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A History of Food at Williams College Dining, Farming, and Gardening: How Williams Students Ate, 1793-2011 Jennifer Luo ‘13, For the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives and the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program August 19, 2011 Jennifer Luo Summer 2011 History of Dining, Farming and Gardening at Williams College Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Part One: 1793-1962 a. Context: The town around b. How Williams students dined, 1793-1962 i. Fraternities and eating clubs 1. Fraternities, after eating clubs ii. College Dining: College Hall 1. Garfield Club 2. Baxter Hall 3. Athletes iii. Self-Cater iv. Summary: How Williams students ate, 1793-1962 c. The College Garden d. The College Farm e. Historic Meals i. Class Suppers ii. Harry H. Hart’s Favorite Recipes of Williams College, 1951 3. Part Two: 1962-Present a. Context i. Williamstown ii. Williams College and the Angevine Report b. How Williams students dined, 1962-2011: The School-Operated Dining Plan i. The “Unit” System ii. The Shift to Whole Campus Dining: Driscoll, Greylock and Mission iii. The Phasing Out of Row House Dining iv. Baxter as a Creative Dining Space v. The 1980s and 1990s vi. Recent History: the Last Decade c. Sustainability in the Food Program at Williams i. Dining Services and Sustainability ii. Jim Hodgkins iii. Bob Volpi iv. Milk: The Story of High Lawn Farm v. Produce: The Story of Peace Valley Farm vi. The Harvest Dinner d. The Student Garden e. The Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program 4. Part Three: College Properties of Interest a. Mount Hope Farm b. Hopkins Memorial Forest i. Buxton Garden ii. The Sugar Bush 5. Conclusion 2 Jennifer Luo Summer 2011 History of Dining, Farming and Gardening at Williams College Introduction Many Americans know – and can intuitively sense – that the way Americans have fed themselves has changed drastically over the course of the country’s 230-some year history. Before there were supermarkets, schoolchildren are taught, there was farmland; before the frozen hot dogs, families canned and preserved at home. Then came the Industrial Revolution, and with every additional innovation in food preservation, transportation, growth and productivity, food became more and more convenient – that is to say, processed. In recent years, amid concerns about public health and environmental stability, the topic of food sustainability has been of growing interest, and the local and organic food movements have both swelled. It was from this recent fervor for food sustainability that I began this project. The issue I sought to consider was narrow: instead of studying the history of food in the broader United States, I wanted to conceptualize the role of food specifically at Williams College. How did Williams students eat, from the College’s founding in 1793 to the present day? Did they garden or farm their own food? Did they eat local foods? Did they cook for themselves? How did the dining options play into and affect the social scene? In part because my motivation for the project was sparked by an interest in food sustainability, I was especially curious how sustainable the Williams dining scene could have been. If it’s more sustainable to eat “the way our great-grandparents did,” then how exactly did Williams students eat two hundred years ago? While many have written excellent histories on Williams College, none yet have focused exclusively on the way students have eaten at this institution. As exciting as that 3 Jennifer Luo Summer 2011 History of Dining, Farming and Gardening at Williams College was, that also meant that this project was a pioneering effort: where does one begin when one wants to write a food history? My research project, I soon realized, was more than anything a treasure hunt through College history. From the College Archives, I examined primary resources, like menus from 19th century Class Suppers, articles from student newspapers, and yearbooks from the 1850s. From the House of Local History, I traced the histories of local farms in Williamstown, and from a series of interviews with Williamstown residents and College affiliates, I began to make sense of the dining climate fifty years ago. Not long after I began research, I realized that the way that Williams students today dine is vastly different from the way they dined in the 1800s and much of the 1900s, and the difference is mostly structural: quite simply, there was no school-wide dining service offered at the College until 1962. Before that, students were responsible for arranging their own room and board, and the most visible result of that was the development of fraternities, which provided both to students. This, in part, provides an explanation to why fraternities became such a tremendous part of student life at Williams; at the time, they offered what every student immediately needed. Because of this significant turning point in 1962, I’ve divided this account of the history of food at Williams into three main parts. The first part concentrates on the way students ate from the time the College was founded in 1793, until 1962. Because students were each responsible for their own food, there are few complete records or explanations of the dining scene; the College, for instance, did not publish any sort of guide of manual to the system. As a result, this part is organized conceptually, around the three main ways that students ate: at fraternities (and, by extension, eating clubs), at the occasional College- operated cafeterias, or by cooking for oneself. I also trace the histories of the student garden and the College farm, and include a section that more carefully considers the exact foods that students ate. Part Two encompasses food-related events and policies after 1962. The 1960s was a decade of serious change at the College, and because so many policies were implemented and changed in such a short amount of time, I’ve organized the chapter more chronologically than conceptually. I also spend a fair amount of space considering the development of food sustainability at Williams. 4 Jennifer Luo Summer 2011 History of Dining, Farming and Gardening at Williams College The final section, Part Three, is unlike either of the sections that precede it. The actual Williams campus is considered very little here; instead, Part Three gives brief histories of two College-owned properties that had connections to food, farming, and gardening: Mount Hope Farm and Hopkins Memorial Forest, which was once Buxton Farm. These were leads I followed in hopes of learning more about student agricultural efforts or a budding College agriculture program. However, for both of these properties, I learned that by the time the College acquired them, the farms and gardens were no longer in operation, and the College did not have intentions to reinstate them. I include them here to give a more full and complete picture of the local agriculture industry, and as a suggestion for further research. To no one’s surprise, I quickly realized that in order to understand how students ate and why they ate that way, I needed to have a grasp of general College history, as well as local Williamstown history. As a result, I open both Part One and Part Two of this report with a brief summary of important town and College happenings; these, I hope, will contextualize and situate the content that follows. Looking at the history of this institution through the lens of food is refreshing; it’s a novel way to consider this College and the social lives that students at this College lived. It’s also an illuminating way to look at how College responsibilities have broadened over time: whereas Williams was once a place to receive what was essentially just an education, the College after 1962 became invested not only in teaching, but also in the health, happiness, dining and living accommodations of its students. The history of food at Williams is a story not only of industrialization and a changing America, but also of a College navigating both ideological and physical shifts. 5 Jennifer Luo Summer 2011 History of Dining, Farming and Gardening at Williams College Part One: 1793-1962 Context: The town around Though Williamstown’s current fame within the Berkshires is typically traced to Williams College or art museums such as the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, for most of its history, Williamstown has actually been a strong farming community. From its inception in 1749, the town specialized in dairy farming, sheep herding and wool production, and was composed of hundreds of self-sufficient family farms. Even those who supported themselves by other trades usually raised a few cows and chickens, and tended to a small vegetable garden to provide for their basic needs. Families made their own cheese and butter, and did plenty of canning and preserving in the summer months, so that visits to the general store were infrequent and only for items that could not be produced at home.1 A 1994 research Williamstown project by Williams students found that even by 1850, the town was still largely agrarian, and that specialized trades, such as carpentry, blacksmithing, and wagonwrighting, were frequently still being done “in-house” in most families.2 A typical farmer’s breakfast of the 19th century likely was composed of the following: Coffee Chicken (home-raised) Potatoes (home grown in house garden) Bread (homemade) 1 “From Wilderness to Williamstown,” Williamstown House of Local History, 1095 Main Street, Williamstown, MA 01267. July 13, 2011. 2 Gail M. Burns, “Students’ research finds town in 1850 largely agrarian,” New Ashford Hancock, October 28, 1994. 6 Jennifer Luo Summer 2011 History of Dining, Farming and Gardening at Williams College Butter (homemade from cream from house cows) Fresh cream (homemade) Indeed, in 1861, there were 138 farms in Williamstown, boasting a milk cow count of over 750, and the dairy farming industry remained strong until well into the 20th century.

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