Brooks Tobacco Barn
Title
Brooks Tobacco Barn
Subject
[no text]
Description
The Brooks Tobacco Barn, now rotting between parking lots 26 and 31 along Governors Drive, represents a once central mission in the experimental work of Massachusetts Agricultural College. It was built in 1924 to accommodate the MAC’s experimental program in tobacco preparation. The Massachusetts Agricultural College was chartered in 1863 as a land grant university of agricultural education. In the following decades, the program grew and new buildings were erected as needed. No comprehensive campus plan was formulated until more than fifty years after the university’s founding. In the years following World War Two, the administration recognized the increasing industrialization taking place worldwide and the influx of students coming into the Massachusetts Agricultural College. These two factors encouraged the development of forward-looking plans, which updated the curriculum and created campus facilities to support the evolving mission of the school.
During the early 1920s, with funding from the Massachusetts Legislature, the MAC purchased a piece of land previously known as Brooks Farm. The land was renamed the William P. Brooks Experimental Farm, and became part of the university’s experimental agriculture program. Tobacco, a significant agricultural industry in the Connecticut River Valley, is a crop that requires scientific knowledge for successful growth. According to a 1915 circular on “Tobacco Growing in the Connecticut River Valley” by Hadley resident Leslie R. Smith, tobacco is also extremely vulnerable to weather conditions and plant disease. These complications made tobacco an attractive crop for the Massachusetts Agricultural College’s experimental work. The university began growing tobacco around 1920, but initially had no barn for curing and drying the plant. Upon purchasing the Brooks land, the MAC allocated $5,000 to build what would be the Brooks Tobacco Barn.
Completed in 1924, the structure was raised in an agricultural landscape with few trees. It was a standard two-and-a-half story New England barn on a rectangular plan, with two swinging doors and a gable roof. Tobacco was hung and dried from the structure itself, just one step in the process of preparing tobacco. A 1923 report by the director of the Massachusetts Agricultural College discussed the Department of Agronomy’s “comprehensive study of the effect of cropping systems on the growth and development of stalk-cut tobacco.” The following year, in designating the Brooks land for a tobacco barn, a budget identified, “one of the experimental projects to which attention has recently been given is that of cultural problems of tobacco.” University records also list a variety of faculty papers on issues of tobacco growing, disease, and cropping. The Brooks barn still stands, but the tobacco program no longer exists at the center of faculty and student research on experimental agricultural practice.
During the early 1920s, with funding from the Massachusetts Legislature, the MAC purchased a piece of land previously known as Brooks Farm. The land was renamed the William P. Brooks Experimental Farm, and became part of the university’s experimental agriculture program. Tobacco, a significant agricultural industry in the Connecticut River Valley, is a crop that requires scientific knowledge for successful growth. According to a 1915 circular on “Tobacco Growing in the Connecticut River Valley” by Hadley resident Leslie R. Smith, tobacco is also extremely vulnerable to weather conditions and plant disease. These complications made tobacco an attractive crop for the Massachusetts Agricultural College’s experimental work. The university began growing tobacco around 1920, but initially had no barn for curing and drying the plant. Upon purchasing the Brooks land, the MAC allocated $5,000 to build what would be the Brooks Tobacco Barn.
Completed in 1924, the structure was raised in an agricultural landscape with few trees. It was a standard two-and-a-half story New England barn on a rectangular plan, with two swinging doors and a gable roof. Tobacco was hung and dried from the structure itself, just one step in the process of preparing tobacco. A 1923 report by the director of the Massachusetts Agricultural College discussed the Department of Agronomy’s “comprehensive study of the effect of cropping systems on the growth and development of stalk-cut tobacco.” The following year, in designating the Brooks land for a tobacco barn, a budget identified, “one of the experimental projects to which attention has recently been given is that of cultural problems of tobacco.” University records also list a variety of faculty papers on issues of tobacco growing, disease, and cropping. The Brooks barn still stands, but the tobacco program no longer exists at the center of faculty and student research on experimental agricultural practice.
Creator
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Source
UMass Special Collections and University Archives
Publisher
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Date
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Contributor
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Rights
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Relation
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Format
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Language
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Type
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Identifier
RG150-0003226, RG150-0003227, RG150-0003875
Coverage
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