Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Bowers, Jonathan, House
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“(VII) Daniel Smith Gray, son of Timothy Gray (6), born in Wilton, New Hampshire, October 6, 1816, died October 9, 1900, at Lowell. He attended the district schools of his native town, and remained at home working on his father's farm until he was about twenty years of age.”
Historic Homes and Places and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Middlesex County, Massachusetts ; (1908). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.76000253- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
It appears that immediately after ilr. Lowell's return he had at once gone to work to construct a loom ; but he found its construction no easy task. Without patterns, or even drawings, so far as we know, each part had to be planned and tried, altered and rearranged, until tlie whole assumed the shape of a machine. We are told that " many little matters were to be overcome or adjusted before it would work perfectly." Mr. Appleton says : " Mr. Lowell said to me that he did not wish me to see it until it was complete, of whicli he would give me notice. At length the time arrived. He invited me to go out with him and see the loom operate. I well recollect the state of admiration and satisfaction with which we sat by the hour watching the beautiful movement of this new and wonderful machine, destined, as it evidently was, to change the character of all textile industry. This was in the autumn of 1814."
The great obstacle to tlie use of the power-loom, at that time, proved to be dressing the yarn ; it required a man at each loom to dress the warp as it unrolled from the beam. This rendered it necessary to stop the loom while the man was doing it. This difficulty was removed by the invention of an ingenious mode of dressing the warp before it was placed in the loom. Mr. Lowell procured from England a drawing of Horrocks' dressing-frame, and Mr. Moody, whose services he had secured, made an improvement which more than doubled its efficiency, - a very ingenious machine called a warper, that wound the threads from the bobbins on the beam. After this there was no farther difficulty in running a power-loom.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 134 fires within 5 miles of Bowers, Jonathan, House between
2001 and 2020, burning about 74 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 31 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
40
Arson/incendiarism
31
Debris and open burning
29
Recreation and ceremony
19
Smoking
4
Power generation/transmission/distribution
3
Natural
3
Equipment and vehicle use
2
Railroad operations and maintenance
2
Other causes
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 506 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Bowers, Jonathan, House between 1898 and
1975: 345 Plantae, 95 Animalia, 33 Fungi, 29 Protozoa, 3 Chromista, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. C. Mathieson, A. F. Newton, A. F. Newton, M. K. Thayer and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
30 workings within 5 miles of Bowers, Jonathan, House: 16 past producers, 10 producers, 4 plants.
14 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Granite, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Graphite. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Lowell, the town this property stands in, in 16 storm reports between 1995 and 2023: 6 thunderstorm wind, 4 flood, 3 lightning, 2 hail.
The reports record 2 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
3,203 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
Situated near the top of a small hill less than one-half mile from the Merrimac River, this mansard house is commonly called the "Round House" or "The Castle " because of its unique design. The five-story house was built in 1872 by Jonathan Bowers, an industrialist and owner of a local pleasure resort. It was construc- ted of granite from Bowers' own quarry in Iyngsboro and cost $30,000. The Round House is forty feet in diameter and its walls are eighteen inches thick. Each of the first three floors have eleven foot ceiling heights with a two-foot depth of floor construction. The fourth floor attic is nine feet high and topped with a cupola. The house is set back from Wannalancit Street about thirty feet. The driveway approach is introduced by a granite wall standing four feet high.
Echoing the roundness of the house, the two sections of the wall curve inward at the entrance to the drive and are accented at both ends by a round granite column five feet high which is topped with a flat, round granite slab. The basement floor of the house is marked by a projecting belt course, and the windows are rectangular and plain. The main entrance on the first floor consists of a one-story, flat-topped porch extending from the round core toward Wannalancit Street. Seven steps lead through a large arch to the double front doors. On the opposite side of the building is another extension which probably served as the pantry- One-story high with a flat roof, it contains three small arched windows and an arched doorway. The first floor has five segmental arched windows.
On the south side of the house is a two-story rounded bay window.
/ARCHITECT The Round House is significant for its unique architectural design and as the home of a well-known local mill owner. Although the architect of this curiosity is unknown, it is known that the builder was Jonathan Bowers. Bowers, owner of a local mill and amusement park, built the Round House for his daughter's wedding reception. The house cost $30,000 and the granite used in its construction was from Bowers' own quarry in Tyngsboro. The interior woodwork was cut and molded by carpenters from his mill. Bowers himself occupied the house until 1879 when he moved to neighboring Willow Dale. The next owner was John G. Rogers, a grain merchant who lived ton tro Roung nouse unc a Nila daitn in 9 in the Round House until his death in 1890. George F.
Libbe, a dealer in plumbing, tin and sheet iron products, was the next occupant of the house. In 1919 Libbe sold the house be used as their headquarters. In 1925 the Round House was sold to Minnie Bowers Jewett, the daughter of the builder Jonathan Bowers and mother of politician Victor Francis Jewett. Between 1925 and 1934 the house was used principally as law offices by Victor Jewett, who was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives between 1912 and 1934. The Round House was abandoned from 1965 until 1971 when it was purchased by the present owners who saw it advertised under the category of "Castles" in a Boston newspaper. The interior of the house is currently being restored to its 1872 appearance.
The exterior remains virtually unaltered, and con- tinues to remain one of Lowell's most unique landmarks.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76000253, 14 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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