Amherst History Month By Month: A Chocolate Box Miscellany for the New Year

In past columns, I’ve talked about the ways that architecture can be a portal or lens to other aspects of our collective past and perhaps even our more individual stories as well. Amherst’s built and natural environments need protecting because of this embodied capacity to reveal something about our identity and our values. How this is manifesting at present is demonstrated below in several examples (or individual pieces of chocolate!). 

Literary Connections: Celebrate the Writers in our Midst
A perfect example of architecture as a lens to other histories is the successful Writers Walk that exists to both inform and promote the town’s rich literary history via its buildings. This is one of Amherst’s greatest strengths in terms of its identity. 

As I seek to link the topic of historic preservation to other goings-on, I was pleased to see these events listed for January in the Indy’s “What’s Happening in Amherst” page: 

JANUARY 11-14 AND JANUARY 18-21, 2024: SEUSSICAL THE MUSICAL. Amherst Community Theater presents the Broadway musical Seussical!” Oh, the thinks you can think” when Dr. Seuss’ best-loved characters … cavort in an unforgettable musical caper! …all your favorite Dr. Seuss characters spring to life onstage at the beautiful UMass Bowker Auditorium. Dr. Seuss was born in nearby Springfield. For tickets, go to: https://amherstacts.org/buy-tickets/

And at the Drake, JANUARY 18: THE VALLEY VOICES STORY SLAM: MISSED CONNECTIONS. Thursday, at 7:30 p.m. The Drake, 44 North Pleasant Street. Tickets, $17.

Suessical will happen on the UMass campus. The NEPM Story Slam is hosted by The Drake, downtown. Last month I happened to survey some of the performance spaces in Amherst and retrospectively, should have titled it “Part 3” of my articles on the history of Amherst Center. As I write about our downtown’s architectural history, I know at least one reader who keeps track of the times I say that a further article pertaining to the theme is forthcoming!  The Drake is a significant new performance venue – and has its own very interesting history. See, there are so many interesting preservation stories in our town!

Downtown History and Educational Institutions: Our ‘Book and Plow” Town 
My last column also cited the major contribution that Amherst College has made to the coherence of the design of Amherst Center. But the look of the town has also been driven by business development in a more general sense. These days higher education and business development are more closely aligned than in the late eighteenth century so that it would be hard to imagine the Town of Amherst thriving without the contributions of three of its “Five Colleges” (Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.) The civic and “higher ed biz” components are closely aligned.

Business Development: Play, Play, Play
Many of Amherst’s downtown businesses are family-owned, some with deep roots in its agricultural origins, and today, businesses maintain a sense of pride in ownership that reaches back decades, if not centuries. Small businesses give Amherst its unique vibe and character. In this category I would place specialist stores like Tony Creamer’s Fretted Instrument Workshop on South Pleasant Street and The Toy Box, on North Pleasant Street, where the owner, Liz Rosenberg, launched her toy shop in 2003. It is the passion for deep inventory, product quality and an informed reach into their own niche markets that makes these stores hum with relevance and vitality when you step inside. It is the business owners as well as historic architecture that make towns like Amherst work. Maybe it sounds very Pollyannaish, but these two stores help us make music and nurture our ability as children and adults to play!

Business Development: Private-Public Partnerships
But, as Marvin Gaye cried in his haunting song ‘Inner City Blues’, it “…make me holler the way they make me do my life!” because the building blocks for quality of life here have been harder to achieve for some of our residents. I think part of our shared values as a town involves the idea of right relationship – and one aspect of this is making the town more inclusive for all. For this reason, I was excited to read about the dedication ceremony last week that was an example of a private-public partnership celebrating the 40-acre site that is Amherst’s Westside Historic District.  The Town of Amherst has installed a new street sign at the corner of Hazel Avenue and Northampton Road and the ceremony to mark its appearance, as Anika Lopes stated last week, “stands as a testament to resilience, community, and a deep commitment to inclusivity,” raising up the “generational endeavor started by Lopes’ grandfather Dudley Bridges.” The Westside Historic District, home to Amherst’s African American residents for centuries, and characterized by a range of 19th-century architectural house styles, was nominated to the National Register of Historic Sites in 2000. 

Amherst’s many educational institutions also help to contribute to its diversity and its commitment to principles of equity even if these principles are not yet fully realized. (I am writing this article as the traditional observance of Kwanzaa begins that many African Americans celebrate along with Christmas or other spiritually derived holidays.) Our town wants to uphold its global relevance in many dimensions and a sign of this recently was at the last Town Council meeting. 

International Partnerships
In 1993, Amherst and the Japanese town of Kanegasaki – 10 hours apart, across the globe – became sister cities and met last week, via Zoom at the Town Council meeting to renew that agreement virtually. Pledging to foster in each town a place for residents and businesses to share in a “vibrant and engaging community spirit” was moving to watch, even online and via the needed translation services. There are other international partnerships in Amherst, including ones developed with Japan many decades ago at UMass when it was a very young Agricultural College. But the sister city friendship agreement is also aided by working relationships and exchange programs with Amherst’s junior high and high school students. Like the programs for Hispanic Month and South Asian Month in our town, often celebrated and supported by the Amherst Recreation Department, these kinds of relationships speak to Amherst’s sense of curiosity about the world, perhaps shifting its focus from Yankee origins to a closer alignment with its older indigenous peoples.

Online Historic Preservation: “Pretty Much All Real Life”
Finally, my last delicious chocolate in the box, delivered for the New Year (to continue the metaphor) comes from the Emily Dickinson Museum, where Emily Dickinson’s 193rd birthday was celebrated recently. Again, this was an online event, and a fascinating interview with Dickinson scholar Martha Nell Smith.

We heard about the history of the Evergreens, designed by the architect William Fenno Pratt, as well as the close and passionate relationship between Emily Dickinson and Susan Dickinson. We also learned about Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Austin and Susan Dickinson’s only surviving child, and her heirs, living at the Evergreens on Main Street into the 1940s. Nell Smith and Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, shared images of the house and its collections, including fascinating paintings, musical instruments, letters, and photographs.