufacturers.

It is as compact a portrait of the water-power economy as the record gives: wood in every direction — cabinets, toys, carriages, lumber — plus wool and paper, all within a few streets of the race that had drawn them. The district's anchor tenant shows how the system recruited. Singer's sewing-machine cabinet works came to the East Bank because local men put together what the race made possible: free water power and a site bought by local subscription. And the district's limits show in the same company's plant: by 1870 the Singer complex already carried two dry kilns, two boilers and a steam engine alongside its water power — steam arriving, at first, as the race's assistant. Singer stayed on East Madison until the works outgrew the bank entirely: just before its move in 1901 it employed 1,500 people and turned out 5,000 cabinet sets a day. The East Bank did not die with the move. The Michigan Central's branch, built in 1870, had terminated at the Singer facility, with yards across Niles Street, and the ground kept its industrial tenants into the automobile age, as a later entry in this section tells.

Sources:

1. National Register of Historic Places, East Bank Multiple Property Documentation Form (1997/1999) — Lowell's 1837 platting by Emrick and its naming; Cottrell's 1853 water-power lots; the 1866 annexation; the Sanborn map of 1885 and its nine East Bank plants; Singer's recruitment by free water power and a subscription-bought site; the 1870 kilns, boilers and steam engine; 1,500 employees and 5,000 cabinet sets a day before the 1901 move; the Michigan Central branch of 1870.
2. This build's Businesses section — Singer's East Race beginnings as a hydro-powered works, cross-referenced; the firm's full profile stands there.