Lowell: the town across the river

1837 — 1866, and after

South Bend's second plat was a separate town, laid out to rival it: Alexis Coquillard sold a considerable amount of his East Bank land to Christopher W. Emrick, who laid out the original plat of the town of Lowell in 1837, as the East Bank multiple property documentation tells it. The town was named for Lowell, Massachusetts — New England's renowned riverside manufacturing center — "probably in the hope that it would emulate its namesake," in the documentation's words. It first encompassed a two-block strip in the present East Bank area, from slightly north of Cedar Street to Jefferson Boulevard, between Niles Avenue and St. Louis Boulevard, together with a section westward to the river between Madison and Washington Streets. The East Race, built through the western part of Lowell in the 1840s, made the hope plausible: the race — called at the time the Lowell Race — powered the mills that made the East Bank the city's first industrial ground.

Lowell grew by the same instrument as its rival: additions. Samuel Cottrell, who held the east half of the river's water power, laid out several parcels and was advertising water-power lots for sale in 1853; by the middle 1860s, in the documentation's phrase, additions to the original town of Lowell had swollen the town nearly twice. Chapman's 1880 county history preserves the question of the day: "for some years the question of its annexation to South Bend was agitated, its interests being closely identified with the latter place." The answer came in 1866, when most of the present East Bank was annexed to the newly incorporated city and organized as its Fourth Ward. Two further parcels followed in 1871 — one encompassing much of the land south of the Grand Trunk Railroad, part of it platted by Samuel Parry, and a small section to the north — completing, in the documentation's words, the present geographic boundaries of the East Bank. The town's name died as a municipality and lived as a description: "Lowell" and "Cottrell" still appear in the property descriptions of the ground, and the East Bank's historic resources were listed in the National Register multiple property listing of 1999.

The dates of Lowell's platting and annexation are carried two ways in the record, and both are printed: 1837 and December 1866, as the East Bank documentation and the government file of this record carry them; and 1846 and 1867, in the History Museum's account, as the communities file names the variance. No averaging is attempted.

Sources:

1. East Bank Multiple Property Documentation Form (National Register, 1999) — Emrick's plat of 1837, the town's extent, Cottrell's additions, the 1866 and 1871 annexations
2. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), as quoted in the documentation — the annexation agitation
3. Communities and Government, this record (the Museum's variant dates, 1846 and 1867, named; the December 1866 annexation act) — banked fragments
4. East Bank Ink — the Lowell and Cottrell names in present property descriptions