Sat 6 Sep 2008
Floorplans (PDFs):
First Floor, Second Floor
First Fridays was held there last night, but capacity has been reduced, such that a fairly long line formed outside. If it’s not obvious from the floorplans, the main entrance is now on the left side of the building, not the front. I didn’t stick around until the end, but it seems the event was a success, at least once you got inside.
If you haven’t been there recently, the Sports Information site has a few neat outlooks on fall seasons; the women’s soccer team won today 4-1, and the men were up 3-1 when I left.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I realize that this is a stupid question, but where is Goodrich? When did it open? How has it been used in the past? I just don’t know anything about it . . .
September 7th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Old, but:
http://www.williams.edu/dean/campus_life/goodrich/
September 7th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
David - depending on when people were at Williams, they may know Goodrich as a chapel, a gymnasium, or a studio art building. Now it is mostly a coffee bar and study/hangout/performance space.
September 7th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
ronit -
Or a large lecture hall for history, religion, and philosophy (with the upstairs available as an art studio)
8 o’clocks on snow and icy days were a perilous climb to the hall!
September 7th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
dkane -
Amazing that you would have little background on Goodrich but refreshing that you would admit it. Itl will feature in ‘Growing Up Turgidley’ in the chapter describing the my Grandfather’s famous prank - ‘the Goat in Goodrich’.
Sincerely,
Rechtal Turgidley, Jr
Quark Island, Maine
September 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Goodrich Hall was the chapel before Thompson was built (it is the same vintage as several nearby buildings). In addition to the enumerated functions, it has dance performance (and practice?) space– moving that out of the old gym next door freed up room for more general work-out space in the old gym.
Goodrich was a huge blessing after Baxter was closed and Paresky was so long coming on line.It was heavily used as a coffee house and concert venue and a number of functions, such as Dining Service’s Grab and Go lunches, were run out of the building. Unfortunately, in the spring of 2007, the flooring in the big main Goodrich room (named “Payne Hall” for the now late Hank Payne) shook violently and nearly gave in while students were dancing at a concert. That led to the emergency closure of the building. Engineering inspections revealed that the floor was dangerously close to collapse. What started out as a shoring up, expected to be completed over the summer of 2007, led to a much more comprehensive, difficult, and time-consuming project as it became necessary to bring the building up to code in some other respects. One staircase presented particularly difficult problems. And so the Goodrich project has taken over a year longer than expected (and there’s still work to be done to bring back the short-lived but beloved coffee house function).
This Goodrich Hall (the stone-clad chapel-like building across Rt. 2, on the eastern corner of Rt. 2 with Spring Street) is not to be confused with the white-clapboard Goodrich House that is a student residence near the old Williams Inn/Dodd House and part of the Dodd neighborhood.
One very good (but expensive) collateral impact of the near-miss with Goodrich Hall is that the College had a lot of the other older buildings inspected for engineering problems, uncovered quite a few, and made repairs. Among other things, the Dodd living room floor was reinforced.
I’d be curious to know how current students like the renovated Goodrich Hall. Also as time goes on, how it works with Paresky in place (Paresky was only open a short time before Goodrich had to be closed because of the floor, I think).
September 8th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I note several spaces in Goodrich converted to dance rehearsal space. While it is too bad some of the capacity in the very cool payne hall (which hopefully retained its character in the renovation) was lost, getting rid of the redundant office suites makes sense. And by shifting dance studio space to Goodrich, that opens up more room in Lasell — and I know the next (and probably last, for some time) major construction planning endeavor involves refashioning Lasell and Chandler to offer improved fitness and locker facilities … that space is very tight, and they will need to utilize every inch to create a fitness center on par with Williams’ peers. Other than the fitness center, hard to think of any substantial facility at Williams that will not be state of the art once stetson-sawyer is completed …
September 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Jeff Z. - then it’ll be time to tear down the theatre again, or gut half of the freshman dorms, because why not? I don’t think Morty could go to sleep at night without the sound of construction somewhere on campus.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Ah, but Ronit, I’d be willing to bet that Morty will be long gone before the athletic reconstruction is completed (my guess would be sometime around 2011/12, with the big fund drive behind him and his signature campus reconstruction completed, there wouldn’t be much in the way of grand projects to embark upon, and he would have already had a very long tenure for a 21st centure college president).
If that is the case, I’d hope that the new President had a decidedly less construction-intensive philosophy, because really, other than upkeep and maintenance, there won’t be a single campus function that has not been recently renovated. Before the first wave of major construction (science center in 2000), the science complex hadn’t been augmented in around 35 years, the athletic complex in 15, the theater and student center dated to the 1950’s, the library was close to 25 years old. By 2012, essentially every major building on campus will have been constructed or gut-renovated in the last dozen years. Huge, huge difference in terms of the life cycle of the physical plant. Unless the school is insane, it will be time to enjoy at least a decade of a relatively quiet campus, with only minor renovations and upkeep, while Amherst takes its turn at massive-scale reconstruction (Amherst is currently in the middle of a campus master planning process).
September 8th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Maybe they could demolish Thompson Chapel and replace it with something sleek and neon?
Or they could always try out another new housing system, because cluster housing is so 2006.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Once the athletic reconstruction is done, the only remaining big need I see currently is for a large social space, big enough for major concerts (without disturbing neighbors) and for “town hall” campus functions. I guess the gym or field house could handle the few times the latter is ever needed.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Fair point. There are a plethora of mid-sized concert spaces / sit-down lecture spaces on campus now (the new theater, brooks rogers, goodrich, the log, paresky, chapin), but nothing for large concerts. The thing is, something like that would only be used a few times a semester, at most, so hard to justify a building that only serves that function … perhaps if the fieldhouse is renovated as part of the athletic reconstruction, they can add some accoutiscal enhancements to enable it to better serve this function.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
That would be a great idea, if they could pull it off.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
My understanding is that fieldhouse will be torn down and rebuilt as part of the athletic reconstruction. I don’t know if anyone’s putting any thought into its suitability for concerts.
One set of facilities on campus that is definitely not state-of-the-art is the music building/Chapin complex. Because it’s historical and pretty, Chapin is unlikely to be remodeled substantially despite all its functional issues, but there’s still a lot of room for renovation in the music building. It’s ugly (”most creative use of concrete” award notwithstanding) and will become much more exposed when Sawyer comes down. The practice rooms are cramped, with ceilings so low that a lot of violin/viola players can’t even stand up without hitting their bows on the ceiling, and the spaces are not well-suited for the ensembles that rehearse/perform there (Chapin is awful for berkshire symphony, Presser is not very good for choirs, Shainman is cumbersome and awkward for symphwinds/jazz band, and so on.) Also, the climate control is quite often completely useless. Bernhard is still reasonably functional, just as Baxter and Stetson were reasonably functional, but it’s definitely not the sort of building you’d go out of your way to put on an admissions brochure, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it were the next up on the renovation list.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Bernhard and Sawyer both had issues from the get-go. An era of failures. Hope the new buildings will hold up better, be more functional and fit in better.
What are the issues with the fieldhouse? I haven’t been in there in a long time. What would a new one incorporate/add (besides, we hope, a big music venue)?
September 8th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
More room is required to accomodate an end of the 21st century indoor track and field facility - a full standard, state-of-the-art 1/8th (the current facility is oddly less than 1/8th) of a mile track with 8 lanes completely around (the current facility has 7 cramped lanes in the sprint straight and 5 lanes elsewhere) and generously ample room (the current facility has either mostly no or grossly inadequate provision for the following - field events, home teams’ (both genders) and several visitors’ dressing rooms, trainers’ rooms, public restrooms, weight training, coaches, spectators, maintenance and storage, and consequently a much bigger (perhaps as much as a quintupling size) footprint is needed. If the College is going to do it, then find a new site and do it right in order to suitably last 100 years! The current facility is a dump and an embarassment for our deserving kids and for an institution of the College’s pretensions.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I think “quintupling” the field house in size is a little, err, excessive, but looking at google maps, it appears that if B&G was moved or reconfigured, or a lot of the parking down there removed (perhaps possible in light of the expanded parking lots in other areas nearby? or perhaps parking could be moved to former town garage site?), the field house footprint could be doubled. I don’t know that there is anyplace around campus to move it, so I imagine it will stay in the lower spring street area. I do hope that, if they redo the field house, they get a really creative architect who can create a multipurpose space that is attractive and has good accoustics that could convert a few times a year to a great space for large all-campus concerts. That would be a huge asset to the campus.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Quintupling is a little excessive, but doubling is inadequate for the projected needs of 100 years. Have you visited this cramped, run-down, cheaply constructed facility - a facility which is required to receive broad use by many throughout the year? How about putting a new multi-purpose field house in a well planned satellite campus of the future in, say, a current cow pasture located in south Williamstown or Pownal?
September 9th, 2008 at 7:36 am
I think people in town would absolutely flip out if Williams were to try to embark upon that. Makes much more sense to keep Williamstown’s open spaces green and do everything possible to keep the campus contiguous. Much better to try, creatively, to expand in the unattractive back alley / asphalt / hidden space between spring and water streets. It also makes sense to have the athletic facilities grouped together in one spot on campus. There is quite a bit of room for expansion down there, if anything should be moved to the edges of campus, it should be parking and the B&G complex, so that the athletic facilities ran remain grouped together.
I haven’t been in the fieldhouse in years but I certainly recall that it was in inadequate in many ways. But I can’t imagine that a smart architect who makes much better use of space, combined with a facility two or even two and a half times bigger, could effectively provide three times as much useable space. I don’t recall seeing any fieldhouses larger than that for any other D-III schools …
September 9th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Wonder if some functions could be moved underground. Makes sense to move B & G (or Facilities, or whatever they call it) out of the center of town. I also wonder there are other Williams functions around or in the fieldhouse that could easily be moved away from that area.
In looking at other schools over the years, I’ve noticed how many have spread much of their fitness/recreational equipment/venues around their campuses, allowing students and staff a variety of places to work out or play rec-level sports. Some also seem to have created more room in their gyms by moving some coaches, equipment rooms, and administrators out of the gyms. I have often wondered whether that might work at Williams, freeing up more space in the gyms for the teams (including for cross-training). If, for example, the gyms had more weight-training equipment, track and field and other fieldhouse sports could use it and that would eliminate adding some extra new space for the fieldhouse.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:27 am
I would think that some space would have been freed up on campus by the new academic buildings — such as in some of the small houses that formerly housed departments (to the extent those buildings weren’t torn down). More, possibly including bigger buildings, should be available (including, perhaps, Jessup?) when the new Sawyer comes online. Could these spaces absorb some College functions now carried on in the fieldhouse area and/or also house athletic functions (whether facilities or staff or both)? And aren’t there spaces, such as in the bottom of Greylock, that aren’t being used or are being used inefficiently and that could be reconfigured to absorb some of space needs/functions from elsewhere on campus?