Please, Mister Postman, Look and See…..

  Prior to the advent of the modern electronic era, the arrival of the day’s mail always generated palpable expectations in the denizens of any institutional residential setting, whether it be summer camp, the military, or college. As a matter of expense, pay phones provided by the AT&T monopoly were not dialed up regularly by […]

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Brooks House on Fraternity Row:  Mystery Solved?

When we arrived on campus in 1964, Belvidere Brooks House was only three years old.  It was the 1961 replacement structure for the classic DKE fraternity house, which had burned down in 1959. Understandably, it would have been prohibitively costly to replicate the DKE house, but it seemed surprising that the new residential house was […]

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The Green River

The Murky Secrets of Williamstown’s Green River We sing the school song about the majesty of the surrounding mountains as “monarchs”—Mount Greylock, Pine Cobble, and so forth. But what of the lowly Green River meandering around Williamstown? The lyric of the song does recognize that “the peaceful river floweth gently by.” While mountains and streams […]

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Snack Bar anyone?

John Stickney ‘68, writing in the travel section of The New York Times in 2003, described the Williams College snack bar to his readership: “This breakfast or lunch standby, open to the public, has wooden-beam ceilings and a broad semicircle of tall windows. A motherly counter staff serves up comfort-food favorites like curly French fries […]

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