Wilson Quad Basement notes
110 Pulpit Hill Road Amherst, MA 01002 p: 413-549-5799 f: 413-549-7918 www.facdarchitects.com
March 4, 2019
Louis Hasbrouck, Building Commissioner
Northampton Inspection Services
lhasbrouck@northamptonma.gov
Quad Basement Egress - Smith College
Dear Hasbrouck,
On November 13th, 2018 Allison Avalon Duke, Smith Project Manager, and I met with you to
discuss egress from the basement spaces of the buildings within the Quad. You requested
that I follow up with a letter which I am finally getting around to.
The goal of the project is to limit student access to vast areas of the basements and, in so
doing, make them safer. These areas are not well supervised and include electrical panels,
transformer vaults and mechanical equipment. They will be partitioned with wire mesh walls
and new exit signs will be added along the egress paths as needed.
If you recall, there are many current and new dead-end corridors and single exits. However,
with only one minor exception, these exit conditions meet the occupancy and travel distance
for S-1 occupancies. Our meeting was to confirm that you accepted our interpretation of
these as S-1 spaces with accessory laundry (R-2) use.
The attached drawings include the following to back up our assertion that egress is safely
addressed.
0.1: Occupancy and Travel Distances are calculated. Wilson is the only building in which the
103’ travel distance slightly exceeds the 100’ maximum allowed by code. This is
illustrated on sheet W-1.1
Floor Plans:
• The basement plans show restricted area in red hatch, student trunk rooms in green
hatch, and laundry and other regularly accessed student areas in blue.
• S-1 and R-2 mixed uses in Comstock and Wilder are separated with a ½ hour door
(illustrated with heavy dashed black line).
• Egress paths are shown: green lines in student areas, redlines in restricted areas.
We appreciate your consideration of this letter. Please let me know if you require anything
else between now and our permit application.
Laura Fitch, project architect