In his preliminary campus planning proposal, Philip Parsons calls for a return to rituals and outdoor activities that give meaning to the campus. Mount Holyoke has a history of such activities, as can be seen in these photographs of May pageant events. The May Queen and attendants perform on Skinner Green in 1926.
When President Joanne Creighton opened the campus landscape forum at MHC March 3, she posed a number of questions. Said Creighton, "How do we make the campus more functional, more vibrant, and even more beautiful? How do we make it inviting and enlivening, a campus that draws people in? How do we showcase its assets? Uncover its hidden potential? Overcome its deficiencies and liabilities? How do we develop the campus as a living laboratory and an ecologically responsible habitat?" These questions and others relating to preserving the campus landscape and planning for its growth made for informative presentations by the forum's panelists and engendered a lively dialogue among the panelists, faculty, staff, and students at the event.
Creighton conceived the forum as the launching of a comprehensive campus master-planning process that is in the beginning stages. In early March, the Parsons Consulting Group submitted a preliminary master-plan proposal for the campus, and President Creighton recently formed both a board of trustees landscape and facilities task force and a campus master-planning committee made up of faculty, students, and staff.
Following Creighton's introduction and remarks by Joan Cocks, MHC professor of politics and the event's moderator, the forum began with a presentation by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, professor of history and American studies at Smith College. Noting that MHC has "a special responsibility for its historical landscape," Horowitz gave an overview of the history of the Mount Holyoke campus--focusing on its development from a single seminary building based on an asylum model to the current campus format.
Landscape architect David Miller, an expert on historic resource management and landscape architecture, spoke about the "landscape values" of the preliminary Parsons proposal, taking a look at how the current campus functions. He also offered a history of campus planning at MHC and a glimpse at how the College's landscape and architecture relate to the geography and history of the Connecticut River valley and to the campus plans of colleges such as Harvard, Yale, and Union. Miller discussed elements of the Parsons proposal that would "reopen the landscape, improving the flow of the landscape through core areas of the campus." He emphasized the value of lakes and streams to the campus ambiance and the importance of "bringing Prospect Hill back to the main part of the campus."
Campus planner Philip Parsons discussed his group's preliminary proposal for the campus. Quoting Montaigne, he noted that "to stay the same we have to change," acknowledging that the plan is designed to encourage greater social and intellectual vitality here. The proposal calls for a return to the original open and pastoral character of the campus and movement away from what Parsons calls the present "suburban look" that encourages isolation and privacy, rather than interaction. According to Parsons, opening up vistas from the top of Prospect Hill by thinning trees and clearing away overgrown vegetation--and doing the same in other areas of the campus with obscured views--is critical.
Other elements of the proposal highlighted by Parsons included treating Chapin Road and Lower Lake Road as a "cultural spine"; improving and emphasizing the Chapin Road and Park Street entrances to the College; creating a new humanities and social sciences building between Shattuck and Dwight to complete the open-ended quadrangle; and removing parking from the central part of the campus (apart from emergency, deliveries, and maintenance traffic) and by the stream in front of the art museum. After concluding comments by MHC art professor Michael Davis, who noted, "We have reached a clear and critical threshold, and it is time to rearticulate the soul of this college and what it means to live, work, and study here," the presentation portion of the forum ended.
In his report, Parsons notes that his proposal, at the College's request, is designed "as the beginning of the process rather than as a conclusion." The document also notes that "careful and extensive internal debate and analysis will be essential to refine goals and strategies." That debate and analysis began at the forum, which ended with a number of students, faculty, and staff members voicing strong concerns about various aspects of the proposal, posing questions to the panelists, and requesting that MHC community members play a significant role in the campus planning process. President Creigthon proclaimed the event "an important first step in this extremely important process."
Mount Holyoke College from the
air
Mount Holyoke students rally around
the maypole in 1898.
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