Carol Clark: Well hello. My name is Carol Clark. I’m a professor of the History of Art and American Studies Emerita here at Amherst College. And it’s my pleasure today to have a conversation with Blair Kamin, the author of the recently, or just about to be published book, Amherst College: The Campus Guide. It’s part of the Print and Architectural Press series on college architecture. So, Blair I’d like you to perhaps begin our conversation with a larger question, why write a guide? What’s its prime purpose?
Blair Kamin: The purpose of a guide is really very simple. It’s to give people the tools with which they can understand what they’re seeing as they walk around Amherst campus. When I was a freshman in the fall of 1975 no such guide existed, and I had no guidance as to why I appreciated the war memorial or why Johnson Chapel me or why the social dorms were so ugly. So, this literacy is essentially the you know the most... the essential goal here. And… but at the same time there is a larger project which is that this is really a kind of family history. You know the Amherst family as it were is united, it is bound by, not by blood but by experience. The experience of attending this beautiful liberal arts college. And when you look into the archives, and the history you discover all sorts of things that you know in the same way that you might when you would say take a one of those ancestry DNA tests. You know you might discover that who the patron was for Johnson Chapel? A farmer from nearby Pelham who was beseeched on his death bed by Samuel Fowler Dickinson, Emily Dickinson’s grandfather to donate his fortune to the college. And he did and his brother sued because his brother was Jude only got $12 but Amherst won. And there are many other stories like that that are kind of either conveniently overlooked or just forgotten, and they tell us something about the campus and it’s the values and the visions of its creators. So I think that you know it's… the guide is really an attempt to give you lenses to see the campus and also give you a deeper understanding of its back story and back stories and the… and what they tell you about that through that family history.
CC: Well and it’s true I think that at least in my teaching students always have opinions. Some have strong opinions about buildings, one way or another. But they never really understood why the building was conveying those thoughts, those ideas and feelings to them. So, this will give them a sense I think of how buildings speak to us and how they stay with us over time. As you say, the family of Amherst is bound by this experience and it's a rooted campus experience which involves the landscapes which I’d like to talk about a little bit later. But something you said made me think about the reason that you chose the Print and Architectural Press and this guide series is because it is done as walks and with the assumption that you don’t sit down necessarily and read the book through, but you consult it, you walk around with it in your hand. And what were the decisions to organize the book as a guide around these walks rather than write a book that is organized chronologically, starting with the story of Johnson and that sort of controversial story of brow beating him into giving us money?
BK: Well the idea here is… really that …honestly you can... let me just back up… the book can be read either as a guide as you’re walking around on campus or it can be read…you know on your couch, or in your bed, I’ve heard from friends who’re taking this book to bed with them, and that’s a good sign. But why walks? So, the walk is really a very sound organizing principle, first it’s convenient, you tour all the buildings in a single compact area rather than bouncing from one quadrangle to another to catch all the buildings in the given time period. Second, the walk is telling because it allows you to see buildings from different eras, their construction and close proximity to one another and how well they relate to one another or don’t. And third and most important, the walk is revealing because it allowed me to emphasize the importance of the spaces between buildings, the voids rather than the solids. And in general, that means that the quads at Amherst which are so much a part of the experience but which are conventional guide devoted purely to architecture might well overlook and I mean the main quad really illustrates the advantages of this approach. You know you see multiple generations of architecture, different styles from Greek revival to Victorian Gothic, to modern and postmodern working together with a landscape to form an extraordinary place, one that’s much greater than the sum of its individual parts. Think of the war memorial, as powerful as it is, it would be a lesser experience without the book ends to frame it, Seeley Mudd to the east and Webster to the west. Take away the pine trees around the Memorial and their intoxicating scent is gone. Take away the steps that lead from the main Quad down to the Memorial and the Memorial’s identity is a separate physical space one that quietly summons you to slow down and ponder the sacrifice of the 142 Amherst men who died in the two World Wars, is diminished. Conversely, once you combine these things the experience becomes far richer, far more meaningful. So, in a nutshell that’s why I organized the book spatially rather than chronologically, it’s all about the experience of being on this campus.
CC: Well I think you argue really well Blair in what you just said for the spaces between and taking a walk on campus, not only do you see the context of other buildings which you wouldn’t in a chronologically ordered book where you just see you know a facade perhaps or a couple of views of one building. But you look to your left, you look to your right and you walk through, I think the war memorial is a fabulous example of this. Contextual and spaces between and let you pass through them, you enter a building, you enter the space of the war memorial. It’s always a favorite spot of students on campus. The students loved it when I took my American Art History students on campus tours, it was a place they wondered about. They may not have read all of the inscriptions of battles that surround them but they knew it was an important place to be, to stop as they know it was...sometimes they know it was a war memorial sometimes they didn’t. Can we talk some more about that? I think it’s an extraordinary story of an unusual memorial that was really in advance of its time.
BK: Absolutely! The war memorial...you know it’s funny. I’m sorry let me back up. The War Memorial in my view is by far the most powerful outdoor space at Amherst. When I started the book I had no idea who designed it. And it turns out that the chief designer was a landscape architect named Arthur Shurcliff who is also credited with the designs of Colonial Williamsburg and Charles River Esplanade in Boston. So, how did this memorial come to be? Well, it turns out that Amherst did have a war memorial for the soldiers who died in WWI, that was in Converse Hall. And that was just simply painted names of the dead in gold on the lobby walls of Converse and parents were not particularly happy about that. They felt that it was an underwhelming tribute. So the story is that, Stanley King the President of Amherst in the 1930s and 40s was out walking one day and he came upon this expanse of open space at the southern end of the campus and he saw that it was a natural sight for a war memorial because it was… a memorial there would be part of the everyday pass of the campus. It wouldn't just be hidden away as the memorial was in Converse or the civil war bells in Stearns Steeple. So you know, that was the key moment when King came upon that sight that it would be part of everyday activity and then it but by no means means guaranteed success, you know you could have had a statue of a you know a man on horseback or something trite like that there, and instead you know Shurcliff came up with this brilliant design which is contemplative rather than triumphal and it has a feel of classical architecture in that its solid and made of stone and yet it’s...
CC: ordered
BK: ordered, symmetrical and yet there was an abstraction to it that incorporates some of modernism and the abstraction that you get at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
CC: If we didn’t know better, we might have thought Maya Lin might have been an Amherst student rather than a Yale student.
BK: Absolutely because just as Vietnam Veterans Memorial relates to its context of the with … to the Lincoln... and the heroic Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument so the Amherst War Memorial relates to its context in the sense that the view of the steps off the main Quad and the view of the Holyoke Range really inspires you, or it… not inspires you but it… it tugs on you in a way to … it requires… it beseeches you I guess is the best word to like a … like a Greek memorial that it tells you that you’ve reached a sacred precinct, a special spot in the landscape and that you should slow down, stop and pause and it gets you in the gut and that’s what I think your students related to. … you may not realize that the names of the battles that are chiseled into the benches, you know you may not know what they are, but certainly the memorial communicates very powerfully with a… you know… that it’s special and that it’s different, it’s circular, that block of granite is circular on a campus that’s… where the geometry is largely right-angled. It’s you know the words chiseled into the steps that you know the memorial honors the Amherst men who died in two world wars. It tells you explicitly what this is about, the names have the power you know to evoke individuals. So, I mean it's… it’s incredibly powerful and I think that it is you know here you see that classism is largely stripped of declaration but not of its power to convey emotion and meaning. That’s really the heart of it. It’s you know it… it's very much not… it’s very different from traditional triumphant memorials of you know man on... the general on horseback. It’s not about war, it’s about the sacrifice made to win freedom and it’s also about service and the larger world because Amherst campus turns inward, the quadrangles turn inward away from the outside world, but the Memorial opens a view and frames and focuses a view of the Holyoke Range. And it talks about service, in other words, that… and service that transcends combat I would say. It's about you know, it really interprets Amherst motto of you know giving light to the world in other words you're looking out at that range, you’re looking out at a range that symbolizes a world beyond the college and that is important because you know it suggests that the lessons learnt in this...on this wonderful hill are not restricted to that hill but need to be given expression and meaning in the world beyond.
CC: Well and as you’re talking there, I’m remembering the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial you walk down I mean in that case not steps but a wrap and you pass through and then you come out of it to the other side. It is a process and I think this is very much like a process of stepping down into it and you don’t unless you turn around or you’re coming back, you don’t see the inscriptions on the steps.
BK: That’s true.
CC: And because you’re walking down, you look up and you see then coming back, but when you first encounter it you don’t know that.
BK:That’s true.
CC: It’s very strong and it’s also somewhat in keeping I guess, I hadn’t thought about this but after the Second World War many of the memorials were not to be like the soldier on a horseback or triumphant. They were to be the veterans ice skating rink, the veterans park, they were the faces of youth, so we think of all those and we don’t think why are they called veteran? It was post World War II way of commemorating service and in this way it is… like those our memorial, rejects the triumphant, rejects the soldier on a horse but it also goes further because it still...beyond the slate it’s an abstract construction like the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. So, it’s really an interesting pivot I think.
BK: Well it’s true but at the same time I think, remember that Memorial... the War Memorial is also connected to Memorial Field and King’s idea was that, number one you know it was a perfect spot to put a war memorial because many people would be going from the hilltop down to the gym so in other words you know it's a very high traffic site. But it is important to recognize the connection between the War Memorial and Memorial Field, because the idea was that the team spirit of athletic teams was seen as part of the characteristics that enabled you know American allies to win the Second World War. So, in other words you know the idea was that play, and reverence were intermingled with one another. Play and commemoration it's better to say were intermingled with one another and I think that that’s what you know gives the Memorial this part of its power that it’s part of everyday life. It’s not...it is a distinct precinct sacred, but it isn’t entirely separated from everyday life, and so you see what the sacrifice of these lives was for. It was for you know service, for the ability for people to come together and so you know it kind of illustrates that Greenway, what you know these things... what the sacrifice was about. So anyway I mean I think it's you know like a lot of many great works of art as you well know synthesize or combine opposing impulses, you know between action and repose, between celebration and commemoration and I think this is between …you know the classical and the modern and I think that’s what this memorial does successfully.
CC: question be better known I think because in the world of landscape architecture and this may help it become so with your attention to it. It also it also guarantees I think that the foreside of the quad will remain open, we won’t build there, and we resisted building there but this kind of guarantees it for the future…
BK: Absolutely
CC: …it will remain an open space which is critical. I think that’s really important and it's also maybe this conversation reminds me this is a good add for your book because you really wouldn’t necessarily connect the intention of having the field be the purpose and part of the War Memorial. If you see it, you know it’s there. But to know that it was planned to be that, this was thought out and executed this way is something you don’t know until you read your book. Good work.
BK: Thank you. No, I think that, you know you and I have talked about how much the campus is on built space and the unfilled spaces are very important. I mean they give the students and faculty a chance to breathe and blow out steam you know built up in the classroom and the lab. The key is …you know the key is these unbuilt spaces are not undesigned in …you know in reality they are carefully composed and their you know intentionality is also evident on the main quad. The main quad mixes you know the relax, the grassy, leafy, green and the formal. You know all those straight lines revealing directing your view to either Frost or the War Memorial. And that intentionality is also evident in the you know the topographically inspired curves of the Greenway which seeks to draw students together with things like the amphitheater where you can watch a concert, the curving pathways and plantings like the rose or cherry and crab apple trees invite you to slow down, look up from your smart phones, smell the roses or the you know cherry trees and convene. So I mean the idea of the Greenway is to make an interactive landscape unlike the old hill that led to the social dorms, it’s a place not merely a passageway. So again, the intentionality of these open spaces is absolutely critical for the Amherst campus. I mean we tend to take them and the buildings but especially the open spaces for granted and I mean they...that’s completing this reading of the campus it’s utterly important to understand them. You know it’s funny I once went up to the top of Johnson Chapel and looked down and when you look down from there especially that sort of drone or helicopter view you really understand how dominant the open spaces are. I mean they’re just utterly critical. Another way that they’re critical is the organization of a quad. So, when people think of a quadrangle, they tend to think of what’s called an Oxford quadrangle or Oxbridge, Oxford-Cambridge quadrangle. And those quadrangles are typically closed off from the outside world, you have a series of gothic revival buildings that you know make an inner world separated all by itself. Whereas at Amherst you have what are called ventilated quads and those quads are open at the corners and in the case of the main quad at the south end and they open the quadrangles quite wisely to the distant panoramas that make the campus so spectacular. I mean that is the great distinguishing feature of the Amherst campus that it is a spectacular hilltop plateau surrounded in almost every direction by other ranges. So, it would be crazy to do a Yale quad or an Oxford quad at Amherst because that would shut off views of you know of the best part of campus.
CC: And the corners as you say they’re ventilated not just at one side but that the corners are really important because the buildings sit there with space around them rather than being tied to each other as they are at Yale and other quads.
BK: Absolutely. They are not physically tied and yet they’re close enough to create a sense of enclosed space. I mean that’s the wonderful thing about Amherst quad and the enclosure is provided not only by the buildings but also by the leaves and trees. They create this lovely canopy…
CC: Yes. Oh yes.
BK: Right. So, you feel both enclosure but also expansiveness with those remarkable distant views. I mean there’s nothing like it. It’s like intoxicating I mean every time who needs legal marijuana. I mean all you need to do is to get high is to go up on…
CC: Yeah we’ve got that too
BK: Yeah well you don’t need it.
CC: One thing as we’re talking about this I’m thinking about our newest building the Science building and how construction on campus it will ever go and I think Science drives buildings on campus if we think of Fayerweather and the chemistry building that nurtured over to other uses then Merrill now to be turned over to another use or torn down and the new science building. So it’s science that has driven the big constructions on campus at least in the last 100-125 years but we’re limited as we move east not only by our property line because our property line goes more towards the south but we’re also limited by the railroad that is there. So, what... do you think that increased building in coming years will challenge the ratio of unbuilt to built space on the campus and where would we go?
BK: Yeah. I worry about that. Because you know as we’ve discussed the unbuilt spaces at Amherst are essential to the character of campus, I mean already we’ve seen some compromises for example, the new Greenway dorms pinch the once expansive open space of Hitchcock field. There’d be open spaces, that kind of you know they would roll downward, unfurl downward like the famous lawn on Jay Gatsby’s mansion in the….No you know nothing is forever but there are certain essential characteristics that are important to maintain so I mean I get why the Greenway dorms are there, Amherst needed you know to provide state of the art you know residential buildings to keep up in the so called you know architectural arms race with other colleges that were providing new dorms but at the same time that’s probably as far as I would go. In other words, if I were talking to President Martin I would say please don’t build anything to the south of there. Don’t disrupt Hitchcock Field because again Hitchcock Field which by the way is named for Doc Hitchcock, people love it, Phys Ed professor and son of one of Amherst’s presidents, you know generously funded by the alumni who love this guy. You know that too... that open space too is part of the campus and it too is not accidental it's intentional. So yeah, I mean I think that it’s really important to treat the open spaces not simply as opportunities to down another giant building but you know as spaces that have an important set of significance in and of themselves.
CC: I think that’s really a really important point. To change quick a little bit could you.. You taught I know three January courses, I participated in the first one on campus. Could you talk more about how you engaged Amherst students in this project and many of their names of course are attached to entries or buildings which they helped research?
BK: Right. Well that really was my pleasure. So, I taught an interterm course...three interterm courses several years ago and the students were wonderful. What we did was I picked a theme, fraternity houses or the athletic buildings or the buildings of the Victorian era and you know I said to each student pick a building that you want to research in this group. We went into the archives, we did research, they you know looked...worked to discover important backstories and they were each responsible for writing an essay about the building of their choice. And you know I would put on my editor’s hat and edited their you know their copies which is what we call it and you know tried to improve it and then used those essays as the basis for you know many of the essays in the book. What I had to do on my own of course was fact check you know write my own interpretation of the works but the students you know helped to get me started in many cases on you know some of the entries in the book and they’re accredited, their names appear you know at the bottom you know contributing you know so and so contributed. Yeah so that was… and I think that was great because they started the process of opening their eyes to the campus.
CC: And how to do research on the quick and as how to write purposefully for a particular audience. I think that was a great skill that they learnt. You relied of course on our archives which are extensive and the Buildings and Grounds department that keeps physical plans, that keeps records of changes to buildings and sometimes blueprints for the buildings themselves, the original buildings themselves. Can you talk a little bit about how you engaged the archives and the architects and the administrators of buildings and grounds?
BK: Well the archivists were extremely helpful. I mean many of the nuggets you know come from the bowels of Frost and what’s in the archives. In some cases, I had the opportunity to interview the architects and also you know the members, the leaders of the college’s building efforts, you know helped by Jim Brassord. And you know this was helpful because again it helps tell the stories of how things transpired. Just for example, the Powerhouse is widely regarded as a success on campus; this is a former coal-fired power plant, designed by McKim, Mead and White, the great architects who designed so many buildings at Amherst, and it had fallen into disuse and was essentially just sitting there. Jim Brassord noticed, went up to MASS MoCA and noticed that many of the warehouse buildings there had been repurposed for the display of contacted the architects of that project and came up with a wonderful solution which was to repurpose this old coal-fired power plant as student gathering space and so you know by talking to Jim by talking to the architects, it was, you know it became apparent to me what they were aiming for and why they succeeded so well that created this and they kept beautiful brickwork and other details like the grand arched windows of the Powerhouse but they also emphasized its kind of loft like industrial character and its spatial flexibility so it could you know serve as a place for parties or numerable other things and you know that’s where I think the tools of journalism combine with the architectural historian’s tools. So, in other words you know you got the benefit of going into the archives but also for the more recent buildings where the architects and patrons are still alive you know you could interview them. You know in some cases when I want to criticize a building it's helpful that the architects are dead because they cannot respond, and the patrons are dead too. So, like with, at Chapin we don’t have to worry about that because I don’t know there may be some Chapin still around, but I mean you know…
CC: They haven’t been vocal, and it has been criticized over the years.
BK: Yeah. And everybody recognizes that. It’s you know not a great building. I should say that… two things...First President Martin never asked me to pull punches in this book. You know one would think that the college contributing financially to the publication of this book that they would want to kind of want a whitewashed version of Amherst architecture and that was never requested of me. I had full freedom to say what I thought you know what I think and in fact when I met with President Martin after she read a draft of the book she was very excited and interested in the criticism for the campus as you know it was for her good to have a set of outside eyes to look at it. Another critical person to our team was the photographer Ralph Lieberman. Ralph was a perfect partner for this project. He was not simply a photographer, he is an architectural historian. So, he and I would bounce ideas off of one another. You know his input often affected my view of Amherst buildings. It’s really much easier to write when you have a partner someone to talk to and Ralph was that essential partner, so his impact is evident both in the photographs which are spectacular of the campus but it’s also hidden within its some of the text that you know he and I discussed as we worked on the project. The other thing that I really Carol can’t stress enough is your role, which is that you were the editor of this book, the person to whom I sent on the you know drafts of the entries and the person who guided me as I tried to write a guide and you know every writer needs a North star, someone who is a … who really is a compass that points you in the right direction. And your role in this guide was utterly essential, there were so many times when I was either frustrated or you know tired or needed guidance and you know you were the essential editor and the essential compass so you know it’s really important to me that your role is foregrounded here because I couldn’t have done it without you.
CC: Well Blair thank you. I really appreciate those thoughts. And I have to say it brings back my memory from I think it was about 2011, like a long time ago that I was contemplating, I taught the campus in various ways as a seminar and always included in my American art classes and I really thought we needed a book on, some kind of book. I wasn’t at all focused on Print and Architectural Press series, but we needed a book on the campus. I wasn’t the one to write it I knew that and I thought my first choice was Blair Kamin but he’s too busy, he has a day job that keeps him pretty occupied. So, I remember so distinctly thinking who am I going to get? Who can I get to write this if not Blair? And I hadn’t come up with a good thought and literally the phone rang and it was Blair saying, Carol I got an idea about writing a book on Amherst campus, and I thought this can’ be. We can’t both have the same thought at the same time. But what a pleasure it’s been Blair I have to say. What a pleasure to work on this, how much I’ve learned and what a good time it’s been working on this project over the years. And Biddy Martin was supportive from the moment that we took the idea to her and her… And she turned to me and said what can I… what do you need to get this book done. It was one of those things where she was behind it from the beginning and in recent times when we’ve had a couple of bumpy roads Catherine has been steady… Catherine Epstein, the dean of faculty and provost as well was steady and helpful as well as she possibly could be. So, it’s been great.
BK: Yeah. It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a team to you know do a book like this and I think that really brings us back to the beginning of Amherst and its kind of foundation. Its foundation myth or its founding myth that which is that the first building of Amherst - South College was not built as a result of some patron floating you offering gazillions of dollars…
CC: or on his deathbed
BK: Yeah or on his deathbed. Or someone like John Howard or endowing buildings or the Massachusetts legislature supporting a college through a charter. Amherst has a very different origins story, it is very much organic from the ground up process whereby and this is reflected in the construction of the first building, you know the summer of 1820, two hundred years ago, almost exactly townspeople gathered on the hill and you know they donated labor, they donated bricks, people you know brought farm produce to contribute, turnips you know other crops. You know they gathered on that hilltop, and stayed there, slept there and started building this college and that, you know that’s Amherst right. You know it’s not a campus of knock out architectural statements but the buildings combine to create a whole, buildings and landscape combine to create a whole that’s much greater than the sum of its individual parts and I mean that was true in the book we just did and it’s true you know in the campus as a whole so I mean there is a kind of you know appropriateness to the fact that it took many hands not one to develop both this campus and the book about it. And I’m just thrilled that I had a chance to work with you to be a part of it.
CC: Well it’s been a pleasure. Maybe a good place stop. This was a community college founded by the community and that community service is still very much a part of the ethos of the college. There’s a reason called Amherst College not Johnson College after Johnson gave his money. I think that's an important point. It’s a terrific book. Congratulations! And I encourage alums and well beyond to read it, to walk the campus and to learn and enjoy what is there for us all. Terrific. Thank you Blair.
BK: Thank you Carol. Thank you so much.