Photo of the Week: The Pavilion at Orchard Hill
The Pavilion at Orchard Hill. Photo: Hetty Startup
Our feature, Photo of the Week, presents each week, a new picture by a local photographer. We invite local photographers to share their photographs here. Please include a description/caption and an indication of who is to be credited.
About the Pavilion
In Spring of 2025, the campus completed construction of an open-air Pavilion facility on Orchard Hill to be a community asset, open for quiet contemplation and planned events. The project includes an approximately 1,600-square-foot pavilion with a trellis-covered, 620 square-foot deck on one end and a 620 square-foot stone patio on the other. Generous stairs that meet the deck double as access as well as a small amphitheater. An accessible path leads visitors to the entry of the pavilion and toilet facilities.
Materials for the project include cast-in-place reinforced white concrete walls that diminish in height from one end to the other, opening the main space to both intimate and distant views of the site. The concrete walls are perforated with color channel glass openings, and the framed areas above the concrete walls contain light steel frames housing small color light boxes.
More information on the Orchard Hill Pavilion and another photo gallery can be found at: https://umasshospitality.com/gallery/pavilion.
While we can all appreciate a beautiful, contemplative space, sadly, the pavilion is neither. Instead, it is a cold, sterile, concrete folly. It is such a waste of money and land. Surely a better use of that land would have been a small cluster of student dorms, with a natural garden space to serve the university community and honor the donors. This folly, by definition, serves no purpose and fails to honor anyone.
This project had detractors from the outset. There was one student revising for finals enjoying the peace of the setting when I was there taking photographs. I had to pick my shots to avoid the large trash and recycling containers that were inside the pavilion. The restrooms and janitor services part of the design curves off to the main entrance from Orchard Hill, rather than the access path from Eastman Lane. This part of the design is very different in feel from the white ‘acropolis’-like shape of the actual pavilion. See more here https://www.amherstindy.org/2023/02/03/amherst-history-month-by-month-the-spaces-in-between/
Like the ill-fated, coal-fired steam-heating plant UMass erected at nearby Tillson Farm — which may be an apt set for a dystopian film or play, though it never delivered any steam heating to the campus below — it will be interesting to see how this Neo-Brutalist pavilion will be utilized and regarded by future generations.
One may wish to compare and contrast this with the modest structure that Amherst College erected near its Book and Plow Farm (a short detour north of the Norwottuck Rail Trail with a splendid view of the Pelham Hills, especially at sunrise or moonrise).
My final word on this (after oh so many words!) is that I am deeply grateful this was not erected on the land behind the Center for Renaissance Studies. Thank you to all of the community members who joined me in speaking up against that happening.