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“
The stewardship of cultural landscapes provides the
richness and complexity of the human story of our nation
. . . ” |
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—National
Park Service, statement on Cultural Landscape preservation |
This
atlas is designed to mark Mount Holyoke College's
commitment to stewardship. It views our historic
campus as a treasured piece in the national
tapestry of cultural landscapes. In our piece
of the tapestry are woven many of the very
threads that form major features of our country's
culture and history. Viewed broadly, we can
see in our campus motifs prominent in the
whole fabric. Viewed up close, we see the
particular richness, texture, and color of
our piece of the whole, a segment created
by a pioneering experiment in women's education
and the ongoing activities of a women's college
in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Hence,
this atlas is many faceted history with multiple
perspectives. It seeks to enhance historical
understandings in several ways:
Mount Holyoke College and the Modern Pastoral:
A Work of Art and Artifice
by Robert Schwartz
The Mount Holyoke campus represents a work of
art and artifice, the core of which embodies
the tradition of American pastoralism. Although
this tradition moved beyond the ancient Arcadian
idyll of shepherds living the virtuous rustic
life, it proudly carried forward a key belief:
landscapes reflecting the "natural"
beauty of rural settings were needed as places
of inspiring contemplation and soothing relaxation
for a society increasingly dominated by urban
life, its stresses, and its many problems. In
this sense, the modern pastoral was a combination
of moral, social, and aesthetic ideas.
These
ideas—and much more—were developed
into the modern art of landscape architecture
by Frederick Law Olmsted. One tenant of his
art and philosophy found early expression in
his reflection "On the Value of Natural
Places," written in 1865. There he echoed
a romantic, Wordsworthian appreciation of natural
scenery as a source of solace and emotional
recovery while extending it into a practical
principle of landscaping, which in urban parklands
would be beneficial not just to the cultural
elite but to all.
If
we analyze the operation of scenes of
beauty upon the mind, and consider the
intimate relation of the mind upon the
nervous system and the whole physical
economy, the action and reaction which
constantly occur between bodily and mental
conditions, the reinvigoration which results
from such scenes is readily comprehended. |
At Mount Holyoke, the influence of Olmsted and
his two sons, Frederick Law Jr. and John C.,
are evident in archives documenting the firm's
involvement with the College from the 1880s
to the 1920s. And even though Olmsted
and his firm cannot be counted among the principle
designers of our campus, Olmsted ideas and designs
were very influential here, just as they were
in the some 300 other college and university
campuses that the firm had a hand in designing.
It could scarcely have been otherwise.
In the last decades of the 19th century
and the first decade of the 20th,
President Mead, Treasurer Lyman Williston, and
Mary Woolley emulated parts of the Olmsted designs
that had been executed for the campuses of Smith
College and Wellesley College, as they began
to introduce what was then called the cottage
system of individual dormitories and buildings.
Underway before fire destroyed the old seminary
building in 1896, these plans were rapidly put
into execution in the years that followed. In
his consultations with the Olmsted firm, Williston
absorbed the principles and philosophy that
defined the Olmstead approach to landscape,
something to which the development of the campus
under Williston and Wooley attests clearly,
as we shall see.
Before
then, the modern pastoralism of Frederick Law
Olmsted was inscribed in his landscaping for
Pageant Field, Goodnow Park, and Prospect Hill
in the 1880s. An essential element of Olmsted's
approach was the preservation and shaping of
open spaces that were defined at their edges
by walkways, trees, plantings, and buildings.
This framing by walkways on the edges enhanced
the experience of the landscape by guiding pedestrians
around park-like greens with their long and
open perspectives. As in Olmsted's Central Park
in New York City and in his Fenlands in Boston,
roads designed for vehicles were hidden or subordinated
by being put below grade or kept at the extreme
outer edges of the park. In the case of Pageant
Field, Olmsted developed the allées
of trees that served as former property boundaries
to create paths that led people along the edges
of the field to the water's edge of Lake Nonotuck
(Lower Lake), enhancing their view of the gently
rolling green and the approach to the lake.
Although
further research will clarify the extent to
which Olmsted ideas were consciously incorporated
in the landscaping leading from Skinner Green
past Blanchard and on to Lower Lake, it seems
clear, as mentioned above, that Treasurer Lyman
Williston was significantly influenced in his
landscaping decisions of the 1890s and early
20th century by John C. and Frederick
Law Jr. Hence, after fire destroyed the old
Seminary and as the new dormitories and Blanchard
Hall were constructed in rapid order, Williston
was careful to preserve the pastoral tradition
of Mount Holyoke's landscape. In so doing he
found further encouragement in developments
at Wellesley. At the turn of the century there,
the Trustees adopted the designs of Frederick
Law Olmsted, Jr. and the faculty continued to
insist that its remarkable natural landscape
be preserved. In moving forward with Wellesley,
Mount Holyoke consciously rejected the transformations
unfolding at Smith where an increasingly dense
collection of tightly spaced buildings gave
the campus the look of the surrounding town.
So with advice from the Olmsted brothers and
his own sense of taste and conviction, Williston
preserved and improved what we now call Skinner
Green by siting the new buildings around its
perimeter with generous spacing between them
to retain long perspectives and open areas.
The siting of Blanchard generously apart from
Wilder dormitory framed and enhanced the view
from the Green to Lower Lake.
During
a period of considerable expansion up to the
1950s, spaciousness, open perspectives, and
modern pastoralism continued to shape and distinguish
the College. With help from Frederick Law Jr.
the classic gothic buildings constructed under
Mary Woolley were placed along College Street,
giving a confident, stately face to the world
while retaining the distinctive spaciousness
of the campus. In the 1920s when the College
shifted from the Olmsted to the Shurtleff architectural
firm, the Shurtleff plans envisioned an expansion
of Blanchard Hall and modifications that would
have replaced the curvilinear flows of Olmsted
inspiration with rectilinear quadrangles. Fortunately,
the depression made the execution of the Shurtleff
plans impossible. As the years wore on, visual
and physical access to Lower Lake was preserved
in the gentle slope down to the (former) tennis
courts and in a broad expanse at the water's
edge. In this park-like green, the Outing Club
constructed a stone fireplace in 1942 to enhance
the place for picnics and other social activities.
Of key importance, Lower Lake road remained
near the buildings and away from the lake, echoing
the Olmsted principle of keeping vehicle traffic
to the edges of park-like spaces and subordinating
vehicle traffic to the pedestrian's enjoyment
of the park and scenic surroundings.
It
was only in the 1950s that the rectangular modernism
of that era established itself on campus via
the building of new dormitories (Torrey, Ham,
McGregor, Prospect, and Buckland), the row academic
structures in the Clapp Hall area (the Psychology
and Education Building, the Art Building, Carr,
and Elliot House), and Gattell Amphitheater.
This had the regrettable effect of separating
the campus into upper and lower parts. Nevertheless,
the open, rolling, and spacious qualities of
the Olmsted inspired landscape and campus remain
predominant overall, a situation on which the
oft-remarked beauty and harmony of the campus
continues to rest. In that sense, it remains
in keeping with another tenant of Frederick
Law Olmsted's art and philosophy, as expressed
in his 1886 notes on his plan for Franklin Park
in Massachusetts:
[T]here
is no beautiful scenery that does not
give the mind an emotional impulse different
from that resulting from whatever beauty
may be found in a room, courtyard, or
garden, with which vision is obviously
confined by wall or other surrounding
artificial constructions.
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