Buildings records
Scope and Contents
The Buildings records focus on the College's buildings, both extant and demolished. The vast majority of information in the collection falls between 1875 and the present, though there are a few scattered items from before 1875. The College Archives staff is continually adding new information to the files. This collection interprets the term "building" loosely, and includes information not only about the buildings themselves, but also about what occurred / occurs in the buildings, especially where student residences are concerned. Much of Smith College student life is and long has been centered in the residential houses, and so a buildings file may contain annual group photographs of house residents, student rosters, house government material, and information on house traditions, in addition to the architectural information, ownership history, and photographs of the building itself. The collection also interprets "Smith building" loosely, containing limited information on a number of privately-owned, off-campus boarding-houses.
Dates of Materials
- 1825 - 2018
Creator
- Smith College Archives (Organization)
Conditions Governing Access
All but two (2) boxes are open for research according to the regulations of the Smith College Archives without any additional restrictions.
Box 55 is also RESTRICTED, until 2050.
Conditions Governing Use
Smith College retains copyright of materials created as part of its business operations; however, copyright in other items in this collection may be held by their respective creators. For reproductions of materials that are governed by fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. For instances which may regard materials in the collection not created by Smith College, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold materials' copyrights and obtaining approval from them. Researchers do not need anything further from Smith College Special Collections to move forward with their use.
Biographical / Historical
Smith College was incorporated in 1871 and opened with fourteen enrolled students in 1875. Therefore, most of the extant buildings were erected after 1875, though there are quite a few that date from the earlier part of the 19th century and even some from the 18th. The campus is and always has been a mixture of constructed and acquired buildings: Smith' s first three buildings were Dewey House-former home of Northampton judge Charles Augustus Dewey, College Hall-built by the trustees as the first academic and administrative building, and Gateway House-built by the trustees as a home for Smith's first president, L. Clark Seelye (1875-1910). Dewey was home to the very first Smith students and today houses faculty offices and meeting rooms. The present-day campus as a whole serves as an "architectural garden," with styles ranging from Colonial to Greek Revival and Victorian Gothic to neo-Georgian, with a dose of "modern" styles added more recently.
Extent
161.386 linear feet (287 containers)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
The Buildings records focus on the College's buildings, both extant and demolished. This collection interprets the term "building" loosely, and includes information not only about the buildings themselves, but also about what occurred / occurs in the buildings, especially where student residences are concerned. Much of Smith College student life is and has long been centered in the residential houses, and so a buildings file may contain annual group photographs of house residents, student rosters, house government material, and information on house traditions, in addition to the architectural information, ownership history, and photographs of the building itself.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
As a preservation measure, researchers must use digital copies of audiovisual materials in this collection. Please consult with Special Collections staff or email specialcollections@smith.edu to request the creation of and access to digital copies.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The material in the Buildings Collection comes to the Archives from a wide variety of sources over an extended period of time.
Bibliography
This, the House We Live In: The Smith College Campus from 1871 to 1982. Eleanor Terry Lincoln and John Abel Pinto. Smith College: Northampton, MA, 1983.
Note: This, the House We Live In is the most directly useful in this context, providing short histories of each building in the order of their construction or acquisition by the College and an alphabetical index. It also contains a quick but thorough narrative history of Smith College's expansion from the original Dewey and Lyman Homesteads to its present-day landholdings, and a discussion of the overall architectural history of the College. The book also separately lists the construction date and architect of each building if that information is known.
Processing Information
Processed by Sara Streett.
Processing Information
Please note that prior to 2018, folder inventories were not always updated when new material was added to the collection. As a result, folder inventories may not be complete and folder numbers may be incorrect.
- Title
- Finding aid to Buildings records
- Status
- Legacy Finding Aid (Updated)
- Author
- Sara Streett
- Date
- 2003
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
- 2005-09-23: manosca104 converted from EAD 1.0 to 2002 by v1to02-5c.xsl (sy2003-10-15).
- 2018-11-16: Containers added and finding aid updated as part of the College Archives Survey
- 2020-01-16: Added boxes 1-62, updated extents and dates.
- 2020-03-03: Added shared boxes, cleaned up some old notes
- 2020-06-26: Added 82 flat files
- 2020-09-28: Added some information from old paper guides, more data cleanup.
- 2022-04-06: Added historical information about individual buildings
- 2022-04-11: Added Accession 2022-A-0038
- 2022-05-23: Added Accession 2022-A-0052
- 2022-08-23: Added Accession 2022-A-0060
Repository Details
Part of the Smith College Archives Repository
