"The Picture Was Incredible"
At 4 p.m. on September 21, 1938, about an hour after the end of
opening convocation in Johnson Chapel, the great 1938 Hurricane struck Amherst
with almost no advance warning. It raged for three hours. No one was injured,
but 134 campus trees were toppled, buildings were damaged and cars were crushed.
Classes were cancelled the next day as President Stanley King rallied the student
body for cleanup duty. "All our buildings were standing," he wrote later,
"but roofs were gone, windows blown out, trees were down, and all campus
roads and paths were blocked. The picture was incredible." In this photo
looking south from College Row, workmen from a local road-building firm, Warner
Brothers & Goodwin, finish removing stumps from the Main Quadrangle. Stearns
Church, which appears in the distance, was torn down 10 years later to make way
for the Mead Art Building.
Photo: College Archives and Special Collections
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