Williams Inn
Williamstown, MA

This old automobile repair yard is now the Williams Inn, a community inn, restaurant, and park at the heart of Williamstown, MA. This new hub is a lynchpin that connects the college campus to Spring Street, the Town’s commercial corridor. Through a highly collaborative design process with our team, Williams College, and town representatives, we arrived at three distinct areas for this site transformation: first, the construction of the Inn and surrounding terraces, parking, and arrival; second, a restored perennial stream corridor leading to Christmas Brook; and third, a community park at the terminus of Spring Street.

The site required extensive environmental remediation, and through our work, we now celebrate the local ecology by creating a wide variety of new habitats throughout the site, increasing opportunities for encounters with birds and other wildlife. New plantings throughout the site consist almost entirely of New England native plants. We rebuilt stream channels and wetlands and revegetated with all native plants, improving watershed health and creating wetland habitat on the college campus. Terraces are perched and angled to provide encompassing views of the mountains and surrounding wetlands, enhancing the inn’s connection to the unique natural environment of the northern Berkshires.

Recognition
LEED Gold
SCUP | Honorable Mention 2022

Collaborators
CambridgeSeven Associates
Nitsch Engineering
Aqueous Consultants
Pine & Swallow Environmental
Countryside Landscape

Photography
Ngoc Doan