Essay

Mass MoCA & the Hoosac Tunnel

paper would gently float down from the ceil­ Any engineer knows that ing at timed intervals. While this was happen­ ing, eerie voices cried out from teathered the key to the universe is hanging speakers, which rose and fell from discovering the cause for an the high ceiling. Children ran around in this effect (and vice versa). To space. It was like an untidy bedroom, only this one was much much bigger and it had a lot what lengths do we go to more stuff on the floor. discern them? At the risk of seeming gauche, I admit that I didn't understand the point of most of the exhibits. The only one I did get showed video BRIAN BRENNER clips of a taxi wandering around North ass MoCA is not an espresso drink, Adams. The taxi had a board on top that had but an elaborate museum in North been programmed with space-appropriate M Adams, Massachusetts. The muse­ messages automatically matched to a GIS. For um displays works of modern art and "instal­ example, if the taxi drove by MacDonalds, the lations." To a rational engineer such as myself, message might be something like "Eat health­ a lot of the artwork is hard to appreciate. The ier food." Now this was a clever exhibit, and it material can be confusing and unapproach­ even had a computer database and engineer­ able. When I visited, there was a display of ing things. But overall, most of the exhibits something about risk and the cosmos of the struck me as peculiar. Probably at the top of universe. You threw some weird dice at a sort­ the strangeness list was an exhibit I can't even of craps table, and then received a playing describe completely. Suffice to say that it dis­ card with a symbol that you were supposed to played a male mannequin wearing a gold foil find elsewhere in the exhibit. My card had a suit that had a dynamic feature. "Joker" with a symbol representing eternity, or the loss of lunch, or something like that. Modern Irony There were many paintings on the wall. I I may not understand modern art, but I do like think they were paintings. They had blobs of irony, and I thought that Mass MoCA was color arranged (or flung) in random patterns. plenty ironic. The museum occupies a beauti­ Next to this exhibit was a vast space filled fully restored old factory complex. The com­ with crumpled white paper. New sheets of plex features a campus of nineteenth-century

68 CIVIL ENGINEERING PRACTICE FALL/WINTER 2004 brick buildings, redone in industrial chic for opens in North Adams, about four miles from the museum. Along with the strange museum the museum. The Hoosac Tunnel is a great is a strange restaurant and a strange store. The civil engineering achievement. In its day, it idea, apparently, is to develop a center of was the longest rock tunnel in the world, avant-garde strangeness. There's also a extending 4.75 miles below the Hoosac moun­ lawyer's office in one of the buildings - that's tain range. The tunnel opened a clear railway not strange per se, but the lawyers probably route to the west. It required twenty years to like being associated with the edginess of the build, and featured the first use of nitroglyc­ complex. erin. The tunnel was built at a time when the Mass MoCA creators succeeded admirably connection between things and what you did in establishing the museum after battling to get them was much more direct and under­ years of adversity. The museum complex has stood than it is today, at least in our privileged recently become very popular and a destina­ Commonwealth. Freight traffic still uses the tion attraction, no easy thing in the fiercely tunnel, but its importance has been eclipsed competitive Berkshires with such stellar cul­ by the roar of semis barreling down the Mass tural attractions as Tanglewood and the beau­ Turnpike to the south and braving the hairpin tiful Williamstown art museums. The facility turn on Route 2. has become a catalyst for the redevelopment In today's factories in North Adams, the of the whole city, which, along with Pittsfield, frippery of Mass MoCA revitalizes and drives had been a poor stepchild to the rest of the the economy forward. The infrastructure classy county. Mass MoCA is a roaring suc­ comes back to life, and the area is reborn. But cess and has helped put North Adams back on I wonder if this is a real rebirth. The art instal­ the map. The downtown was thriving when I lations at Mass MoCA, while maybe entertain­ visited, with a mix of eclectic and practical ing if you are wise enough to understand stores on the busy, attractive Main Street. them, don't really build or accomplish any­ There was even a real mocha bistro, some­ thing. I know that's a silly argument - there thing unimaginable in the dowdy, hardscrab­ is a place for pure abstract (and in this case, ble little city of the past. completely disconnected) thought in the The irony comes into play when you think scheme of creation. But still, my son is also about the previous uses of the factory com­ good at making a mess on the floor, and does plex. Back in the nineteenth century when the little to drive the economy of our household, factory was a factory, workers made widgets not to mention trying to revitalize a city's of some sort. I'm not sure exactly what they economy. Maybe I'm too much the engineer, made, but it was clearly something tangible, looking for more direct cause and effect. corporeal and useful. In the days of competi­ Maybe I should accept the fact that food just tive American manufacturing, understanding arrives at the supermarket and not wonder what you did with your time and its resulting about how it gets there, and what I'm doing to product was bit different than today at Mass earn the right to eat it. But in North Adams MoCA. Workers trudged off to the mill in a there are ghosts in the factory walls and in the pre-post-North Adams factory setting musty darkness of the old tunnel, and they we're talking Flintstones here. must be looking on and wondering as well.

The World Gets Smaller & Larger BRIAN BRENNER is a professor at Tufts University. The frontier at the edge of the wilderness was He also worked with Bechtel/Parsons on the Central much closer for those workers two centuries Artery/Tunnel Project. He served as Chair of the ago. Not far from the mills are the portals of editorial board for Civil Engineering Practice for the Hoosac Tunnel. The tunnel's west portal seven years.

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