Electric Trolleys Come to UMass

Arthur Sharp, University of Massachusetts graduate, designed a waiting station which serviced people in transit for over one-hundred years. Completed in 1911 as the Massachusetts Agricultural College trolley station and shelter, the one-story structure opened onto North Pleasant Street, where electric tracks ran from Sunderland and to Northampton. Trolley service declined then disappeared in the following decades, and the shelter was eventually adopted by the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority as a bus stop. Later accompanied by a modern Plexiglass bus shelter, the waiting station was demolished in May of 2012. The building’s hundred years at UMass tell a story of the university and of the fast-changing modes of transit that have served its students, faculty and staff. 

The first electric trolley through Amherst, Massachusetts was boarded on June 16, 1897. Originally called the Amherst and Sunderland Street Railway, the line was connected to Northampton in 1900 and eventually sold to the Holyoke Street Railway in 1907. The trolley tracks ran down North Pleasant Street, through the university campus. UMass – then, the Massachusetts Agricultural College – graduate Sharp finished his degree in landscape gardening in 1910 and went on to design a building for the campus trolley station. Stylistically, the structure was based in the new American Craftsman style. It was simultaneously influenced by Japanese styles of architecture; the Massachusetts Agricultural College had a sister school in the Imperial College of Architecture, Sapporo, a relationship begun in the 1870s. Also reminiscent of Italianate buildings, the waiting station – of brick and cement, with asphalt shingles – served as a gateway to campus when first built. On its outskirts, the station was a visitor’s first stop at the Massachusetts Agricultural College.