Landmark Lowe Hall Celebrates 132 Years in Style

Improvements Bring New Life To Landmark Building

Lowe Hall has enjoyed a storied history at the heart of Cushing Academy. Built in 1890, it is one of the four original buildings at Cushing and one of only two that remain today. Improvements to the facility completed last summer are designed to ensure it continues to serve the school well in the years to come.

Yesterday

Lowe exists thanks to the generosity of Abraham T. Lowe, an Ashburnham native. Dr. Lowe was born in 1796 and attended Dartmouth College, earning a medical degree, according to the sesquicentennial magazine, Cushing Yesterday and Today. He came home to Ashburnham and set up practice with his father, also named Abraham. For a period, Dr. Lowe also ran an apothecary shop on Court Street in Boston.

Dr. Lowe was engaged in his community. He served in the state legislature and also as the president of several banks. He was also one of Cushing’s original trustees, starting in 1865 and continuing until his death in 1889. Books from his personal collection were some of the first books in Cushing’s library.

Over the past 132 years, Lowe, located off Academy Road, just across from the Main Building, has served as a girls’ dorm (actress Bette Davis ’26 once lived there), a boys’ dorm, an infirmary, and a dining hall. Originally the building included 21 steam-heated rooms. An editorial in an 1889 Breeze characterized the residence as “luxuriated in its plush furniture and fine paintings, its broad staircase and its marble flooring.”

Lowe Hall stood where buildings around it failed. A fire destroyed Cushing’s original Main Building in 1893. The community gathered at Lowe as the fire smoldered. In 1938, it stood through a hurricane that devastated Long Island and the New England shoreline, although its chimneys were destroyed. It has been remodeled frequently over the years, including a 2015 rehab of the common room.

Because Lowe Hall was constructed so early in Cushing’s existence, its story really is the story of Cushing.

—Cushing Yesterday and Today, 2016

TODAY

A renovation this summer brought new lighting, new doors, and new wood-look vinyl flooring in the student rooms. The biggest change was for the bathrooms, which have been totally gutted and rebuilt with modern sinks, subway wall tiles, new tile on the floors, and full-size showers.

▼ Ray Freeman writes, “Had a great ski season. Mary and I logged 20 days at Vail, Steamboat Springs, and Mammoth Mountain just before celebrating birthday #88. I still remember Henry Hunt trying to persuade me that cross-country skiing was fun, but I’m clearly a downhill kind of guy.”

Cushing and with the rest of the class of 1953! I would love to have news of other classmates.”