Alumnae Quarterly
[ Current Issue | Archives | About Us | Contact Us ]
|
Have a fondness for Prospect Hill? With only a few mouse clicks you’ll connect to architects’ evolving plans for the hill, as well as links to historical information and archival photos. Click on the maypole icon at the hill’s summit and you’ll see the 1904 May Day celebration. You can then link to other photos and alumnae reminiscences of May Day. Once the atlas goes live, you’ll be able to explore all corners of the campus through maps, photos, and memories. While histories of college campuses have been compiled since at least the 1930s, Schwartz’s atlas is groundbreaking because it will use state-of-the-art geographic information systems (GIS) technology to visualize, interpret, and connect maps, pictures, and texts. Equally innovative is Schwartz’s plan to develop a “humanized” atlas that documents the memories and activities attached to MHC’s landscape and buildings. “I don’t know of any projects under way to create an atlas that also collect the memory of places,” says Schwartz. “And that’s a key part of this atlas. For example, we’ll learn about the memories that alumnae associate with Lower Lake and Skinner Green.” Schwartz’s goal also is to recover electronically what has been displaced and modified. “Historians are always in the business of getting back what’s gone. That’s one impetus for this project. Another is my concern about some recent campus changes. Instead of being a griper, I’m trying to educate myself—and others,” he says. “Conservation isn’t drawing a line in the sand and saying, ‘No more change.’ We’re always going to have to be changing the campus. But I think, for example, that the design and moral aim of Frederick Law Olmsted’s original landscaping plan for Prospect Hill deserve to be retrieved and understood, along with the succession of landscapes and architectures that have formed and re-formed the campus. The atlas will not only recover some of the varied and shifting ideas that have shaped the campus over time but also will help us better serve as good stewards of this historic campus.” Since President Creighton approved the project in February, Schwartz has been consulting with Jill Crook Trebbe ’90, an archivist at the Frederick Law Olmsted Historical Site in Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s also designed a course, Mapping the Memorable Landscapes: A Cultural and Environmental History of the Mount Holyoke College Campus, in which students will research and create components for the atlas. Materials for this fall 2003 course will be previewed at a May 23 “Back-to-Class” Reunion session that Schwartz will present with Donna J. Albino ’83, a software engineer and longtime collector of historic Mount Holyoke postcards. Schwartz hopes that alumnae will help create the atlas by contributing “memories of places that served as sites of educational and social life. Though I can’t make any guarantees about what will be used and probably won’t be able to respond to submissions, I welcome focused recollections of the campus.” Reminiscences can be sent to Schwartz at hatlas@mtholyoke.edu or care of the history department, Skinner Hall, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075. |
If you’ve ever wanted to see Mount Holyoke’s historic campus through
the eyes of the past, you’ll soon have that chance. A Web site being
developed by Robert Schwartz, professor of history, will offer an interactive
atlas of the campus from its origins to the present. “Memorable Landscapes:
An Electronic Historical Atlas of the Mount Holyoke College Campus”—expected
to be complete in January 2004—will invite the MHC community to step back in
time.