Conway School of Landscape and Design has moved to a mill building on 180 Pleasant Street in Easthampton. The school is leasing space and looking to buy a permanent facility somewhere near an urban center down the road. According to a report by Andy Castillo in the Greenfield Recorder, the move was influenced in part by a changing environmental and technological landscape, and students had difficulty commuting to the rural property which was up. a dirt drive. The school’s educational focus is on the effects of climate change, and resilience to that change, particularly on urban spaces and post-industrial cities. Director Bruce Stedman said that’s easier to teach closer to affected cities and towns.
“Conway School of Landscape and Design was founded in 1972 by Walter Cudnohufsky in a small sugar shack next to his barn on Delabarre Avenue. The school then moved to a 600-square-foot building on Route 116, built in 1986 as a house, remodeled in 2003 . . . He (Cudnohufsky) imagined he would only have it there for a few years,” Stedman said. “Forty-two-odd years later, we’ve done that.”
