Garrison Keillor: When we were cool

"The mansion on Lowry Hill whose backyard the Guthrie sits on did not last long either. Thomas Lowry arrived in town after the Civil War and made his fortune in the wake of the crash of 1873 when he snapped up real estate at bargain prices and then came the boom and suddenly he had a mansion on a hill that was named for him. He was the president of the Soo Line railroad and a staunch Republican who bought and restored the railroad car that carried Abraham Lincoln's coffin from Washington to Springfield in 1865. Lowry died in 1909 and two years later the Lincoln car, which was kept at the Soo Line yards in Columbia Heights, went up in flames." -Garrison Keillor, Star Tribune July 15 2005

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