Guess what turns 30 this year? You are correct if you picked “The Lynn Album: A pictorial history.”
Written by Elizabeth Hope Cushing with a foreword by former Lynn Historical Society Director Kenneth Turino, the 192-page book is a fact-packed chronicle of Lynn’s history and a lovingly-crafted tribute to the city.
The greatest testament to the city and its history is that 192 pages were not enough to thoroughly tell Lynn’s story in 1990, never mind 2020. A sequel expanded upon Cushing’s work and a new history is on the precipice of being overdue.
The book overflows with information. Did you know giant boulders left by a glacier could be found 400 years ago dotting the landscape Lynn now occupies?
Lynn Harbor never became a major seaport like Salem and Marblehead because — wait for it — the harbor is too shallow. A band of “five Puritan men,” as Cushing described them, brought their families in 1629 to an area occupied by people led by Montowampate with the intruding settlers carving out a life along the coastline.
In order to plant crops and survive, settlers used seaweed as fertilizer. The stringy stuff we complain about for its odor became a commodity so valuable, according to Cushing, that community leaders were forced to forbid non-Lynn residents from harvesting seaweed from Lynn beaches.
Never a docile bunch even in the 18th century, Cushing describes how Lynn residents agitated by the tea tax imposed by the British passed resolutions in 1773 rejecting the tax. They wanted to make the beverage a locally-made product and a resident who hoarded tea found himself the target of irate local women who destroyed his stash.
A year later with revolution in the air, the pulpit in a Lynn church became a gunpowder hiding place and four Lynn men were killed at Lexington on April 19, 1775.
Fast forward 100 years and Cushing tells the amazing story of Jan Metzeliger, an immigrant from Dutch Guiana who came to Lynn from Philadelphia to become a shoemaker. Racial bias didn’t prevent Metzeliger from teaching himself physics and mechanical drawing before constructing a wooden model of the shoe-making lasting machine he spent three years perfecting.
Building the machine was the first chapter in the inventor’s push to put his creation into production. Investors forced him to turn over his patent in return for the financial backing that allowed Metzeliger to go into business and revolutionize the shoe industry.
He died at the age of 38 in 1889 from tuberculosis and a bridge spanning the commuter rail tracks is named in his honor.
Cushing’s book also plots General Electric’s growth from the role cofounder Elihu Thomson played in inventing electricity to the management genius of Charles A. Coffin and the expansion of GE to 12,00 employees in 1913 with the numbers growing well into the century.
Another fun fact is that GE’s first local factories were called the West Lynn Works with the River Works built about a half-mile away.
Cushing’s book is so fact-filled it can’t be digested in one bite, mostly because of its rich photography trove. Thumbing through it reveals early photos of Lynn’s waterfront with horses waiting to haul wares outside Breed and Bassett’s Lumber Wharves and Steam Planing Mills.
Horses-pulled trolleys were housed in car barns on Western Avenue and Central Square 120 years ago served as a transportation hub.
People packed into Mount Vernon Street by the hundreds to watch the first train roll down the elevated tracks now used by commuter rail. The overhead rails brought dignitaries in Lynn and ferried residents to military bases for eventual overseas deployment during World War I.
“The Lynn Album” dives deep into Lynn architecture, especially bygone homes, illuminating along the way curious locations across the city. “Stonehenge” was the nickname for the Walnut Street home built by Judge James R. Newhall atop Sadler’s Rock. In keeping with the judge’s lofty title, the house loomed 166 feet above the street.
A castle once graced Ocean Street near Kimball Road — or a reasonable facsimile of one. Built by painter Francis Alexander, the house had a squared-off turret.
Some of the book’s most fun photos are the ones of women in long billowing dresses standing on Lynn Beach while kids frolic in swimsuits. The ocean with its timeless constancy is one of Lynn’s best features. People and the city’s entire history are but footnote in the cycle of water breaking on the rocks, receding and breaking again.