Learn About Save Smith Baker

The global mission of Save Smith Baker is to preserve Lowell’s past, enhance Lowell’s present, and help create Lowell’s future. Within this mission, there are many goals.

 

We will protect and rehabilitate the architecturally significant Baker Center, originally known as the First Congregationalist Church,  to preserve the past. The church, built in 1884-1885, replaced a smaller church built in 1827 when Lowell was still a town. 

 

The building is an impressive structure inside and out. It was designed by the architects Otis A. Merrill and Arthur S. Cutler, who also designed City Hall, the Central Firehouse, the Howe Building, and many other buildings in Lowell, other parts on Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. The auditorium-style sanctuary, a unique design for a church, has near-perfect acoustics. 

 

Lowell is one of the most historically significant cities in the United States. While primarily known as the cradle of the industrial revolution in America, it has also been an innovation hub, and a gateway city for many waves of immigrants and refugees from other countries.

 

This history has made Lowell a city of people from many cultures, with a variety of religions and beliefs. This diversity, while sometimes difficult, has been Lowell’s superpower.

 

To enhance the present, the Center will be a multi-venue and multi-use center for all of the communities and cultures in Lowell, including the underrepresented immigrant communities and recent refugees.

 

The Center will serve as a performance space for events, civic engagement hubs, coworking  spaces for business startups with computers and other technological resources, a venue for family, church, and other events, office space, a shared-use kitchen, a Southeast Asian Refugee Museum, and a place for many other functions.

 

The Center will be a hub of civic engagement where many groups can come together to meet, work, and create innovative and local solutions to common problems.