Lynn Works by George Greenamyer, the monumental sculpture at the corner of Broad and Market Streets, a tribute to the history of labor and industry in Lynn, was dedicated in October 1987, part of the celebration that year of the opening of North Shore Community College’s new permanent campus, built on the site of the Great Lynn Fire of 1981.

It is 60-feet long, 22-feet high and 4-feet wide. On a rail spanning the length of the sculpture sit two flat cars, each representing Lynn workers and industries. The rail car on the right is all about shoes. On it ride ten 10-footers, shoe-making shacks used by individual shoemakers to make shoes by hand. In between the 10-footers are seven men wearing aprons, carrying ladies’ high-button shoes made by machine. At the far left, a man points forward, perhaps to guide the eye to the other flat car that features three automobiles, two factory buildings with smoke billowing from smokestacks, an aircraft engine, a nod to General Electric, and a very diverse group of 13 people working in a variety of capacities and dressed accordingly.

The emphasis on shoe making and manufacturing on the right side of Lynn Works is in keeping with Lynn being the Shoe City. By the mid-1700s, Lynn was a center for making women’s shoes, and during the early-to-mid-1800s, entrepreneurs organized central shops, which streamlined shoe making. Shoemakers left 10-footers and making the entire shoe behind, as they now worked in larger spaces, making one part of the shoe before passing it along.  

Another outcome of shoemaking in Lynn was growth in the strength and influence of labor unions.  A strike by Lynn shoe workers in 1860 was the biggest labor action in the US before the Civil War. Numerous labor unions were active in Lynn as shoemaking boomed into the first decade of the 20^th century, but by the 1930s, these unions were in decline as shoe manufacturers moved their factories to other states.

As the 20^th century progressed, General Electric became the leading industrial employer in Lynn. This is represented by the airplane engine carried above the heads of workers standing on the left railcar of Lynn Works. The International Union of Electrical Workers has stood up for the rights and interests of GE employees, and “the GE,” as they say, will continue to prosper as the jet engine component of the GE Corporation will soon be spun off as its own entity.

In addition to paying homage to shoemaking and GE as prime movers in Lynn’s industrial history, George Greenamyer recognizes the role cars and the railroad played in Lynn’s development. The Eastern Railroad [now the MBTA Commuter Rail] came to Lynn in 1838 and connected the city to Boston and the North Shore. In 1841, Afro-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who wrote his famous autobiography while living in Lynn, refused to sit in the segregated section of the Eastern Railroad and was removed from the train in an incident foreshadowing the protest of Rosa Parks in the 1950s. In Lynn during that decade, the Lynnway opened, signaling a post-war shift in travel and commuting from railroad to car, a transition represented by the three autos on the left railcar.

George Greenamyer has captured the spirit and history of Lynn in Lynn Works.   His many other large-scale works, installed in public spaces throughout Massachusetts and the US, share with Lynn Works being elevated well above the ground and supported by steel beams, a reliance on human forms, ordinary people, the use of modes of transportation: cars, trains, boats, planes, a sense of whimsy and a grounding in realism, no abstractions.   On his website, www.georgegreenamyer.com Greenamyer states he wants his work to be “understandable to the non-art-trained person” and he believes “public art should not be simply museum art in a public space.”

George Greenamyer (1939 – 2023) started the sculpture department at Mass College of Art & Design and taught there for decades, focusing on metalworking and welding in his classes. He writes he seeks “to make the concept belong to the site,” and in the case of Lynn Works, he has. The Great Lynn Fire of 1981 destroyed quite a few shoe factories, and with respect to those, Lynn Works honors centuries of shoe workers and members of the modern workforce as well.   George Greenamyer died in April 2023. His obituary ran in the Patriot Ledger, among others. Lynn Works is testament to the art of his constructions.   https://www.patriotledger.com/story/lifestyle/2023/07/25/marshfield-ma-sculptor-george-greenamyer-dies-teacher-mass-college-of-art/70453510007/

My Role in Lynn Works

I was on the committee formed to commission an outdoor sculpture for the new Lynn campus. The choice came down to a contemporary “statement” piece or one that “said something” about Lynn.   Fortunately, the latter view prevailed.

Twenty-five years later, in constructing the college’s new wing, Lynn Works was removed and warehoused indefinitely. I became a crusader for the return of the sculpture, and after a long campaign, the effort succeeded.

I’m grateful for my role in bringing to Lynn a monumental work of public art that makes viewers think about the ways it represents the city.