College Lane Science.pdf
Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. FORM B − BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph Topographic or Assessor's Map Please see attached continuation sheet. Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: Pioneer Valley
Planning Commission Date (month /year): April, 2011 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 31D-007-001 Easthampton NTH. Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Smith
College Campus Address: College Lane Historic Name: Clark Science Center: Sabin-Reed Hall, Burton Hall and McConnell Hall Uses: Present: classrooms, laboratories and offices Original:
classrooms, laboratories and offices Date of Construction: 1913-14; 1967 Source: Smith College Style/Form: Classical Revival, American International Style Architect/Builder: Charles
A. Rich, Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott, Exterior Material: Foundation: brick, concrete, granite Wall/Trim: brick, sandstone, concrete, glass Roof: not visible, metal Outbuildings/Secondary
Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 5.84 acres Setting: This building complex is on the east side of Paradise Pond and is
part of the Smith College campus.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [College Lane] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 1 NTH. ___ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much space
as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics
of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. The Clark Science Center is composed of three connected buildings: Burton Hall, Sabin-Reed Hall, and McConnell Hall.
The oldest, Burton Hall, of 1913-1914 is a three story brick building under a low-pitched hipped roof. Burton’s east façade is seventeen bays long. At the first story a sandstone watertable
circles the building and in its center bay is the main entry, a classical composition with a trabeated surround in which engaged stone columns with composite capitals support an open
elliptical pediment. Within the opening are double leaf doors beneath a high transom window. At the second and third stories the center three bays are recessed and the opening is divided
by four engaged, composite capital columns. The columns rest on a stone beltcourse and rise to support the building’s entablature. At the second story the full-length windows of the
center section are paired below multi-pane transoms while the third floor windows are paired but capped with arched lights. The engaged columns are linked by carved stone balustrade
and beneath the third story windows are terra cotta plaques with festooning in high relief. First and second story windows have splayed brownstone lintels and footed sills. The remaining
bays at each side are divided into groups of four and three windows with 6/1 sash. Topping the center three bays is a parapet wall. A glass bridge at its southwest corner attaches Burton
Hall to Sabin-Reed Hall. Sabin-Reed Hall is American International in style. It is a four-story brick, glass and poured concrete building under a flat roof. Above the first floor, its
elevations are made up of a grid of vertical concrete and brick posts that extend between a concrete sill and a concrete roof cornice. The posts, cornice and sills frame glass-filled
bays that are slightly recessed. The glazing shares the bays with projecting brick panels that rise from ground level to the concrete cornice thereby creating a pattern of solids (brick
and concrete) and voids (recessed glass). On the west the brick panels are solid, but on the east, facing the inner campus they are fenestrated by three horizontal windows. A series
of concrete panels surrounds the roof edge as a parapet wall. As a model of modernist American International style, Sabin-Reed was designed to express the machine age’s replacement of
ornament with geometry and pure forms. McConnell Hall shares styles with Sabin-Reed being American International in style as well. McConnell Hall is connected to Sabin-Reed on its south
elevation by a two-story glass and metal bridge at the second and third floor level. It is a four-story brick and poured concrete building whose upper two stories are supported on first
story concrete piers. First story glass and concrete walls are recessed behind the piers to create the impression of open space at the first story level. The upper three stories have
brick walls that extend between a concrete base and a concrete cornice and appear to float over three-story high, slightly recessed glass panels. Less complicated than the exterior walls
of Sabin-Reed, the McConnell building nevertheless is linked to its contemporary by the use of concrete panels at its roofline in a parapet wall and shares with its neighbor the use
of geometric forms. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local (or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the
owners/occupants played within the community. Burton Hall was Smith College’s first science building for women and was built in 1914 as Botany Hall providing classroom and laboratory
space for the biological sciences, for chemistry and geology. It was designed by architect Charles A. Rich who also designed John M. Greene Hall for Smith College. For almost fifty years
Botany Hall served the college as its science center but by 1961 the administration was preparing to expand its science offerings and needed additional space for laboratories, a library,
classrooms and equipment. The Boston architectural firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott was chosen to design two buildings around Burton Hall and to design alterations for
Burton Hall thereby creating the Clark Science Center. In order to gain adequate space for the two additional buildings a Students Building was demolished. Of the needed $8,000,000 for
the Center, $3,000,000 was donated by Edna McConnell Clark (class of 1909) and her husband W. Van Allan Clark. While the Center itself was named for its principle donors, the Clarks,
McConnell Hall was named for Edna’s father and Sabin-Reed was named for Florence Sabin and Dorothy Reed. Florence Sabin (class of 1893) was the first woman to be appointed to a
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [College Lane] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 2 NTH. professorship at Johns Hopkins University; Dorothy Reed (class of 1895) was an associate of medical scientist William Osler and it was she who developed the diagnosis for
Hodgkins disease. Married as Dorothy Reed Mendenhall, she was the mother of Smith college’s sixth president, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall who was responsible for guiding the development
of the sciences at Smith in the 1960s. At its completion Sabin-Reed Hall was devoted to the biological sciences of bacteriology, botany, chemistry, zoology and held the science library.
McConnell Hall held the physical sciences. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire Massachusetts, New York, 1873. Birney, Margaret and Bilyana Dimitrova.
Smith College: an architectural Tour, Princeton, N.J., 2007. Hales, John G. Plan of the Town or Northampton in the County of Hampshire, 1831. Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton
and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895. Walker, George H. and Company. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884. Walling, Henry F.
Map of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, New York, 1860.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [College Lane] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 3 NTH.