For those loyal readers of this blog, you know a lot about the Village of Lowry, the small community I call my hometown. A village conjures images of a sleepy, friendly place - it takes a village to raise a child kind of place. I have posted dozens of essays about that little spot in Pope County, some not so bucolic : its history, early settlers, people, family, businesses, landmarks, the railroad, disasters, tragedies-natural and man-made, rebellions, folk lore, photographic history, the Leghorns-both the chickens and ball team, accidents, murder-suicides, WWII and Great Depression ... (see a few samples below)
But only a passing reference to the naming rights. These belong to Thomas Lowry, the Twin Cities street car, real estate and railroad magnate. He was the President of Soo Line Railroad & Twin City Rapid Transit street car line. I suspect few if any current Lowry residents would recognize the name. In the 1890's, apparently, Lowry was in the running to be a Soo Line hub and repair center but lost out to Glenwood so that probably contributed to Thomas' apparent antipathy for his namesake village - and he garnered a like return. But by all accounts he was highly respected and admired, known to his employees as "the old man, pillar of the Twin Cites society. He died in 1909 of tuberculosis.
But in the Village of Lowry, there is no Thomas Lowry Bronze Statue, no Thomas Lowry Portrait in the village offices, no Thomas Lowry Memorial, no nothing. Just his name on the water tower. You would think his wealthiness would have been nudged to at least endow a hospital named for him or a recreation center or a fire truck - something. He had the coin. He spent some to buy the Lincoln Funeral Car to use as a street car promotion. But a raging grass fire in Columbia Heights destroyed it before it could be restored and moved to a museum site near the Sibley House. But for his village, nada. A spurned step-child.
It's not as if the Thomas was a wallflower.
Here's Thomas Lowry memorial in Minneapolis.
And the Thomas Lowry Mausoleum in Lakewood Cemetery.
I believe there are more things named after Thomas in Minneapolis & St. Paul than most any other person. The swanky Lowry Hill neighborhood, 94 Lowry tunnel, Lowry Ave & Lowry Ave Bridge, Thomas Lowry Park, Thomas Lowry Elementary School (torn down), Lowry Hotel (condemned), Lowry Medical Arts Building (now condominiums), The Lowry seafood restaurant (defunct) - and Lowry Dairy Queen (thriving but unfortunately in Nordeast, not rural Pope County).
So he certainly wasn't shy about having his name plastered about. But if our village founders had exercised a little more prescience, they could have named the place Carnegie and at least gotten a library out of the deal.
Appendix A
Here's a sampling of Village of Lowry related posts if you want to catch up.
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| Postcard from Gust Nelson. Lowry circa 1916 |
