Location: Lynn, Essex, Massachusetts, United States
The Lynn Stories Mural is located on the side of the LynnArts Building in the Frederick Douglass Park in Lynn, Massachusetts. The mural was a multi-year collaboration between three artists - David Fichter, Yetti Frenkel, Joshua C. Winer - and includes mosaics created in residencies with students from all of the city’s middle and high schools. Funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the New England Foundation for the Arts.[1]
Lynn Stories Mural Image Descriptions:[2]
Portraits
- Cyrus Mason Tracy Jr (1824-1891) was a self trained botanist who formed the Explorer's circle, a group of naturalists who were instrumental in preserving Lynn Woods for future generations
- Legend of Pirate Treasure at Dungeon Rock. Dungeon Rock is a natural cave in Lynn Woods. Pirates are rumored to have buried treasure there. One of the portraits in the mural is of Hiram Marble (1803-aft.1860) in Dungeon Rock Cave - Hiram Marble was a real person who believed in the legend of pirate treasure buried in Lynn Woods. He purchased the land from the city and began digging in the cave. He funded his search by selling tickets to the public to tour the cave.
- Mary Morse (Baker) Eddy (1821-1910) discovered Christian Science while living in Lynn.
- Lydia (Estes) Pinkham (1819-1883) invented and marketed a medicine to aid women with menstrual and menopausal issues. It contained a mixture of alcohol and herbs.
- Elihu Thomson (1853-1937) was an inventor and engineer who formed the General Electric Company (GE)
- Vincent Ferrini (1913-2007) was the poet Laureate of Gloucester, MA. He grew up in Lynn and worked in shoe factories and at GE.
- Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) was an astronomer who discovered a comet in 1847.
- Frederick Augustus Washington (Bailey) Douglass (abt.1818-1895) was an escaped slave who made his home in Lynn in the 1840's and wrote his famous book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave while living in the city.
- The Hutchinson Family Singers were a popular singing group who promoted abolitionism, women's rights, temperance, and worker's rights. One of the singers, Jesse Hutchinson Jr. (1813-1853) built High Rock Tower (pictured behind the Hutchinson Family Singers) as an observatory. It is still used for that purpose today.
- Charles Herbert Woodbury (1864-1940) was one of a group of artists known as the Lynn Beach Painters
- Alonzo Lewis (1794-1861) was a man of many talents; a writer, surveyor, editor, and publisher. He was also an ardent abolitionist, historian and a poet.
- Jan Ernst Matzeliger (1852-1889) was an inventor who significantly changed the shoe industry by creating the lasting machine. This process joined the sole of the shoe to the upper portion. His health was ruined in the pursuit of perfecting his model for the machine, and he died of tuberculosis just shy of his 37th birthday.
- Aristotle George Agganis (1929-1955), a.k.a. Harry Agganis The Golden Greek, played for the Boston Red Sox as a first baseman from 1954 to 1955
Additional images in the mural:
- Stone Tower in Lynn Woods - Stone Tower was built in 1936 for fire observation
- Barred owl in Lynn Woods - Lynn Woods is a 2200 acre municipal park that was created to protect the water supply for the city
- Indian Moccasins and Birch Wood Basket - These items come from the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and represent the tribes who were here before Lynn existed
- GE Worker assembling a jet engine
- Images down the far right side of the arch all feature Lynn Beach and Red Rock: children explore tide pools on a field trip to Red Rock, A hand holds a large Moon Snail, sandpipers, sneakers that are companion pieces to the moccasins on the left side of the mural, shells, and a beach rose.
- Worker's rights rally featuring a woman speaker advocating for the rights of shoe industry workers.
- The Olympia Theater was a grand cinema in downtown Lynn
- Lynn Workers Strike at GE, 1946
- Immigrant family at dinner
- Tenement houses
- Women factory workers
- Lynn Fire of 1889 (In 1981 there was another great fire that destroyed many buildings in the area near where the North Shore Community College now stands.)
- Lynn Shoemaker's Strike of 1860
- Cottage industry shoemakers
- Worker using Jan Matzeliger's lasting machine
- Poems - Bells of Lynn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the Factories by Vincent Ferrini
Sources
- ↑ “Lynn Stories Mural – Lynn Museum.” Accessed September 6, 2023. https://lynnmuseum.org/mural/.
- ↑ Lynn Stories Mural, YettiFrenkelArt. Accessed September 6, 2023. https://yetti.com/lynn-stories-mural.
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