Umass Old and New

Some pictures of the construction and some pictures of the old..

Dickinson- former home of police station and ROTC stuff with new dorms rising behind it. Not sure if the full purpleness came through here. This is a huge construction project that is going on.

What is the building behind Bartlett? Yeah, that's what you can see there in the concrete. Another view of the new dorms being built. The dorms are going where the old tennis courts used to be, and also a large parking lot. They will be wedged in between the new recreation center and Boyden gym.

Something old.. a glimpse of Blaisdell House on the right, the oldest building on campus, and also the former horse barn on the left. The horses moved to the Hadley Farm many years ago and now the barn is falling apart.

A better view of the horse barn. Grinnell Arena used to be nearby but that was torn down too to make room for the new recreation building and new band building. The barn now seems to be home to stray cats, birds, and other creatures. I've seen university vehicles like these parked in front of it so I wonder if it being used for other purposes as well but it seems to be boarded up with fresh locks on the doors etc.

Here we have the new recreation center on the right, and the dorms that are being built on the left. It really is quite a construction site and I hope to take the time to take some more pictures of the area soon. It's hard to imagine how many thousands of students are going to be living in this space. No dining halls are being built though. They will have to go to Southwest to eat (sounds dumb to me too).

And one last picture from the distance. The brick is the edge of the band building, and you can see the dorm construction in the back. This is only a small piece of the project though. There are many buildings going up.

I wish I didn't feel so shy about photographing people. I would love to get some shots of the workers who come and go to the site. They work about the same hours I do (7am-3pm) and there are a lot of them. They wear their yellow safety vests and hard hats. They've got dirty gloves shoved in their back pockets, and carry their Igloo lunch coolers and sometimes a gallon of water. In the mornings many of them have their coffee cups or water bottles. The supervisors are frequently on their cell phones. They work in the rain and they work in the 100 degree sun. These men and women do a hard day's work. Makes me remember I shouldn't complain about my cold air conditioned office. I don't think these folks complain much about the weather, and I'm guessing a lot of them have long commutes at the end of the day too. They have to park quite a ways from the construction site too. So they've got a long walk back to their vehicles when the day is through.