04-05-2025
Emily Dickinson Museum to unveil ‘passive' carriage house
AMHERST — The Emily Dickinson Museum will celebrate on Tuesday the $1 million reconstruction of a 170-year-old carriage house that once stood on its Amherst property and is slated to become the first 'passive' museum structure in the country, according to officials.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony, hosted in partnership with the downtown Business Improvement District and the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, will take place at 5 p.m. at 280 Main St.
'We wanted to present and interpret the structure just as Emily Dickinson herself would have seen it in the mid-19th century,' the museum's executive director, Jane Wald, told The Republican in an interview last week. 'We know that this matters very much to visitors who come to see where she produced her poetry.'
The carriage house, demolished in the early 1950s, stood to the east of The Evergreens, the home of Dickinson's brother, Austin, and his wife, Susan, part of the museum complex that recently reopened for tours.
The construction of the carriage house was based on insurance maps, deeds, early town maps and a single existing photograph of the original building, which stored the family carriage and housed stalls for horses. Its reconstruction, designed by Connecticut-based edmStudio architects, uses 'passive' strategies such as continuous insulation, airtight construction and high-performance windows.
Museum officials said they expect to win certification from the Passive House Institute US Inc., making it the first such commercial building in Amherst, as well as the 'first passive museum building and passive historic house reconstruction in the country.'
Archeologists previously obtained artifacts from the carriage house site, including medicine bottles, knobs and a lock set from a door in The Evergreens. 'It was used as a storage area or an outdoor closet where the family would just put things they're no longer using,' Wald said.
Its reconstruction, by Teagno Construction Inc., of Amherst, 'reflects Dickinson's regard for the natural world and the inspiration she drew from it,' Wald said.
The house will first function as a visitors center and museum store, while the main homestead will be restored to its original functions. These included a scullery kitchen, laundry room, woodshed, pantry and living corridors for domestic staff, Wald said. After the final restoration, the carriage house will become an educational program space.
Wald said that recent cuts in federal arts funding have reached the museum, including a $115,000 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for digitized documentation.
'There's an understanding in the museum world that more funds are now not going to be available,' she said. 'Without those funds, we need to assess what the impact will be.'
Wald said that recent scholarly work on the poet has included a focus on 'class and privilege' and 'ecologies,' or her relationship with the natural world.
'Without question, Emily Dickinson is a global icon,' Wald said. 'Her influence is continually being felt among new generations of poetry readers.'
Sources include the recent Apple TV+ comedy-drama series 'Dickinson' and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Wald said that musicians across genres continue to set Dickinson's poems to music, including classical, country, pop, rock and rap.
'Interest in her poetry continues to grow exponentially, at least my observation of the last, last number of years,' Wald said. 'Her poetry really speaks, or can speak, to everyone.'
In addition to the ribbon-cutting, the Emily Dickinson Museum will host its annual Poetry Walk through downtown Amherst on Saturday, in honor of the 139th anniversary of the poet's death. This is a free public program.
To learn more about Poetry Walk, visit
Read the original article on MassLive.
Read the original article on MassLive.
Read the original article on MassLive.
Read the original article on MassLive.
Read the original article on MassLive.
