The tale of ‘The Student Tower’ at Mount Holyoke College

Peregine Whitney explains their favorite parts of their research and case displays about Williston Hall and Clapp Laboratory to Mount Holyoke College students and staff members.

Peregine Whitney explains their favorite parts of their research and case displays about Williston Hall and Clapp Laboratory to Mount Holyoke College students and staff members. STAFF PHOTO/EMILEE KLEIN

Mount Holyoke College students Toby Hawesi and Sam Thibeault, members of the Class of 2028, view the “Cornelia and Clapp” cases in the college’s archives. 

Mount Holyoke College students Toby Hawesi and Sam Thibeault, members of the Class of 2028, view the “Cornelia and Clapp” cases in the college’s archives.  STAFF PHOTO/EMILEE KLEIN

The Conerlia and Clap exhibit shows photos of students and sta ff enjoying Clapp Laboratory after it’s openning.

The Conerlia and Clap exhibit shows photos of students and sta ff enjoying Clapp Laboratory after it’s openning. STAFF PHOTO/EMILEE KLEIN

By EMILEE KLEIN

Staff Writer

Published: 10-04-2024 4:25 PM

SOUTH HADLEY — The large tower atop Mount Holyoke College’s Clapp Laboratory is named after the people whose fundraising efforts paid for a majority of the building a century ago — the students.

The “blue lions” of a century ago raised thousands of dollars through event-based fundraisers, paid services and emptied their wallets to pay off the Clapp Laboratory’s $600,000 price tag — over $10.6 million by today’s standards. But despite the administration and student’s best efforts, the school was still $50,000 short by the time the building finished construction.

So the women of Mount Holyoke at the time divided the remaining cost based on the amount of years each person would spend in the laboratory, using $25 increments. Then, the students built a model tower out of bricks, each painted a corresponding class color to represent the size of the donation. The tower fundraiser generated $52,000 and inspired staff to officially deem the tower of Clapp Laboratory as “The Student Tower.”

“These buildings really are nothing but the stories of the students who have walked through them,” said Peregine Whitney, a Mount Holyoke student who uncovered the story during his research on Clapp Laboratory.

It’s these students that Whitney felt themselves connect to as they and three other Mount Holyoke students — Asya Anna Begovic, Tara Castellano and Becca Moses — dug deep into the college’s archives to discover more about the 100-year-old building and its namesake. The result of their two summers-worth of work is six cases and a digitized exhibit, called “Concrete and Clapp,” dedicated to the women in science who paved the way for future generations of Mount Holyoke students learn about natural world, and the building that housed this cutting-edge work.

“This is an exceptional level of research,” said Deborah Richards, head of Archives and Special Collections. “I love that I have the opportunity for them to work on these exhibits, because I feel like it’s a really concrete way to build that connection with their history.”

Of the six cases, two are dedicated to the history of the Clapp Laboratory building itself, two show the research and career of Dr. Cornelia Clapp, a 1871 graduate who became a pioneering research zoologist, one case is dedicated to three women who continued Clapp’s legacy and a final case that displays herbariums created within Clapp Laboratory.

“It’s uncomfortable to see into time so clearly,” said Jared Schwartzer, Science Center director, as he looks at a photo of Clapp in her academic garb. “That photo could have been taken a year ago, but this was taken 100 years ago.”

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Moses, who completed the cases on Clapp and the women who studied under her, became interested in the zoologist researcher when she did a history presentation on early 20th century sex education and found a connection to Amy Elizabeth Adams, Ann Haven Morgan and Christianna Smith. It was these three women who continued Clapp’s work and strongly urged Mount Holyoke to name the century-old laboratory after their mentor and teacher.

“They took her commitment to research and laboratory methods so seriously and made it available to women,” Moses said. “It felt like a really meaningful connection between the story of Cornelia Clapp as an individual and the story of Clapp Lab as part of Mount Holyoke College.”

In addition to becoming the first female researcher employed at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Clapp was a very early adopter of the laboratory method, which used a more hands-on approach by learning through ones own observations and experience rather than relying on information published in books.

Moses learned that Clapp often sent her students out to vernal pools around Mount Tom to observe, sketch and collect specimens that later would be dissected. She had student create microscope slides of chicken embryos at different stages of development to observe changes. Cat dissections in particular began in 1874 and became a staple in all Clapp’s classes.

“If you were an animal and you wandered onto campus, you might not be safe,” Moses said, recounting a joke. “There were just a lot of stray cats around and those were the things that people dissected. So there are some jokes about the slightly sadistic zoology department and cats running away from crazy Clapp.”

Clapp’s method of teaching proved extremely successful, and under her leadership the zoology department outgrew Williston Hall, the building that previously houses the life sciences at Mount Holyoke before an electrical fire burnt it down in 1917. Despite Williston Hall no longer standing, the history of the building enthralled Whitney because they saw the inprint of the nonexistent building on the academics structures that took its place.

“I learned that the bricks from Williston, which were salvaged from the ruins, were used to construct the temporary laboratory, which then in the 1980s was renovated into the Ciruti Language Center,” they said. “As a Russian and Eurasian Studies major who has spent many hours in that building, I did tear up when I learned about that because it felt full circle.”

After the fire, departments either moved into new buildings or held classes in temporary laboratories until Clapp Laboratory was completed in 1924. On Nov. 7, 1924, Mount Holyoke College dedicated the building in honor of Clapp who retired in 1916. But despite its scientific legacy, the building houses many humanities classes, including several Whitney took during the first few years of college.

“Yes, it is a laboratory, but a center of learning,” they said. “I’ve come to understand the layout of the campus centering around Clap, because it just feels like such a focal point.”

The exhibit can be found in the Mount Holyoke Archives for the rest of the 2024-2025 academic year or online at commons.mtholyoke.edu/clapp/.