Shoe shack salvage aims to preserve Lynn history

LYNN – Preservationists are taking steps to salvage the wooden shoe shack at the corner of Alley and Shepard streets, purportedly built in the 1700s and known as a 10-Footer.”We hope to relocate it to a different site. It has been donated by the family,” said Historical Commission member Calvin Anderson. “The building is a remnant of the city’s cottage shoe industry.”Shoes were made in homes or in cramped workshops at the dawn of Lynn’s industrial past, often located next to homes and seldom larger than 10-feet square, hence the name 10-Footer.The Lynn Museum on Washington Street has a restored 10-Footer on display in its lobby.Anderson and others plan to visit the property on Saturday, Dec. 4 armed with tools, gloves and dust masks.”The first phase is to remove all unoriginal material from the facade,” he said.Local artist and Historical Commission member Aikaterini Panagiotakis said research of Lynn Public Library records turned up useful information about the 10-Footer in the city’s Brickyard neighborhood.”Colleen Murphy and I found the names and dates of at least two shoe-making families, which utilized the 10-footer in the Lynn Brickyard neighborhood at different periods of time,” she said.She noted that the property was owned in the 1800s by shoe- and boot-maker John Townsend and eventually by Daniel Townsend.It was later sold to John Hart, whose descendents apparently made shoes in the building during the early 1900s.The diminutive workshop has been referred to by researchers as the Townsend/Hart 10-Footer to distinguish it from the 10-Footer in the Lynn Museum.”Basically there was an urban legend about a 10-Footer remaining in the Brick Yard. No one could prove it. I tried to tell the Historical Commission that it was there, but without any proof it couldn’t be saved,” said Panagiotakis, who has since been appointed to the commission.The building is owned by a relative of Ward 6 Councilor Peter Capano and will be donated to the city, she said, adding that plans are under way to involve Lynn Vocational & Technical Institute students in the restoration project.”The students will become part of the learning process to restore an old structure,” she said.