The nation’s oldest women’s college (founded 1837; in South Hadley center) is bucolic and small, current enrollments average about 2000 students. The great American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted laid out the center of the parklike 800-acre campus in the late 1800s. It easily ranks as one of the most beautiful colleges in the country. Among Mt Holyoke’s 19th-century legacies is a hand-crafted organ in the chapel, one of the last built by New England’s master organ maker, Charles B Fisk. The campus maintains a half-dozen gardens that are open for strolling from dawn to dusk. These contain the glass Talcott Greenhouse , dating back to 1898.
