When the sprawling collection of inexpensive family housing known as North Village in Amherst is demolished in July by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a private developer will build new housing on the property. The demolition will mark the end of a unique, half-century-long social experiment that provided to me, as a kid growing up, a foundation of diversity and community.
My mother and I moved into apartment H-14, a two-bedroom in the center of the North Village Apartments complex in Amherst, in the summer of 1977. I was 5 and my mother was 27. She’d just finished her associate degree at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and in two years, she’d earn her bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In four years, she’d get her MBA.
At the time, I had no idea how unique North Village was. The development was owned by the university and it was designated as student family housing, meaning that every unit — 120 one-bedrooms and 102 two-bedrooms — housed at least one UMass student and one child. Its hundreds of residents made up a diverse community of students from around the world, many of whom had low income and lived in rent-subsidized apartments.
We were one of those families — our two-bedroom apartment cost just $45 per month.
A two-lane road curved gently off tree-lined North Pleasant Street through the cookie-cutter development and separated its sections — each one punctuated by one large, symmetrical, grass-covered hill. At the end of the road was a dead end — there were no through streets in North Village, so there was very little traffic.
Kids in North Village ran around carefree and none of us ever got hurt or got into trouble. It was a different time. We rode bikes and roller-skated without helmets. We threw rocks for fun — sometimes at each other, nicely. We taught each other words and phrases in different languages and we never made fun of anyone’s accent — there was no prevailing point of view from which to feel that entitled.
The homes — single-story clusters of four side-by-side apartments — were each painted the same drab shade of golden tan.
Their flat roofs (which were later built out) and sharp, 90-degree angles caused people to describe them as army barracks. The walls between apartments were thin and we could sometimes hear voices from next door — especially during an argument, which made me cringe silently; or an uproarious laugh, which I always joined in.
North Village was built in 1971 and we were always told it was temporary — that it was only meant to exist for 10 years, then sturdier, more permanent structures would be built on the same property. But it remained for almost five decades. Now, in July 2020, 49 years after its construction, North Village Apartments will be demolished — which will not altogether extinguish a half-century of memories.
North Village was more than just an apartment complex: It was an anomaly, a social experiment. It was a project in the truest sense of the term — in which hundreds of residents of different races and faiths lived not stacked on top of one another in claustrophobic, dimly lit high-rises, but in a decidedly suburban environment, with clean, well-manicured pathways, perfect green lawns and sturdy matching mailboxes floating aside every front door.
A September 2019 article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette quotes current residents who lament the erasure of the complex and tout North Village’s diversity, its sense of family and community, which tells me that not much has changed since my mother and I left 39 years ago.
Food was omnipresent in North Village and it was the most tangible way in which the residents expressed themselves. At backyard potlucks — which were commonplace — I learned in the same afternoon to love the bright, tangy spice of Pakistani food and the saltiness of golden fried German schnitzel. I learned that fried tofu is one of my favorite foods, but that plain, raw tofu is one of my least favorites. It’s where I tasted over-sweetened Hawaiian Punch for the first time and my body spat it out as if it were poison. Then I wanted more.
Pizza delivery was new to us in North Village. Domino’s dominated until Whole Wheat Pizza — that’s what we called it and that’s what it actually might have been called — started to deliver as well. The warm, heavy cardboard box always arrived via a lanky man with long, stringy hair. Inside the box was a lopsided, dense, stone-colored blob with a schmear of tomato paste and a dusting of cheese. The memory is likely better than the pizza itself — I’d give anything for a slice of Whole Wheat Pizza right now.
When the ice cream truck rang its alarming bell, kids went crazy. This wasn’t unique to North Village, but our parents’ reaction was: The same mothers who ordered “healthy” Whole Wheat Pizza stood with their kids and arbitrarily dictated which ice cream products were “junk food” and which weren’t. Actually, all of them were.
Many of our neighbors didn’t have a TV, so neighborhood kids sometimes watched ours, which was a tiny black-and-white box. A tinfoil ball around the antenna supposedly boosted our reception of the three networks and PBS. I was allowed to watch “Happy Days” and “Laverne & Shirley” from 8 to 9 p.m., but then I had to go to sleep. More frustrating than missing “Three’s Company” — which aired at 9 — was listening to the kids outside my window still playing as I tried to fall asleep.
North Village’s laundromat was its central hub of information. It’s where kids gathered while our herd of unlocked bikes waited patiently outside. It’s where adults seeded gossip. It’s where families who were moving away posted signs for free furniture that we used to upgrade our apartment each year. It’s where we found out who was driving to New York City that weekend and could take us, saving us the bus fare.
During the day, people’s doors were just open. I didn’t call my friends or knock on their doors — I simply walked into their houses, as if we lived in one giant home connected by safe outdoor pathways. Each cluster of apartment buildings surrounded a large communal backyard where parents absorbed the sun in flimsy plastic beach chairs, seemingly oblivious to the balls and Frisbees that constantly just missed their heads in my memory.
My mother never owned a car, so we either walked, took the bus or relied on neighbors to get us downtown to the supermarket and the bank or to the movie theater at the Mountain Farms Mall, where I saw “Grease” seven times. I walked or rode my bike three-quarters of a mile to Marks Meadow Elementary School, the now-closed experimental laboratory school launched in 1961 with the UMass College of Education.
Downtown, my mother and I strolled around on sunny weekend afternoons or sat on a bench and made up stories about passersby. We ate vegetarian tacos loaded with pinto beans at Taco Villa, and for a special treat, we split a doughy, puffed-up popover at Judie’s. We never visited the Lord Jeffery Inn, but we always wondered what it was like and who was inside. The stately historic hotel and restaurant felt foreign, off-limits and very far outside of our world.
It snowed a lot back then, and every winter I tried to build a snow fort with my hand-held brick maker — basically a plastic shoe box with a handle. I’d fill it with snow and turn it upside down, carefully laying a rectangular hunk on the ground. But a snowball fight always seemed to start before I ever got beyond the first layer.
In the summer, I set up a lemonade stand. In addition to joining my mother’s MBA study groups, which were often hosted in our living room, I learned a lot about business from selling lemonade. If I spent $1 on two cans of frozen lemonade concentrate, I needed to sell four cups at 25 cents each to break even. If I sold eight cups, I doubled my investment. If it rained and I sold zero, I lost everything. I usually made a little money and drank most of the profits.
One summer I inherited a used pogo stick. I got so good at it that one afternoon, I counted 2,000 jumps without stopping. As I jumped, a small crowd amassed, and someone called The Amherst Record, which quickly dispatched a photographer to cover the important event.
“IT’S A RECORD FOR HIM, ANYWAY,” read the next day’s front-page headline, above a picture of me with a lumpy afro wearing a New York Yankees T-shirt tucked into 1970s gym shorts, proudly jumping on my pogo stick. It must have been a slow news day.
Last summer my mother and I visited North Village. I hadn’t been back since we moved, when I was 9 years old, so, to me, everything looked miniature. The hills I used to run over looked like speed bumps and the distances that once felt like an epic journey for a child felt like mere steps.
The boxy buildings had been upgraded with new roofs and windows — there was also a fresh coat of paint, but it was the same golden tan. The paths showed cracks and the lawns sprouted weeds, but generally, things looked the same. It was summer, so many families were gone, which created a noticeable absence of children — the defining characteristic of North Village, to my mind.
This summer, families will leave North Village for the last time. I hope the kids all had an experience as nurturing as mine, that they lived in as happy and carefree a bubble as I did. It’s sad to see North Village disappear — a rare cultural nexus that will displace 170 families on June 30. The university is working on housing for these families, but no matter what the outcome, it’s hard to imagine how they might land in a place as idyllic, as communal as the one North Village provided for 49 years.
Nabil Ayers is a Brooklyn-based writer and U.S. head of the 4AD record label. He lived as a child with his mother at North Village Apartments in Amherst from 1977 to 1981. @nabilayers nabilayers.com.