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Lawrence, Massachusetts
City
North Canal
Flag Seal
Motto(s):  Industria (Latin) “Industry”
Location in Essex County, Massachusetts.
Lawrence Location in the United States Show map of Massachusetts Lawrence Lawrence (the United States) Show map of the United States
Coordinates: 42°42′25″N 71°09′49″W / 42.70694°N 71.16361°W / 42.70694; -71.16361
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Essex
Region	New England
Settled	1655
Incorporated	1847
Incorporated (city)	1853
Founded by	Essex Company
Named after	Abbott Lawrence
Government
• Type	Mayor–council
• Mayor	Brian De Peña
• City council	Jeovanny A. Rodrigueze (Council President) Stephany Infante (Vice-President, District E) Celina Reyes (at-large) Ana Levy (at-large) Fidelina Santiago (District A) Wendy Luzon (District B) Gregory Del Rosario (District C) Vivian Marmol (District D) Marc LaPlant (District F)
Area
• Total	7.43 sq mi (19.24 km)
• Land	6.93 sq mi (17.95 km)
• Water	0.50 sq mi (1.29 km)
Elevation	16 ft (4.9 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	89,143
• Density	12,863.8/sq mi (4,966.73/km)
Time zone	UTC−5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (EDST)
ZIP Codes	01840–01843
Area code	351/978
FIPS code	25-34550
Website	www.cityoflawrence.com

Lawrence is a city located in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, on the Merrimack River. At the 2020 census the city had a population of 89,143. Surrounding communities include Methuen to the north, Andover to the southwest, and North Andover to the east. Lawrence and Salem were the county seats of Essex County, until the state abolished county government in 1999. Lawrence is part of the Merrimack Valley.

Manufacturing products of the city include electronic equipment, textiles, footwear, paper products, computers, and foodstuff. Lawrence was the residence of the poet Robert Frost for his early school years; his essays and poems were first published in the Lawrence High School newspaper. Lawrence is also the birthplace of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in 1918, and singer Robert Goulet in 1933.

Native Americans lived along the Merrimack River for thousands of years before European colonization of the Americas. Evidence of farming at Den Rock Park and arrowhead manufacturing on the site where the Wood Mill now sits have been discovered.

At the time of contact in the early 1600s, the Pennacook or Pentucket had a presence north of the Merrimack, while Massachusett, Naumkeag, and Agawam controlled territory south of the river. The territory which would later be aggregated into the city of Lawrence was purchased from Pennacooks Sagahew and Passaquo in 1642 for the English settlement of Haverhill, and from Massachusett sachem Cutshamekin in 1646 as a post-hoc payment for the lands surrounding the English settlement of Andover (modern-day North Andover center).

Europeans first settled the Haverhill area in 1640, colonists from Newbury following the Merrimack River in from the coast. The area that would become Lawrence was then part of Methuen and Andover. The first settlement within the present-day city limits came in 1655 with the establishment of a blockhouse in Shawsheen Fields, now South Lawrence.

The future site of the city (formerly parts of Andover and Methuen) was purchased by a consortium of local industrialists. The Water Power Association members: Abbott Lawrence, Edmund Bartlett, Thomas Hopkinson of Lowell, John Nesmith and Daniel Saunders, had purchased control of Peter’s Falls on the Merrimack River and hence controlled Bodwell’s Falls the site of the present Great Stone Dam. The group allotted fifty thousand dollars to buy land along the river to develop. In 1844, the group petitioned the legislature to act as a corporation, known as the Essex Company, which incorporated on April 16, 1845. The first excavations for the Great Stone Dam to harness the Merrimack River’s water power were done on August 1, 1845. The Essex Company would sell the water power to corporations such as the Arlington Mills, as well as organize the construction of mills and build to suit. Until 1847, when the state legislature recognized the community as a town, it was called interchangeably the “New City”, “Essex” or “Merrimac”. The post office, built in 1846, used the designation “Merrimac”. The city was incorporated in 1853, and named for Abbott Lawrence.

Canals were dug on both the north and the south banks to provide power to the factories that would soon be built on its banks, as both mill owners and workers from across the city and the world flocked to the city in droves; many were Irish laborers who had experience with similar building work. The work was dangerous; injuries and even death were common.

The Pemberton Mill collapse occurred on January 10, 1860, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The five-story textile mill, built in 1853, was a major employer, particularly of Irish immigrants, many of whom were women and children. Around 600–800 workers were inside at the time of the collapse, though estimates vary. The official death toll was 88, with estimates of 116–145 deaths and hundreds injured, many permanently disabled. The disaster was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in U.S. history. Investigations pinned the collapse on substandard construction, specifically defective cast-iron columns that were too weak to support the mill’s weight. Poor oversight, cost-cutting by owners, and overloading the structure with heavy machinery exacerbated the issue. The mill had been known to vibrate heavily during operation, a warning sign that had been ignored. As immigrants flooded into the United States in the mid-to-late 19th century, the population of Lawrence abounded with skilled and unskilled workers from several countries. Protesting conditions, in 1912 they walked out of the mills. The action, sometimes celebrated as the Bread and Roses Strike, was one of the more important, widely reported, labor struggles in American history.

The Industrial Workers of the World (the “One Big Union”, the “Wobblies”) defied the common wisdom that a largely female and ethnically divided workforce could not be organized, and the strike held through two bitterly cold winter months. The 15-year-old mill-hand Fred Beal, who was drawn by the experience into a lifetime of labor organizing, recalls that contrary to expectations, it was the most recent immigrant groups, “the Italians, Poles, Syrians [Lebanese] and Franco-Belgians”, who “kept it alive”.

After hundreds of the strikers’ hungry children had been sent to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, and the U.S. Congress was induced to hold hearings, the mill owners decided to settle, giving workers in Lawrence and throughout New England raises of up to 20 percent. However, in the decades that followed, the mill owners moved their capital and employment out of Lawrence and the region to the non-union South—as a young Massachusetts Senator, John F. Kennedy, was later to record.

Lawrence was a great wool-processing center until that industry declined in the 1950s. The decline left Lawrence a struggling city. The population of Lawrence declined from over 80,000 residents in 1950 (and a high of 94,270 in 1920) to approximately 64,000 residents in 1980, the low point of Lawrence’s population. Much of the population relocated to nearby Methuen.

Like other northeastern cities suffering from the effects of post-World War II industrial decline, Lawrence has often made efforts at revitalization, some of them controversial. The Lawrence Redevelopment Authority and city officials utilized eminent domain for a perceived public benefit, via a top-down approach, to revitalize the city throughout the 1960s. Known first as urban redevelopment, and then urban renewal, Lawrence’s local government’s actions towards vulnerable immigrant and poor communities, contained an undercurrent of gentrification which lies beneath the goals to revitalize Lawrence. There was a clash of differing ideals and perceptions of blight, growth, and what constituted a desirable community. Ultimately the discussion left out those members of the community who would be directly impacted by urban redevelopment.