1897

I asked myself at the first of the college year an important question: What can a class secretary do to help the College? This is a serious question and I want to make myself answer in a limited w,ay. What can anyone do to any far away organization that is under extreme pressure of the shrinking dollar value and the explosive restlessness of youth? What can I do at 76 to help a College of three thousand scholars and professors and about half as many more townspeople entirely dependent upon the College? There are two or three views which I asked myself in all seriousness.

First is this. Shall we, the class secretary group, come close enough to our jobs to know the College as it is and then write in the MAGAZINE nice sweet nothings to our classmates keeping to the nostalgic recallings of the beauties of "The elms their shade still cast afar" (this expression from Christophe's poem). Second, shall we form ourselves into a "Kicker's Club" like one in Boston to which there belonged two well-known men of our age, "Hiram" Tuttle and Calvin Coolidge. Third, shall we try to write to the undergraduates solemn words the warning of the O tempora, O mores variety which I have heard translated "Oh, the bad times, Oh, the bad customs."

I have asked myself enough to try to begin to answer just a little, and I want to avoid the old view expressed by my great-grandfather in a preaching book of poems that he wrote (I hope the best, I feel the worst).

I will take one shot at what I, as an old secretary, want to tell the College. You, the College of Fine Arts, are the one and only reason for Hanover, the town of folks and business and homes. If this is so, then you, the College of Fine Arts, should have the say about the arts of the town, and you, the College, should examine and re-examine your Art Departments to be sure they are competent to be the masters of the arts or rather the artistic direction the town shall take. I do not believe that fine arts should stop at the south wall of Campion's Store and at the south wall of the C. & G. House, and have the Art Department of our schools of art complacent about every other building not owned by the College south of these two walls, all the way to the -'Junk."

I like to call it the "Junk," for I think the word is just what the town at the joining of the two beautiful rivers looks like, and I do not want the feeling of the "Junk" to grow north to the south walls of Campion's Store and the south walls of the C. & G. Building. "Them's plain words, fellers," and one more thing I want to write about in the same vein.

I think Lebanon St. is a mess, and I think our Fine Arts Departments are to blame for this mess going back over about 75 years. We men of '97 joke about the old "Prexy" of our time, but everyone of us loved him because of his courage of his convictions. He never had a doubt in his branch of teaching.

I feel quite sure if the professors, all of them, had as firm convictions about south Hanover as I have and they would do as I did when I was asked to lay 33,000,000 bricks in Bridgeport, it would help the College Town a lot. I studied brick and I hunted for an architect who knew brick and a landscape "guy" who knew exteriors and they came and did a job for me, and helped me prove that art pays dividends. Two of these artistic "guys" whom I chose for my work in Bridgeport were later given the chance to bring beauty to Williamsburg in the great restoration program. The landscape "guy" is helping Amherst College solve its problems. What these men did for me thirty years ago leaves my company just a little bit in the excess profits class. I am starting the day that this article is written to beautify one of five old houses that looked like the devil. These nine homes, four two families and one single, look like Lebanon Street houses, and I am not going to pay excess profits taxes and not help these families come up a little in self-respect. These tenants want to pay more rent and have a little more beauty and they can have both.

How I would like to do the same to Lebanon St., Allen St. and South Main St. I caught hell the last time I wrote about the "slums of Hanover" from a young bride who lived in Sachem Village, writing me she loved it and I had no right to call it a "slum."

Let's turn a spotlight on the south end of Hanover. I hate to think I have to come in through the shed and back door when I come back home to my Alma Mater. What, you may ask, has this kind of explosive writing got to do with the College we all love? I love the College north of Campion's Store. I don't love South Main St., or Allen St., or Lebanon St. They look like step-children of a College of Fine Arts to me.

Harry Blunt o£ our class had a dream about the College to the north and west of Campion's store. I had some wonderful hours with him talking about his dream before it came true. His dream was recorded in the wonderful book of etching-like drawings, which I keep on my big office table a good deal. I often turn its pages with pride that I had just a little bit to do with helping to make Harry's dream about Hanover north of Campion's come true. I would like to add more pages in this book to picture what could be south of Campion's.

I feel X can help the College if I can stimulate the Thayer School of Engineering to study areas from Campion's to Mink Brook on Main Street, all of the areas fronting Allen St. and those on Lebanon St. quite far out of town, and try to find a better use for these areas, useful for buildings and parking area and for paths to go to and from portions of the area behind the stores. I think the_ engineers can do this.

I think the Tuck School could study the loss of values of badly covered areas almost all within a stone's throw of the fine nicely-designed firehouse, and also study the business prospects for proper use of these blighted areas and make a sound program for more trade in Hanover. I believe the Tuck School could find a way to double the commerce of Hanover, as is being done in other cities where improved shopping areas are being introduced.

I think the Art Departments of the College ought to foresee and come up with a spark of the beautiful in these areas of Hanover. These three departments of the College should arrive at a business area of efficiency in lay-out, stability of investment, and the beauty of the wall, the window and the door of its buildings.

We need, however, one more element, a landscape fellow trained to dream of grass and trees and flowers. He might want the west side of Main St. moved west 20 ft. cutting off bad fronts of buildings and building new fronts and adding sufficient area on the back so that, with this street widened, a row of trees could be planted down a center parkway. He might want another 20 feet on the east side of Main St. part of the way so that this center parkway street, wide and beautiful, would become the main entrance to Hanover, beginning at Mink Brook and ending at Campion's. This wide street to be supplemented with a large amount of off-street parking areas.

A study made by two professionals employed by a Hanover business man and myself showed possibility of parking 200 cars on one side of Main St. between West Wheelock St. and South St. and a very much better use of the land areas, with elimination of only a small amount of useful structures. If a program of systematic, conscientious professional study can be made of the areas I have mentioned, including Main St., Allen St. and Lebanon St., and those things that are evident to many of us who have studied Hanover, can be carried out, I feel I can then say that I love Hanover all over and not just north of Campion's.

Secretary and Treasurer 886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn.