The initial phase of this project had the goal to empower Lawrence youth to conduct, record and edit audio interviews with employees of the relocating Southwick Company and key participants in the Union Crossing re-development project.
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Who’s Involved?
Union Crossing will transform a complex of 19th century textile mills into more than 400,000 square feet of renovated and newly-built space, including family and workforce housing, commercial office, retail, and community facilities, as well as new green space and public access to the Merrimack River. Union Crossing consists of two adjacent properties: the 240,000 square foot Southwick Mill buildings and associated parking lot, and the 120,000 square foot Duck Mill. Together, these buildings provide the opportunity to create a new neighborhood in the heart of the mill district that is accessible to Lawrence residents and minutes from downtown and the train station. The proposed 150+ mixed-income housing units, new day care center, and significant new commercial and community space will set a standard for energy-efficient and healthy development, build resident assets and wealth, and promote education and wellness.
Southwick has been dressing discerning customers who appreciate Southwick’s trademark of understated elegance and quality workmanship. Founders Nicholas and Vito Grieco immigrated to this country from a remote Italian village in the early 1900’s. Hard working and ambitious, they ran a suit-pressing business in Brooklyn, then a successful tailor shop in New York until the outbreak of World War I forced them to close. Undaunted, they opened a suit business in Massachusetts where they honed their skills as master tailors and experimented with mass production techniques. When that business folded, they worked for another manufacturer until their entrepreneurial zeal propelled them to found Grieco Bros. in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1929.
Movement City and Lawrence CommunityWorks
Lawrence CommunityWorks (LCW) is a nonprofit community development corporation working to transform and revitalize the physical, economic, and social landscape of Lawrence. Movement City is an empowerment network for young Lawrencians between the ages of 10-18. It is a virtual city where young people explore their potential through design, technology and performing arts. They can also choose to participate in a wide range of highly creative economic, academic, leadership development and collective action activities.
Groundwork Lawrence Green Team
Groundwork’s mission and operations are premised on the understanding that environmental conditions are inextricably linked to the economic and social health of a neighborhood. As a consequence, Groundwork is committed to “changing places and changing lives” through on-the-ground projects that help to transform local communities. The Groundwork Lawrence Green Team is a year-round program that offers part-time, paid positions for 10 Lawrence high school students each year to help learn about and lead local environmental and healthy community initiatives, conduct research, raise awareness, challenge their peers to do community service, and participate in hands-on improvement projects throughout the City of Lawrence.
Since 1978, Lawrence History Center, formerly Immigrant City Archives, has collected and preserved documents and artifacts pertaining to the history of Lawrence, Massachusetts and its people. The collection contains the bulk of the business and planning records of the Essex Company that created Lawrence, non current municipal records, thousands of historic photographs and glass plate negatives, organizational records from local businesses and agencies, 700 oral histories with eye witness accounts as far back as 1910, and an array of family and individual records that document the diverse and intellectually challenging nature of Lawrence. LHC employs those materials through exhibits, educational programs and research services to foster understanding of the interaction of the built community and the lives of ordinary people.
MIT@Lawrence is a long-term commitment to support dynamic and mutually beneficial relationships between faculty, students, and staff at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, together with civic leaders, residents, and community-based organizations in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The MIT@Lawrence commitment includes service learning, technical assistance, and community-based service projects in three program areas: affordable housing, community asset-building, and youth pathways to career and education. These areas promise opportunities for action-oriented scholarship through university-community engagement for the purpose of contributing to an equitable and sustainable future in the City of Lawrence.
MIT@Lawrence is excited to support this project not just as part of our youth development goals but also to seed interest in digital storytelling, current resident oral histories, and historical narratives of Lawrence, to be incorporated in a spring graduate class also supporting the development of Union Crossing.
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Related posts:
- Spring Practicum Course Explores Storytelling at Union Crossing Check out this video of the final presentation to the Lawrence Community Works Union Crossing Committee, describing programs devised by the graduate and undergraduate students...
- Weaving Our Collective Narrative: the M@L Story Project How can participatory media tools be adapted for grassroots strategies to seed more forward-focused institutional memory practices? Can we use these tools, supported by...
- MIT@Lawrence Youth Celebration You're cordially invited to watch MIT@Lawrence's youth celebration event, hosted in the 2nd floor conference room of the MIT Museum (265 Massachusetts Avenue) on...
- Photo Journal #5 – Significant Detail and Context This week I got into the meat of the work in Lawrence, in that I finally met some residents in a context of social change,...
- Photo Journal # 6 – From Lawrence to Austin [10/20/07] This week’s ruminations extend the discussion of significant detail from vocabulary to the grammar of the language of landscape in Lawrence (and Austin actually)....
