Saturday, July 13, 2013

Come A Little Bit Closer


 Lavina and Emily Dickinson:  still together

Fans of our most famous town resident -- "The Belle Of Amherst" -- can now get even closer to the rock star of a poetess.  The ornate black iron fence that enclosed the Dickinson family burial plot for 155 years has disappeared.

 Miss Emily receiving visitors early this evening

No, not stolen.  Amherst Town Meeting appropriated $62,000 in Community Preservation funds to have the fence refurbished, so it had to be carefully dismantled and taken off site.

And when it returns it will be good for another 155 years -- as will Miss Emily's poetry. 



Only the footings remain

12 comments:

Walter Graff said...

Wow!!! somebody's robbing that grave.

In our area materials to build the same wrought iron fence are between $3,600 -$4,040
Installation Cost is between$900 -$1,077
Or a total of $4,497 -$5,117 for 150 linear feet which makes it about $32 a linear foot.

Funny how you add a famous name and suddenly the cost is astronomical. It's a fence. Classic waste of money.

Larry Kelley said...

It's not "a fence"; it's THE (original) fence.

Anonymous said...

233It's not "a fence"; it's THE (original) fence.

And what are they doing, plating it with gold?

Anonymous said...

It's too bad they couldn't find money to fix some of the broken and toppled over headstones. That cemetery is loaded with history but not many people know that there are many veterans of the revolutionary, civil and WW1-2 wars buried there.

And what about actually having "Mural Brochures" in the box that says "Mural Brochures" at each entrance.

Anonymous said...

It's the original fence because that's the fence they put up at the time. I would rather have them put up an original replacement fence and save tens of thousands. No one is going to there to look at the fence. If I got there and a sign said that the fence was replaced after 155 year I wouldn't care one whit.

Anonymous said...

The Town of Amherst spent $150,000 in CPA funds several years ago restoring more than 250 headstones in the three oldest parts of the cemetery. The remaining sections date from after 1870, and there are indeed some headstones that need attention in those sections, too. You can't do it all at once. These things take time.

Anonymous said...

It's a beautiful fence. Larry, do you know the story behind why/when it was originally placed? Miss Emily wasn't famous at the time of her death, right? So it must have come later. Or, was it general practice for prominent families to fence of their grave sites?

Larry Kelley said...

Fence was built in 1858, sixteen years before her dad dies; so I think it was just a thing prominent families could afford to do at the time.

Dr. Ed said...

Larry is right -- in the 19th Century, prominent families tended to do such things. If you go through the old part of the Cambridge (MA) municipal cemetery (across from but not part of the more famous Mt. Auburn one) you will see places where they not only fenced it off but had stairs going up to the family plot on a hilltop. Some of this is quite ornate.

Anonymous said...

Hmm, and did the town pay for the old fence?

Anonymous said...

One more waste of the tax payers money. Amherst has to do these things on a regular basis to maintain it's "Laughing stock of the pioneer valley" status. I can't believe on one hand people cry town poverty and on the other spent money on bullshit like this. This town is nothing more than a bedroom college community, stop kidding yourselves into thinking it's anything more.

Anonymous said...

Damn, and the town still has no money for road repair.