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Heights History: Reverend Richard Salter Storrs

The Congregational Church of the Pilgrims and its founding pastor, Rev. Richard Salter Storrs, are probably the most underappreciated place and person in the Heights, because the church no longer exists. Plymouth was born out of Pilgrims, at Remsen and Henry Streets, whose members had left the First Presbyterian. The men who founded Plymouth felt that Pilgrims […]

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Heights Happy Hooker is Stuff of Urban Legend

There is an urban legend in the Heights to the effect that Xaviera Hollander’s brothel was in the Behr House. Not true. When 84 Pierrepont was the Palm Hotel it was a house of ill repute, probably in the 1930s and forties. It was purchased by the Franciscan Brothers in 1961 as staff housing in […]

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Heights History: The Two Seth Lows

Here is another article on Heights history by Robert Furman: The Low family fortune was begun by Seth Low the elder (1782-1853, A.A.’s father, who was born in 1782 in West Gloucester, Massachusetts. After the death of Seth’s father, who had served in the Revolution, the family moved to Haverhill, Mass.,where Seth prepared to enter […]

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Heights History: A.A. Low

Most people know the AA Low house at the Montague Street Promenade entrance (3 Pierrepont Place). But do we know who he was besides the father of Mayor Seth Low? Abiel Abbot Low was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1811 and, through his father, Seth the Elder, became involved in the China trade in a […]

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