Barry Moser in 1972, adjusting the second of Williston’s two printing presses. By 1969 the Castalia Press was producing broadsides and other fine printing from its home in the old Easthampton railroad depot.
Some of this is necessarily in the nature of a personal reminiscence. Barry Moser spoke at Williston Northampton’s Commencement on May 25th. (Listen here!)Today he is recognized as an artist of international preeminence; in September 1967, for this writer and about 400 other once-young men, he was a rookie faculty member taking over a visual arts program that was, quite frankly, on life support. Its transformation was swift and spectacular. And those of us fortunate to have been in Barry’s classes were transformed as well. Ever the iconoclast, he challenged every assumption any of us might have had about art, not to mention literature, music, psychology . . . all the while demanding that we see, not just look. Any student from his 15 years on the faculty will tell you that his were lessons for a lifetime.
In the late sixties the Williston Theatre was entering one of its golden ages under the direction of Ellis Baker and Richard Gregory. Barry was soon involved as a set designer. He also began to produce handbills for the plays — visual miracles for which the word “poster” is possibly inadequate. Often the central images were executed in the intricate and sometimes unforgiving media of woodcut or etching. Here are a few examples. (All items are by Barry Moser for Williston Academy or The Williston Northampton School; reproduced with the gracious permission of the artist.)
John Brown’s Body, Spring 1969. “I tried for something that looked like a wanted poster.” (Click all images to enlarge.)Continue reading →
Photo by Rachel Deena ’13. Click images to enlarge.
Preparation for the inauguration of the Williston Northampton Athletic Hall of Fame — whose first class will be enshrined on Reunion Weekend, June 6-8 — has involved looking at a great many photographs. I hadn’t thought about this much before, but it has recently occurred to me that some sports are more photogenic than others. Before I sink my own ship by suggesting that, for example, all field hockey photos look the same (they don’t!), or that golf images tend to be ruined by golfer’s outfits (can I get back to you?), let me go out on a limb and suggest that one of the sports that has produced an awful lot of really exciting photography over the years at Williston is Track and Field.
Golf, late 1930s. Those checked trousers and two-tone shoes have never gone out of style. (William Rittase)
There are undoubtedly reasons for this, some of which, truthfully, may reflect this writer’s prejudices. I mean, preferences. So we won’t delve too deeply into the psycho-sociological issues of why, for example, from the photographer’s point of view, helmets and sticks can both be dealt with, but not usually at the same time.
(Yu Chen Wang ’15)
OK, let’s be serious. Is it that track and field athletes, perhaps more than any others, achieve pinnacles of effort and passion that are concentrated in the briefest of durations, perhaps a few seconds, perhaps even less? Yes, this happens in other sports, but I submit — without meaning to diminish any athlete’s accomplishment — that most of the time the brilliant goal-out-of-nowhere, the impossible catch, is reactive. For the track and field athlete, successful execution is entirely studied. And the great jump, the winning acceleration derives from someplace deep within the athlete’s psyche, a place where the soul is quite alone, where all that remains is abandonment to the moment.
(Yu Chen Wang ’15)
Or perhaps this is nonsense. But the camera has captured some extraordinary track and field moments. The older images on this page are the work of William Rittase (1894-1968), a Philadelphia-based photographer who specialized in industrial images, but who did some very special catalog work at both Williston and Northampton School in the 1930s and ’40s. His photos are even more remarkable when one considers that he favored a large-format camera that was not conducive to “action” photography at all.
(William Rittase)
As many are aware, there is a photographic tradition at Williston Northampton. Bob Couch ’50 mentored student photographers beginning in the 1960s and began to teach photo courses in the ’70s. That program is now in the capable hands of Edward Hing ’77, himself a Couch protégé. We offer seven different photography and film courses plus evening lecture programs that bring world-class photographers and photojournalists to campus. And wherever one looks on campus, there are talented kids with cameras looking back. We’re proud to feature some of their work here as well.
In 1854 Samuel Williston established the Hampshire and Hampden Railroad Company. He and his longtime business partner, Joel Hayden of Williamsburg, Mass., initially hoped to extend the line as far as Troy, New York, but their realistic concern was to connect Easthampton and Williamsburg, both former villages that were now evolving into factory towns, with what they correctly saw as a rapidly developing national rail grid.
The H. & H.R.R. purchased the route of the defunct Northampton-New Haven Canal, an ill-conceived enterprise that had already lost Samuel a considerable sum. The project took five years; competing railroads did their best to create obstacles. Samuel ultimately spent $35,000 of his own money—about $820,000 in current dollars—to see the 24-mile rail spur’s completion.
His biographer, Frank Conant, points out that it was more “a matter of public service rather than for profit.” But “the day would come when he could board the cars at Easthampton’s nearby depot and arrive in New York City a few hours later.”1
The Easthampton Rail Station in the mid-1950s, shortly before passenger service ceased.
Whether there was an elaborate rail station in the early years, or just a simple shed, has not been determined. The present building apparently dates from 1871. In its original state it contained a large waiting room, baggage room, and office for the station master.
The depot appears frequently in Williston Seminary lore: teams and spectators would board “the cars” for travel to away games as far away as Worcester. The train provided quick access to the entertainment delights of Springfield. Individual anecdotes describe torchlight processions of departing student “heroes” down Union Street from the campus.2 Even freight service found its way into legend: witness the tale of William Peck’s double bass, retold in “Williston’s First Orchestra.”
Edward Payson Guild (b. 1857) graduated Williston Seminary in 1877. He went on to a long career as an editor for Houghton Mifflin and contributed many articles, often on music, to a variety of magazines. Guild wrote the following memoir for the 1914 senior class yearbook, The Log.
The Williston Musical Association had its birth in the Fall of 1876. It was a natural crystalizing of musical interest which had been growing in the Seminary for some time. In the previous winter there were several students more or less proficient in playing various instruments but their efforts at harmony had been confined to two or three fellows getting together occasionally and delighting themselves, if not their neighbors, with various instruments, playing college songs, hymns, or anything at hand. The effect sometimes must have been lugubrious, as for instance one Sunday afternoon when I remember some combination of instruments wailing forth over the campus the strains of “Fading, still fading, the last beam is fading.” No doubt more than one listener was anxious that the fading should be more expeditious.
One day came, however, when the boys said they would have a real orchestra, and in one of the early weeks of ’76 the first rehearsal took place. The players were as follows: C. H. Lewis, E. H. Sleight, violins; H. S. Ballou, W. H. Harper, flutes; E. P. Guild, L. C. Parkhurst, clarinets; C. H. Norton, cornet; J. F. Woodhull, ‘cello; E. L. Ernhaut, pianist.
The original orchestra of 1876. Guild is in the back row, left. (Click images to enlarge.)
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