325, 327, 327 E. Main
325, 327, 327 E. Main
1st buildings: Blacksmith Shop and Cooper Shop 2nd building: Gasoline filling station 3rd building: Lowell Engineering; All Weather Seal The corner of Main and Washington is currently occupied by All Weather Seal and a parking lot. In the past it was home to an early blacksmith shop and more. John Gulliford had a blacksmith shop just west of the Cooper Shop on the corner. In 1883, he purchased the large frame building west of the Commercial House (located where the Huntington Bank is today) and moved it to the vacant lot west of his blacksmith shop to be his house. Gulliford’s Blacksmith was still listed on this site in 1893 but sometime before 1900 he moved his smithy business south of the Grand River to West Grand River. In 1918, the building was used for paper storage and taken down shortly after that. Craftsman who made wooden barrels were called coopers. Barrels were used to transport many kinds of agricultural products from flour and gunpowder to liquids like whiskey, cider, and vinegar. Barrels were an agricultural and manufacturing necessity in the time before the cardboard box. The Cooper Shop on the corner was occupied by William “Deacon” Eddy. He was a cooper in Lowell since 1867 and also did other kinds of woodwork, “being of a mechanical turn of mind.” He had been a soldier in the Civil War serving in Co. C, 50th New York Volunteer Engineers. Eddy was a school director of the old Central School and because he loved to read, he helped to get the school library enlarged. He was a deacon in the Baptist Church for 36 years. In 1893, Eddy turned his cooper shop into an insurance office. His business included owning and supervising all of the bill boards in Lowell. William Eddy’s son, F. D. Eddy donated his father’s cannon to the village of Lowell in 1905, shortly after his father’s death. The cannon is still located in Oakwood Cemetery. It is interesting to note that on July 4, 1901, William Eddy and Benjamin Morse, another Civil War veteran, fired that cannon from McCarty’s hill (Reservoir Hill) which is the highest hill on the northeast side of Lowell using paper wads. Unfortunately, one of the wads went through the wall of the house of Mrs. Isabel Robinson into a bedroom scattering plaster in every direction. No one was injured but that was the last time that they fired the cannon. In 1910, the cooper building was occupied by a millinery. It was taken down in the 1930s and a Shell gasoline filling station built on both the cooper and blacksmith sites. In 1949, Art’s Shell Service in Midtown Lowell, Route 21, was owned by Arthur W. Gross. He advertised General Auto Repairs and Road Service. Ron Fish’s Shell Service followed with 24 Hour Road Service. He specialized in “Lubrication, Brake Service, Washing, Mufflers and Accessories.” The Shell station was taken down to make room for the expansion of Lowell Engineering in 1974. Images: The Sanborn map of 1885 shows the blacksmith and cooper shops. The next building (yellow) to the left is a dwelling here but became “tenements” (rooms for rent) from 1892-1910. It was one of Lowell’s early landmarks and was known as the Gulliford building. Harold Englehardt bought the lot and had it torn down in 1937. The Blacksmith and Cooper Shops at the corner of Main and Washington St. in the 1880s. The peaked-roofed building to the west (left) of the Cooper Shop, pictured below, housed the Blacksmith shop of John Gulliford. Shell Station on Washington St. and Main St. corner, 1938. Shell Station, c.1940. Taken from a slide, 1966. The cannon at Oakwood Cemetery was donated to the village of Lowell by the family of William Eddy. Eddy had been a soldier in the Civil War and a Commander of Lowell’s Grand Army of the Republic post. |