AS A GENTLE BREEZE BLOWS through the open windows and Lyle Lovett croons on an old Sony boombox, workers and volunteers at Lowell's Boat Shop do what they've always done. Saws buzz, sandpaper scrapes, and lumber bangs on floorboards coated with decades of sawdust and paint. Outside, on the Merrimack River, a line of wooden dories are moored near the shop. Cormorants sun themselves, wings outstretched, atop the gunwales.
Lowell's is the oldest continuously operating boat shop in America. Located in Amesbury, Massachusetts, it's both a national landmark and a working museum—emphasis on working. Founded by Simeon Lowell in 1793, it was passed on to Benjamin Lowell, then to Hiram Lowell, and kept in the Lowell family for seven generations, until 1976. (After that it was bought by the Odell family, then the Newburyport Maritime Society, and finally, in 2006, Lowell's Maritime Foundation, an independent nonprofit.)
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