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Locomotive For Passengers as Built by the Lowell Machine Shop. 1855. [Locomotive engine “Leader.”]

Boston: Lowell Machine Shop, 1855. L. H. Bradford, lith. Chromolithograph, 20.125” x 32.25” plus margins. CONDITION: Good, expertly-repaired 2.75” tear into “C” in “LOCOMOTIVE” at center top, three neatly-repaired four inch tears into blank area at right (not affecting image), and repaired four-inch tear at lower left (through rail but not affecting locomotive); repair to upper right corner (margin only); a few small marginal repairs; light toning, soiling and creasing; recently backed with Japanese tissue.

A handsome chromolithograph issued by the Lowell Machine Shop of Lowell, Massachusetts in the heyday of locomotive builders’ advertising prints, picturing the locomotive engine Leader, which, according to the plaque mounted on its side, was built in 1854.

Picturing Leader in meticulous mechanical detail and printed in a pleasing combination of red, green, gold and black, this print is a fine example of the genre that kept the accomplishments of locomotive builders in the public eye and served then as now as one of the more captivating visual records of the industrial transformation of the United States.

Founded as an independent concern in 1845, the Lowell Machine Shop grew from the modest shop of the Boston Manufacturing Company of Waltham into the mechanical heart of Lowell. First located in the Merrimack Company’s machine shop and later managed by the Proprietors of Locks and Canals, the works supplied the city’s entire industrial ecosystem: spinning and weaving machinery, waterwheels and turbines, steam engines, and the shafts and gearing that carried power through the mills. Its reach quickly extended beyond the Merrimack, as it furnished equipment and machine tools for factories across New England, and even turned out locomotives that advanced the region’s rail transport. In scale and consequence, it stood second only to the textile mills themselves.

Its distinction owed much to a succession of gifted engineers. Paul Moody, veteran of Waltham’s early experiments with the power loom, shaped the shop’s inventive, adaptable culture and trained a generation of mechanics. In 1835, George Washington Whistler, the father of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, reverse-engineered an English locomotive engine to produce one of New England’s first homebuilt locomotives, and within a few years the shop had completed dozens more. Under James B. Francis, the canals were refined, turbines perfected, and precision toolmaking elevated to a science. From these workshops—where Americans learned to make the machines that made other machines—emerged the technical self-sufficiency that powered the nation’s early industrial revolution and helped inaugurate its machine age.

Lithographer Lodowick Harrington Bradford (1820–1885) was born in Boston and operated an engraving business there from 1845 to 1848. His partnership with Tappan lasted until the Tappan’s death in 1854, after which Bradford continued as an engraver and lithographer under the name L. H. Bradford & Co., which existed from 1854 to 1859. While it is unclear if Bradford had any other partners, engraver George Girdler Smith is known to have worked for Bradford in the late 1850s, and was also a partner in various lithography firms associated with printing innovations and producing scientific illustrations. L. H. Bradford & Co. also produced scientific and other book illustrations, as well as views, maps, plans, and sheet music covers. Bradford’s best known prints are Fitz Henry Lane’s largest and most successful lithographs, View of Gloucester, Mass. (ca. 1855) and Castine, from Hospital Island (1855), both apparently printed in the same year as the print offered here. In 1856, Bradford began working with the Boston photographer James Ambrose Cutting to create a photolithographic process, concentrating mainly on photolithography for the rest of his career. He died in Gloucester, Mass. in 1885.

REFERENCES: “Lowell, Story of an Industrial City: Lowell Machine Shop” at National Park Service online.

Item #9346

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