I’ve been feeling very nostalgic lately, especially since I’ll be graduating in less than two months. Because of the persistence of this feeling, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and watch some of my favorite childhood movies to bring me back to the good old days. I started with Matilda of course, which led me down a rabbit hole on Netflix. Then after watching Land Before Time, it made me think about some of the buildings on campus which could very well have been here “before time.” It inspired me to categorize nine UMass buildings in regard to childhood movies they remind me of.
- STOCKBRIDGE HOUSE AS LAND BEFORE TIME
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I’m certain we’ve all heard of the Stockbridge House but don’t really know where to find it. Well for those of you wondering, it’s the little blue house located across from the garden side of Frank. It was originally built in 1728 by a man named Samuel Boltwood Jr. who had bought 111 acres of land. It was the first house built in Amherst and was used as a tavern, blacksmith shop, and farm. It was later bought by the Massachusetts Agricultural College and has been a part of UMass history ever since. The ancient history of this building definitely gives it a Land Before Time feel since it was the first building preceding the rest of UMass.
- THE DUBOIS LIBRARY AS MATILDA
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The Dubois Library is the third tallest library in the world standing at 286 feet and 4 ⅛ inches. The 28-story building is home to millions of educational resources. I think it’s easy to say that Matilda would have a field day here. Considering she spent most of her formative years reading hundreds of books from her local library while her parents left her at home, the UMass library would serve as the perfect place for her great intelligence.
- TOBIN HALL AS JUMANJI
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For those who have not watched Jumanji, I will provide you with a quick synopsis. The movie is centered around a board game that creates some jungle-themed challenges that nearly kill the players each time a player takes a turn it. Several different jungle animals and bugs made an appearance throughout the movie making it difficult for the players to finish. Some people may question why I chose Tobin for this movie, so let me explain. I’m a psychology major and a lot of my classes have been in Tobin. This building is also home to a lot of laboratories ranging from neuroscience to children and families. There has always been a rumor that they keep monkeys in Tobin for testing. The monkeys from Jumanji are clearly represented by the “potential” monkeys of Tobin Hall. If you think about it, this theory explains why none of the windows open, the building’s heating is through the roof, and why portions of the main floors are blocked off to anyone without specific key access.
- FERNALD HALL AS A BUG’S LIFE
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Now this one came easy. Fernald Hall, located to the right of the garden side of Frank and directly behind the Design Building, is the Department of Entomology and Zoology. If you also didn’t/don’t know what Entomology is, I’ll save you the Google search. It’s a branch of Zoology that studies insects. So if that doesn’t SCREAM A Bug’s Life to you then I don’t know what else on the UMass campus could.
- THE COMPUTER SCIENCE BUILDING AS ROBOTS
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For this one, I may be stereotyping, but as a fellow woman in STEM (lol), I think I know a little bit about the CompSci program at UMass (TOTAL sarcasm!). I always associated the Computer Science Major, and building, with coding and hard programming stuff I will NEVER understand, but I felt like it made sense to pair it with this fantastic movie. Robots follows the journey of Rodney Copperbottom as he attempts to make it big in Bigweld Industries. Rodney spends a good portion of the movie creating prototypes and inventing new systems to help make life easier, which can be greatly attributed to the CompSci major/building.
- THE FAC AS SCHOOL OF ROCK
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The Fine Arts Center may not be the prettiest building on the outside, like most of the UMass campus, but at least it has beauty coming from within. The amount of plays, music concerts, and other forms of art that takes place in this building is astounding and nothing short of what the children from Horace Green Prep School, with the aid of Mr. Dewey Finn, did. The level of talent featured in School of Rock from such young minds is comparable to the greatness that many of the students and the Center share on a daily basis.
- THE MULLINS CENTER AS THE MIGHTY DUCKS/THE ICE PRINCESS
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I thought it may be a little too cliché to compare the Mullins Center to The Mighty Ducks since its basically a direct hockey parallel, give or take a few years, so I also threw in The Ice Princess which depicts the story of a high school girl attempting to take her knowledge of physics and apply it to the world of ice skating. Both movies are heavily focused on the ice rink and I think would be an accurate representation of what the Mullins Center is really known for; some good, down-to-earth, hockey.
- MCGUIRK STADIUM AS THE GAME PLAN
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Similar to the Mullins Center, the McGuirk Stadium is famous for UMass Football. Although our team may not be the best in the league it certainly resembles The Game Plan. Now when I make this comparison I’m not really paying attention to the whole, Dwayne Johnson meets his daughter he never knew he had and has to bond with her over several months type beat. Instead, I’m leaning more toward the football aspect of things.
- TOTMAN AS HAPPY FEET
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Lastly, we have Happy Feet. This movie follows the story of a young, quirky emperor penguin named Mumble, who stands out from the rest because of an accident pre-hatching that made him unable to sing his mating song. However, through his quirkiness, he learns that he really enjoys moving his feet and he quickly learns how to dance, giving him a reason to stand out from the rest of the penguins and have them not just focus on his flaws. The Totman Gym is known as the “Performance Lab” and houses a number of different sports. I specifically paired this UMass building with the movie because Totman holds a lot of dance classes which is very fitting to the dancing Mumble does in the film.
I hope this was interesting enough. I know I could definitely go on and on assigning different childhood movies to every building at UMass. If anything though, I hope it inspired some of you to sit down and spend some time watching some of those feel-good comfort movies.
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