Memorable Landscapes: An Electronic Historical Atlas

of the Mount Holyoke College Campus

Project Description

Robert Schwartz

Department of History

            This is a modest proposal to create something new under the sun: an electronic atlas of the campus from its origins to the present. True, histories of college campuses, their landscapes, and their architecture are not new. Among the best in this genre are Henry Canby’s Alma Mater (1936), Helen L. Horwitz’s Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges (1984), and Paul Turner’s Campus: an American Planning Tradition (1984).  For a single campus, Peter Ferguson’s and James O’Gorman’s interpretive history of Wellesley is both handsome and insightful (The Landscape and Architecture of Wellesley College, 2000).  Closer to home, there is Anne Edmonds’ A Memory Book. Mount Holyoke College 1837-1987 (1988), a useful and well illustrated history commemorating the sesquicentennial of our institution. Nonetheless, by moving beyond the venerable book via information technology, the Electronic Atlas will offer much that is original and innovative.

 

 

            To understand the nature of the project let us consider one example of the enabling technology and historical content. GIS is a computer technology that integrates cartography, database functionality, and spatial analysis. The defining characteristic of a GIS database is the spatial layer: a map of geographic features that are linked to a database of feature attributes. Feature name, feature type (field, water, building, etc.), date of origin, architect, and ceremonial use are examples of attributes. In the GIS on which the entire Atlas will be based, Pageant Field and Prospect Hill in the1930s will be geographic features within the layer constructed for that era.  On the computer display, one can view the whole layer of features or “zoom in” to examine specific features at varying degrees of magnification. In our vector-based system, the Field and the Hill will be represented by a polygon. Within it will be other smaller polygons, lines, and points to designate, for example, the shaded paths bounding the Field, the wooden seats on the slope that formed a natural amphitheater, and the location of the maypole at the summit of Prospect Hill. The historical information about the Field and the Hill, which will be stored in database table, can be called up for viewing by a mouse click on one or another symbol that serves as a hypertext link. A click on the maypole symbol will bring up a picture of the 1904 May Day celebration on Prospect Hill. On the frame around this image there will be other hypertext links leading to a variety of other documents: a picture of the Queen and her court, a brief history of the rite, a set of reminiscences about May Day

 

 

collected from alums or from archival sources. To take full advantage of internet technology, one link could lead to either an audio or video interview of an alum of the 1930s. Other clickable symbols will designate different sight lines for viewing the scene. For example, a mouse click on an arrow pointing west on the Field will open an aerial photograph of a 1932 celebration honoring Mary Woolley, viewed from above and looking from the east. (See below.)

 

            As teachers are eager to remind all in earshot, maps, pictures, and documents rarely if ever speak for themselves. They need to be interpreted. To bring these sources alive, each layer and significant feature will be identified through annotations, captions, and interpretive essays. To get a sense of this let us continue with Pageant Field, working outward to connect this place of ceremony and sociability with its larger spatial and historical context.

 

           Now more enclosed between the power plant parking lot on the south and the art building on the north, and visually bounded by the Gettell amphitheater on the west and a row of shrubbery on the east, in 1890s Pageant Field was an open, sloping field on which ceremonies, rites, and social gatherings regularly took place.  When the Frederick Law Olmsted firm was first employed to develop part of the campus in 1882, the Field, its gentle slope (now largely gone because of the

 

 

steep grading for the Gettell amphitheater), and the trees lining its south and north edges were incorporated as central features in the Olmsted design. Instead of breaking up and enclosing the space as it is now, the Olmsted plan preserved the field’s openness to create a “natural” avenue for views east and west. The rows of trees that had previously served as north and south property lines were preserved and enhanced, the better to frame these east-west perspectives.  The grove on the south was transformed into a deeply shaded path that escorted strollers down the slope to the boat house at the water’s edge.

 

           The east-west axis led from Mary Lyon’s grave down the sloping Field to Stony Brook. Across the brook the landscape joined the major work of this first Olmsted project, Goodnow Park. Meandering paths through the sculpted woods—a hallmark feature of Olmsted landscapes—climbed upward, reaching Prospect Hill and the Pepper Box observation house at the summit. As intended, the delight of the design made itself felt to walkers. Having ambled down the Field or along the tree-lined path, students reached the water, crossed a small bridge over the brook, and then ascended through the Park to reach the summit.  From there on high, they would look back upon the campus and contemplate the graceful scenery laying below and leading beyond to the Connecticut River and Mount Tom to the west. 

 

 

            Such a jaunt was not pure fancy but a reality in days gone by.  Much repeated, it was a favorite passage through a designed nature that produced the desired effect. Here—and in the Atlas—the poetic voice of one student can serve to carry the point. Writing on June 10, 1889, Ellen Bowers spoke to graduates abroad in missionary work and invited them to recall the lovely serenity of their alma mater.

 

 

Prospect Hill looking west, 1880s
(from Edmonds, Memory Book)

Pepper Box at the summit of Prospect Hill, built in 1884 in conjunction
with the Olmsted landscaping of Goodnow Park
(from Edmonds, Memory Book)

           Such a reverie would surely have pleased Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons Frederick Jr. and John.  It was a reverie inspired by the classic Olmsted combination of artifice and nature with an intended moral purpose. The arboreal path leading to the water’s edge, the meandering passage through groves leading to the summit, the view across campus to Mount Tom, the summit overlook inviting contemplation—all were constructed to create a soothing separation from worldly commotion and to call forth from natural beauty a sense of moral elevation.

 

Students in hammocks near Mary Lyons' grave, 1891
(from Edmonds, Memory Book)

 

 

           However romantic or out of fashion they may appear today, the design and moral aim of Olmsted landscaping deserve to be retrieved and understood. This worthy task holds true more broadly for the succession of landscapes and architectures that have formed and re-formed our campus since its beginnings. To recover these landscapes and architectures entails not only the artful assembly and interpretation of maps and pictures but the rediscovery of the social practices and meanings that were attached to the land and buildings. By doing both we shall better understand how Mount Holyoke was in some ways unique and in other ways fully joined to the broader culture of higher education in general and to the ideas and ideals of women’s education in particular. With this deepened understanding, we can better appreciate our evolving traditions and the shifting roles of our institution. Likewise, we can better serve as good stewards of our historic campus, not to enshrine it but to make the wise use of this resource a practice and habit.

 

            Other benefits will flow from the project, too.  As a learning experience, the project will be partly produced in a new course on the history of the campus, which I shall offer during the fall semester 2003 and shall design to accommodate up to 40 students. Working in teams of four or five and with the help of student technologists, students will create specific components of the Atlas. More broadly, the project will develop in partnership with the Director and staff of the College Archives, with other LITS personnel, and the Center for Environmental Literacy. This collaboration will help develop further the Archives for teaching and research and will enhance the participation of LITS and CEL in course development and instruction.  The work will incorporate the participation of alumnae as sources of reminiscences and past experiences.  Constructed with professional standards of quality, the atlas should be of interest to Admissions, Communications, the Alumnae Office, and Development. It should prove attractive to prospective students, their parents, and donors. As mentioned above, the atlas should help us preserve our historic campus by guiding and informing plans to alter or enhance our buildings and landscape. Finally, by using state-of-the art technology to construct and serve interactive maps and historical materials, the Atlas will reflect well on our efforts to keep in the forefront of information technology.

 

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/ind_rev/indrev.html

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist256/

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/rail/intro_hist_gis.htm

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/rail/home.htm

Railways and Rural Development in England and Wales, 1850-1914 (web version of a published paper)

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/qr02/ (unit for Case Studies in Quantitative Reasoning, Fall 2002)

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist101/home.htm

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist257s02/home.htm
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist257s02/welcome.htm

From the first multimedia Frankenstein course produced on CD ROM, a streaming video

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist257s02/frankenstein/cuts_lan.html (requires Real Player)

www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/ (1999)

www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/home.htm (2001)

www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/ (2001)

www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/clio

 

Works Cited

Canby, Henry Seidel. Alma MateR: the Gothic Age of the American College. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, incorporated, 1936.

Edmonds, Anne Carey. A Memory Book. Mount Holyoke College 1837-1987. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Mount Holyoke College, 1988.

Fergusson, Peter, James F. O'Gorman, and John Rhodes. The Landscape and Architecture of Wellesley College. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, 2000.

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater. Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges From Their Nineteenth Century Beginnings to the 1930's. 1st ed. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1984.

Turner, Paul Venable.  Campus: an American Planning Tradition. The Architectural History Foundation/MIT Press Series. New York, Cambridge, Mass: Architectural History Foundation. MIT Press, 1984.