Abigail Adams House
The Abigail Adams House was built in 1920 as the first dormitory intended to house female students at UMass Amherst, (then the Massachusetts Agricultural College).
When UMass began in 1863 as a land-grant agricultural college, women were not allowed to attend the school. Forty years later, the first female student enrolled. In 1917 the thirty female students enrolled in the Massachusetts Agricultural College lived in fraternity houses that the college leased for them, but due to rising enrollment after WWI, President Butterfield asked the college to look for a better housing solution.
In June 1919, the school received funds from the state and began constructing a dormitory for female students. In the spring of 1920, the college initiated a contest to name the new dormitory. Open to alumnae and former female students of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, as well as all high school girls and members of the junior Home Economics club in Massachusetts, the contest stipulated that the name must be a Massachusetts woman involved in agriculture and country life.
Though Katherine B. Ehenes, a fourteen year old from Medfield, Massachusetts, was one among four who suggested the college name the new dorm after Abigail Adams, she was chosen as the winner because of her detailed description of Adams as “the first farmerette of Braintree and Massachusetts.”
The Abigail Adams House was officially dedicated in October 1920, and the college held a conference on women in agriculture and country life in celebration of the occasion. Built on the west side of North Pleasant Street, the Abigail Adams House stood three and a half stories high, and was constructed in Georgian-revival style.
Often called the Abbey, the dormitory housed 98 students at $75 per room. The building functioned as a dorm until 1962 when it was ravaged by fire. After some renovations, the building was used for faculty offices until 1967 when it was demolished to make space for the Lederle Graduate Research Center.
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003150, RG150-0003710, RG150-0003711, RG150-0003712, RG150-0003720
Barns and Cattle Shed
The University of Massachusetts was founded as a Morrill Land Grant school in 1863. The school was originally called the Massachusetts Agricultural College, then the Massachusetts State College in 1931, and finally became the University of Massachusetts in 1947. These changes in name reflect a change in the very focus of the school. At its founding, UMass was an agricultural school. When the student population began to grow so did the course offerings, and Massachusetts State College became a liberal arts college. Finally the G.I. Bill and the rise in student population that it encouraged helped to create the University of Massachusetts that we know today. The image Edgar T. Scott captured for his 1913 postcard, “Barns and Cattle Shed at Massachusetts Agricultural College,” helps to illustrate the changes that have come to UMass over the years. The post card shows “Several barns located in a field planted with rows of corn.”
This entry is framed around the first of these images, though all of the photos help capture the agrarian focus of the school. The open space is used for corn and in the background of the photo you can see barns and a cattle shed as well as Grinnell Arena (which had been built recently when the photograph was taken) as a livestock and animal husbandry judging arena. Just to the right of the shot would stand Blaisdell House. Blaisedell House was constructed in 1869, making it the oldest building still standing on the UMass Campus, the college only having opened in 1867. It was constructed to house the Farm Superintendant. In 1893 the house was moved to where it stands today.
The horse barn, which is the most recognizable piece of UMass which is still standing, was originally used for draft horses to be used for farming work. However, as the school developed and became Massachusetts State College, the need for farm horses such as Clydesdales shrank. The barn was left empty, and was used to shelter the Morgan Horses after the 1940 disbanding of the U.S. Cavalry. In fact the Horse Barn at UMass is considered the birthplace of the modern Bay State Morgan, which is the horse of Massachusetts, the animal of Vermont, and the only horse breed to hail from the United States of America. The corn fields were also replaced by roads and trees in the 1940s, which also follows the college’s trend away from an agricultural school and towards a liberal arts college.
With the continued growth of the school and the creation of the University of Massachusetts, the demands of the ever growing student population had to be met. Where cornfields and the barns in the left of the picture once stood there is now the George N. Parks Marching Band Building, which is attached to the Grinnelle Arena (the building as it is now was not complete until 2011). Also new to the lot shown in the picture is the Recreation Center (completed in 2009). In order to satisfy the parking needs of the students using these new buildings a parking lot was constructed.
Yet despite these modern buildings, the Horse Barn, Grinnelle Arena, and Blaisdell House still stand. They, along with the new Band Room and the Rec Center were all constructed to meet the needs and expectations of a growing school. Those five buildings, new and old, in such close proximity tell a complex history.
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003174, RG150-0003175, RG150-0003176, RG150-0003178, RG150-0003206
Bartlett Hall
Preservation of UMass buildings has been granted a place of importance lately within the campus community. The reaction to the demolition of the trolley station illustrates this renewed interest in the preservation of campus landscapes. The trolley’s destruction, which the administration claims was due to miscommunication, made the front page of the Collegian. Even so, more than a few famous or historic buildings on the university’s campus are slated for demolition, including Bartlett Hall, which was completed in 1959.
Built on the site of the old Drill Hall, Bartlett was the first building on campus to use modernist design on campus. The simple façade does not interfere with the decorative aspects of the blue and clear windows in the wing occupied by the Gender Studies Department. Brick was chosen for the other edifices so that the building looked like it belonged in its surroundings. Admittedly, Bartlett Hall was poorly constructed. Currently, the structure needs added braces just to remain standing. The building’s layout has also been described as convoluted. That being said, Bartlett, complete with its obvious and not insignificant flaws, is evidence of a period of rapid expansion for the school. In the twenty years between 1947 and 1968, UMass experienced a building boom: the number of buildings on campus doubled from 49 buildings in 1947 to 99 in 1968. Bartlett Hall was part of this rapid expansion. Because the building has something to tell us about the university’s history, it should not be overlooked, despite its poor construction.
The demolition of this building, while perhaps necessary, will also destroy significant and important histories of the University of Massachussetts campus. Bartlett was not only the first building on campus to be built in a modernist style, but it was built by the famous architectural firm Shepley & Bulfinch. To destroy it is a shame, and without the physical building the architecture of campus will suffer. The poor construction tells a significantly history, too. It tells the history of a University which, feeling the pressure of rising enrollments after the second World War, threw up buildings which where quickly and often poorly constructed. This history, when viewed through the lens of construction and demolition, highlights the need for a thorough and comprehensive expansion plan.
The destruction of Bartlett Hall will, without a doubt change the landscape of UMass. From a purely architectural perspective, UMass is loosing what is a very unique and historically significant building and a great example of modernist architecture. From a historical perspective there are more options for the future. Bartlett stands, with some support beams, as physical evidence of a history that played out without regard for the future. Yet its destruction need not prevent us from telling that history.
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003849, RG150-0003850, RG150-0003210, RG150-0003846, RG150-0003854
Durfee Plant Houses
In 1867 Dr. Nathan Durfee donated $10,000 towards the construction of a series of greenhouses on the Massachusetts Agricultural College campus. Architect T.A. Lord designed a series of five buildings which were named the Durfee Plant Houses after the project’s patron. Built on the east side of campus, near Stockbridge House, the five Victorian conservatories had curvilinear glass rooves trimmed with wrought iron supports, and were completed before the campus was even opened to students.
The main house layout consisted of a central octagonal room with two sixty by thirty foot wings attached. A small side wing projected from the northeast corner of the main octagonal chamber. This building also housed a potting and work room. Outside, two fifty by twelve foot propagating pits created space for growing certain plants. To the north of these buildings, Lord engineered a reservoir that fed water into a heating and aerating tank over the potting room. In the rear of the main building, Lord added a botanic museum. The entire area of the structure covered approximately 5,000 square feet.
The plant houses were designed to house at least 1,300 plant specimens, inculding rare and beautiful exotic plants, as well as the seeds for planting and books on plant studies. Each of the five buildings housed a different series of plant specimens. The Dry Stove housed cacti and succulents, the Moist Stove housed tropic plants, the Palm House exhibited cool/temperate trees and shrubs, and the Victoria House held aquatic and air plants. These buildings also provided the residence for plant-related experiments. For example, college President Clark performed an experiment on a chili squash to measure plant growth.
In 1883, the Durfee Plant Houses caught on fire. Although the structures did not burn down completely, the fire caused serious damage. Fortunately, students saved many of the plant specimens which were later placed in the rebuilt greenhouses. Reconstruction of the buildings occured over the course of the next decade, with the aid of $10,000 donated from Leonard M. and Henry F. Hills for repairs shortly after the plant houses were initially constructed. By 1892, the area the structures covered had increased by 2,000 feet. The new design not only increased the size of the conservatories, but also displayed a more business-like façade. A lighthouse-like glass tower now housed a giant Agave americana, or American aloe plant.
Responding to the changing needs of the MAC and students of plant studies, as well as the increased use of Durfee’s facilities, the college sponsored a new series of greenhouses to stand next to the existing Durfee structures in 1908. This addition included a series of greenhouses and a two-story brick building of classrooms and labs, which became known as French Hall. Together, French Hall and the Durfee greenhouses became known as the “New Durfee Range” and later the “French Hall Greenhouses.” With maintenance and the ocassional improvement, the Durfee Plant Houses remained standing separately from the French Hall Greenhouses.
While the Durfee Plant Houses remained in use, as of 1954, the structures were falling apart. The same designer of the initial Durfee Conservatories re-designed a new structure to go over the original buildings. The new design intended to highlight the continuity of the historically older sections, while refreshing the integrity of Durfee’s orginial function.
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0004139, RG150-0004147, RG150-0004146, RG150-0004155, RG150-0004149
Marshall Hall
<p>Construction on Marshall Hall at the University of Massachusetts, then called the Massachusetts State College, began in 1915 and was completed in 1916. Built on the west side of what is now Thatcher Road, the building was designed to house the microbiology department. Known simply as the Microbiology Laboratory until it was renamed twenty years later, the structure’s three floors, contained the Microbiology Department’s academic offices, classrooms, and research laboratories.</p>
<p>Two decades after it was built, the university renamed the first space on campus dedicated to the study and research of microbiology after a man who had provided leadership for department. The Microbiology Laboratory was renamed Marshall Hall in 1935 after former professor of microbiology, Dr. Charles Edward Marshall, who had passed away in 1927. Dr. Marshall had also served the university as the first head of department of Bacteriology, director of the graduate school, and the director of the experiment station. His views on the purpose of the study of microbiology also fit in well at Massachusetts State College: in his 1911 book, <em>Microbiology: A Text-book of Microorganisms, General and Applied</em>, he urged microbiologists not to simply describe how microbiology can be useful to other disciplines, but to infiltrate other programs, especially agricultural and domestic science programs.</p>
<p>As the school began to expand after World War II, so did the microbiology department. In 1947, the Marshall Annex was built for additional research space, specifically for the Microbiology Department. Marshall Hall was demolished in 1996, followed by the Marshall Annex ten years later to make way for new construction. The new Integrated Science and Laboratory Science buildings now stand in the place of Marshall Hall and Marshall Annex. Though Marshall Hall is no longer extant, its story plays an important role in the history and expansion of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.</p>
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UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003346, RG150-0003347, RG150-0003348
Music Cottages
<p>The “Music Cottages” certainly qualify to be among Umass Amherst's lost heritage and landscape. In sincerity, identifying the buildings by this name nearly eliminates any proof that they ever existed. Photographs of the Old Infirmary Group buildings in the University Special Collections Archives offer tantalizing, but scant evidence about the cottages. Though these photos are accompanied by captions that read, “now music cottages,” a considerably thorough review of the minutes from Trustees meetings dating between the late 1950's and 1996 sheds no additional light on how any of the Old Infirmary Group buildings ever came to be known as “music cottages.” Lack of data notwithstanding, further evidence is available in an article on page 5 of the Umass Chronicle dated September 20, 1996, which announced the University's plans to raze 'cottages A, B, and C' of the Old Infirmary Group as well as Marshall Hall before the winter of that year. It seems most telling, that this article's detailing the destruction of the 'music cottages' keeps so much of the buildings' known history but as the final funeral dirge falls silent, so too do the cottages' stories.</p>
<p>Harold Whiting Cary's <em>The University of Massachusetts: A History of One Hundred Years</em> (1962) mentions 'an infirmary building being occupied in 1961 that replaces the former meager facilities', but he does not indicate how these former facilities may be used in the future. Once again, a thorough review of the Trustees minutes also reveals nothing about the intended use of the Old Infirmary buildings for the future. According to the aforementioned newspaper article, Cottage A had been vacated the previous spring by the Office of the College of Food and Natural Resources. Cottage B had been vacant for several years, and Cottage C had been vacated by the Music and Dance department at the end of July in 1996. That the Music and Dance department had occupied Cottage C gives credibility to the former existence of the 'music cottages' as such but offers little additional information.</p>
<p>It is truly a loss that the Old Infirmary buildings which had occupied a place on the campus and its maps for over eighty years were suddenly wiped off the map after 1996. Prior to the new infirmary built in the early sixties, campus maps just identified the Old Infirmary buildings as the University Infirmary. As early as 1968, the buildings appeared on maps as the Old Infirmary Group, and on every map from then until their demolition they were identified as such. Interestingly, the FY 1972 Comptrollers Annual Statement of Real Property Buildings and Structures lists the Old Infirmary Group as “Hospital A-B-C.” The letter designations are interesting for a seeming connection to the cottage letters of the newspaper article, but they never appeared on any actual campus maps by those names. According to the February 1955/56 College Catalog, the separate buildings each served a particular function as a part of the University Infirmary. One was used for bed-patients, one for out-patients, and the last was for contagious cases requiring quarantine.</p>
<p>If the Old Infirmary Group buildings still stood today, their stories could probably be better resurrected. The 2007 Preservation Massachusetts 10 Most Endangered Historic Places Nomination Form is a less than friendly reminder of the ongoing legal issues surrounding destruction of historic places and its associated consequences. Attachment A lists the Infirmary buildings and Marshall Hall as four buildings already destroyed of several historically valuable sites on campus threatened with the same fate. Attachment C contains some choice language lamenting the “less than exemplary care for...historic sites.”</p>
<p>For those who lived during the time of the 'music cottages' on Umass Amherst's campus, they certainly must have been real. It is surprising to find that the Music and Dance department records detailing departmental operations and administration from 1919 to the present are devoid of any reference to the 'music cottages.' A map from a Parents' Weekend in the year 1988 is another scattered remnant intriguing for the little light it sheds on the existence of the cottages. The only information it contains designates Cottage C as the place where a performance of Afro-American Dance shall occur. Apart from that, only muffled images of the photographs and the newspaper article point to buildings identified as the music cottages. Undoubtedly, someone on campus still remembers the music cottages as such, but more research is needed to give a true voice to the music cottages' stories. For all newcomers to UMass Amherst, the music cottages and their story have fallen silent.</p>
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003373, RG150-0003366
Practice House (now part of the University Club)
150 years after the Massachusetts Agricultural College acquired the Cowles’ house in 1864, the building still stands on what is now the University of Massachusetts at Amherst campus. Much has been changed, however, in the three centuries since its construction as a colonial New England farmhouse. Oliver Cowles settled in Amherst during the early 18th-century, and built a farmhouse for his family around 1731. Just over a century later, this home and the surrounding property was sold by the Cowles descendants to the state of Massachusetts. Both became part of the new Massachusetts Agricultural College, a land-grant institution whose original focus was experimental farming, where it was eventually put to use as a Practice House for the Home Economics Departement.
Starting in 1864, the Cowles house served as residence for the farmer in charge of MAC’s experimental program. The structure remained much the same during these years. An Italianate-style porch was added then removed between 1900 and 1930, but the Cowles’ home – eventually known as the Homestead – otherwise maintained its 18th-century appearance. In 1929, as the country sunk into economic depression, the Massachusetts Agricultural College realized a need to expand its mission as the nation and the world became increasingly more industrialized. Just two years later, in 1931, the institution renamed itself the Massachusetts State College – a clear symbol of change.
With this expansion came an experimental major in home economics. Women had been attending MAC since the late 1800s, but this program of practical homemaking was new to the Depression era. Just before the crash, in early October of 1929, a Springfield Republican article announced the opening of a “Practice House, Where Students Learn Fine Points of Household Economics” at the Massachusetts Agricultural College. The Cowles’ home was updated in a Colonial-revival style and became the Practice House, where, supervised by a faculty mentor, groups of female students lived together and learned how to keep house on a moderate budget. The Republican article recognized that this sort of program already existed at similar New England institutions, but the experimental nature of the system was well aligned with the philosophy of the original Massachusetts Agricultural College. A similar program remained in place in the Homestead for almost fifty years.
Groups of women lived in the Homestead until 1964, and the building was used by the Home Economics Department until 1972. The Lederle Graduate Research Center was planned for the site of Oliver Cowles’ home in the early 1970s, and the 1730s farmhouse would necessarily be displaced. Rather than demolition, however, the University of Massachusetts chose to relocate the Homestead beside the Boltwood-Stockbridge house, which was serving as the University Club and Restaurant. The Boltwood-Stockbridge house was the oldest in Amherst, a 1728 farmhouse which had also been owned by a member of the extended Cowles family. Like the Cowles’, it had been sold to the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1864 but has remained on its original site. The two buildings were attached by a modern structure and combined to serve staff, faculty, and alumni of the University of Massachusetts. The story of the Cowles’ house, the Homestead, or the Practice House, is both a story of positive preservation on the UMass campus, and one that speaks to the ever-changing nature of the landscape of a growing university. The Home Economics major no longer exists at UMass. It has perhaps evolved in the Department of Nutrition, but these students – male and female – certainly do not live and work together in a colonial Amherst farmhouse, as those early classes did.
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003323, RG150-0003321, RG150-0004573, RG150-0004557
Frank Waugh House
The Waugh House was the on-campus home of influential landscape architect, and university professor, Frank Albert Waugh (sometimes referred to by his initials, F.A. Waugh). It existed somewhere in close proximity to Wilder Hall. Here Waugh lived alongside his wife, Alice, and their six children (in no particular order): Dan, Fredrick, Dorothy, Esther, Albert, and Sidney.
Waugh came to the university, then known under the moniker Massachusetts Agricultural College, shortly after the turn of the century and quickly became a campus innovator. In 1903, he was instrumental in founding the university’s Landscape Gardening program (later renamed Landscape Architecture), which was only the second of its type nationwide at the time. He also contributed significantly to the founding of the Food Science Department, alongside Fred Sears, and Walter W. Chenoweth between 1913 and 1918.
Waugh was a player in the creation of the campus’ physical landscape as well. Among the university’s archival holdings are several draft plans for campus expansion composed by Waugh in the first decades of the twentieth century. It is suggested that Waugh chose the site for what would later become Wilder Hall, as reflected in a 2007 introduction to a reprinted edition of Waugh’s influential text “Book of Landscape Gardening.” Later on, Wilder Hall would become the administrative home of both the Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Departments, both of which Waugh led at some point.
Outside the university, Waugh did influential work with the National Forest Service. Working as a consultant between 1917 and 1920, he advocated for more inexpensive lodging and a scenic roadway at Bryce Canyon National Park, for easier access down into the Grand Canyon, and redesigned Oregon’s famous Mount Hood drive.
What Waugh is most remembered for, however, is his contribution to the university’s art and music scenes and its social life. He was both a painter and a flutist. He would regularly hang exhibits of his paintings, give free, well-attended concerts in Memorial Hall, and organize various campus events related to the arts.
Within the context of his home (pictured), Waugh became a mentor and inspirational figure for many students who attended the university at the time. A former student of his recalls being among a group of students who would visit Waugh’s home on Sunday afternoons to “drink hot chocolate and listen to classic musical on his Victrola.” In an interview after Waugh’s death, his daughter Dorothy mentioned that at one point their home was open to all on Wednesday afternoons from 4:00-6:00PM. Dorothy recalls students showing up in groups as large as a dozen. Waugh, a passionate music enthusiast, would have typed up programs prepared, for students, detailing what music was to be heard on the Victrola throughout the course of the afternoon. On these afternoons, Waugh and his students would discuss art, music, and their personal lives. As one former student remarked in a memorial to Waugh, he “knew more about us, in some ways, than our parents did.”
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003417
WFCR Radio Station
Founded in 1961, WFCR has played a vital role in circulating news throughout the Pioneer Valley. Initially located within the Springfield Trade School in Springfield, Massachusetts, WFCR first moved to UMass Amherst in 1967 after the school's Board of Trustees allotted the station space on the second floor of the Hampshire House. Despite being located within a bland building, WFCR has made a monumental impact on the radio airwaves. Though WFCR still operates from Hampshire House, the station’s time at UMass is drawing to a close.
The Hampshire House is located on the Southwestern wing of the UMass campus. A five story building, the Hampshire House was quickly built following the influx of students after WWII. Because of this, the building is very simple. Made of concrete blocks, the Hampshire House has metal door entrances on the north and south ends of the building. The east and west sides of the building are covered in a beige mortar and undecorated windows. Prior to WFCR’s occupation, the Hampshire House was primarily used for housing ROTC students. The entrance to the WFCR studio is located on Massachusetts Avenue, and the studio is still on the second floor. Today, the building is filled with offices of UMass faculty.
After arriving on the UMass campus, WFCR aimed to include the Four College Community (at the time Hampshire College was not part of the now Five College Consortium) within its radio broadcasts. Upon this integration, WFCR rapidly expanded their airtime to seventeen hours a day, and broadened their listening audience as a result. A key reason for this increase in listenership was Gilbert Mollata. Mollata, developed the first radio classroom lecture series titled, The Four College Lecture Hall, where professors from the local colleges would discuss their disciplines on air. Scholars from around the world would come into the WFCR studios to share their findings with Western Massachusetts listeners.
Since 1961, the radio equipment used at WFCR has changed dramatically. At the station’s inception, WFCR only had a 10-watt transmitting site, operating thirty-six hours a week; by 1964, WFCR aired 119 hours of material per week. In the early 1960s, radio equipment was larger and less efficient than it is today. The most common radio mixer was the 1A mixer, which was made of four large transmitters. This equipment was stored in the producer’s room, overlooking the on-air studio through a clear glass window. Archival pictures from 1970 show the on-air studio consisting of a round table with microphones on it. Popular microphones from the mid 1960s included the electret microphone and later in 1970, the dynamic microphone. Patented in 1962, Bell Laboratory’s electret microphone eliminated the need for a “polarizing power supply by using a permanently charged material.” In other words, these electret microphones were built to last for years. They were replaced by the dynamic microphone, which was invented in the 1970s. The dynamic microphones were needed because lower frequencies were not picked up clearly by electret microphones.
Following the passing of the Public Broadcasting Act by President Johnson in 1970, WFCR became affiliated with National Public Radio (NPR). Further, after adding a satellite in 1979, WFCR expanded its listenership to radios across Western New England. Today WFCR caters to over one hundred thousand listeners weekly, and it is all being broadcasted from within the small office within Hampshire House on the UMass Amherst Campus.
In 2011, WFCR announced that beginning in 2013, radio shows would begin broadcasting from the first floor of the Fuller Block Building on Main Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. Many Springfield business associations were pleased with the decision because WFCR could uplift the depressed streets of the City of Homes. WFCR’s future move was due in large part to the Hampshire House’s cramped small quarters. CEO Martin Miller stated, “ a 65 year-old former dorm is not adequate for 21st century broadcasting.” Among Springfield residents, there has been a positive public reception for WFCR’s decision to move.
Unfortunately for the UMass Campus, by 2014 WFCR will no longer be broadcast from within the Hampshire House. The sound which was broadcast over the Pioneer Valley airwaves for over fifty years will have a new home. By good fortune, WFCR is moving to Springfield, a city which will most likely embrace the radio station. While WFCR might soon be “lost” at UMass Amherst, it can still be found on the airwaves.
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0005692
Botanical Museum
The Botanical Museum, constructed in 1867 for a total cost of $5,180, was one of the original four buildings built before the first class of students arrived in the fall of the same year. Erected behind the original Durfee Conservatory, the Botanical Museum quickly became a familiar sight and frequent destination to the young men attending the newly formed Massachusetts Agricultural College.
The Botanical Museum served many purposes. Its basement was used as a storage space for pots, plants, soil, and many other materials used in the adjoined conservatory. The first floor contained a laboratory, a recitation room, and the President’s office. The second floor housed the museum where students could see glass display classes filled with plants, fruit and flower models, seed and wood specimens, and many interesting vegetable products.
One notable object in the museum preserved the history of President William Smith Clark’s famous weight lifting squash experiment. Starting during the summer of 1873 and concluding in November the same year, President Clark and his students set out to see how much weight the squash could “lift” as it grew. Using a system of pulleys, as the squash grew, more weight would be lifted. In total, the squash lifted forty-five hundred pounds as it grew. A plaster cast of this weight lifting squash was made and put on display in the museum.
Students also attended classes taught by the now famed progressive farmer and public figure, Levi Stockbridge, in the Botanical Museum. Professor Stockbridge quickly became well liked and known for his experiments in plant feeding and systems of practical crop fertilization.
The Botanical Museum was an integral part of student life throughout the history of UMass. In the early days, when the university was called the Massachusetts Agricultural College, admission and entrance exams were proctored in the museum and annual prizes for students’ collections of plants were awarded here. Later, following the construction of a separate botany building, the Botanical Museum housed the physics and mathematics departments.
Unfortunately, the Botanical Museum succumbed to damages caused by a fire that started in the original Durfee Conservatory on February 5, 1967. The museum and the conservatory were quickly engulfed in flames.
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
RG150-0003213, RG150-0003214, RG150-0003216, RG150-0009697