Jack Kerouac Park is a small street-corner memorial in downtown Lowell, dedicated to the city's most famous literary son. The centrepiece is eight large granite columns inscribed with passages from Kerouac's novels — including "On the Road," "The Dharma Bums," and "Doctor Sax," the autobiographical novel set in Lowell itself. The columns surround a bronze bust of Kerouac and a few benches where people sit to read the inscriptions.
The park is a five-minute walk from the Boott Mills Museum and is worth a visit for anyone interested in the Beat Generation. Kerouac's Lowell — the working-class French-Canadian neighbourhoods, the Merrimack River, the Pawtucket Canal — still exists in recognisable form, and reading his Lowell novels while actually in the city adds a different dimension to both the books and the place.