On September 9 we hosted a Zoom lecture by Blair Kamin, entitled The Storm and the War that Changed Amherst. 

In his lecture he describes the effects of the hurricane of 1938, which uprooted many trees on the Amherst College campus, facilitating a redesign of much of the campus landscape. Then, after World War II, the question of where and how to place a memorial to honor Amherst’s war dead led to the design and location of the iconic war memorial on Memorial Outlook.

Mr Kamin (BA, Amherst College 1979) was the architectural critic for the Chicago Tribune from 1998 to 2021, and won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1999. He brings a depth of architectural and historical insight and detail to his lecture, which is now available online here.