A rare prospect of Lawrence, Massachusetts

A large prospect of Lawrence, an industrial settlement founded by a consortium intending to use the waters of the Merrimack River to power mills. Named after one of the founding industrialists, Abbott Lawrence (1792-1855), this view seems to have been published at the time of Lawrence's incorporation as a city in 1853. Although built with philanthropic ideals (the text counts 14 churches and 14 schools), Lawrence was still hardly a worker's paradise: in 1860, only about five years after being named in this print, the Pemberton Mill collapsed, killing 145 of its 800 workers, with 166 injured.