Category Archives: all news

All posts at Dartmo.com; the main page.

Academic Center flux

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An article in The Dartmouth states not only that the North Campus Academic Center is delayed and that its projected inhabitants are changing, with DCHCDS and DICHCP moving to the Williamson, but also that past problems have included “the Board of Trustees’ disapproval of the building’s design.” Is that why it seems to have gone from partial brick to all-white?

One wonders whether a new president might bring in his own favored designers.

ADD, Inc. designed the renovation of a part of the Nurses’ School dormitory Home 37 (a.k.a. 37 Dewey Field Road) to house Dana library until the Academic Center is built. The Planner has photos of the colorful work.

An article in the Valley News includes a perspective rendering of the Williamson Translational Research Building at DHMC (small version in DICHCP press release).

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[Update 04.25.2013: Alex Atwood has a photo of a nice model and some sectional renderings of the NCAC.]

The scoreboard of the future

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The Dartmouth writes on proposed amendments to the Town’s zoning ordinances, including amendments that deal with athletic scoreboards. The minutes of the Planning Board from February 5 (pdf) state that Dartmouth has eight outdoor scoreboards and provide this background:

Bob Ceplikas, Deputy Director of Dartmouth Athletics, said there have been a lot of changes over the years with the set-up of Division 1 sports venues, including technology. It is more and more standard for Division 1 football stadiums to include video displays in their scoreboards. Dartmouth is now the only Ivy League school that does not provide video display. The Ordinance’s current language does not allow for scoreboards to exist as they currently do; it does not even allow for the score to be displayed. The Ordinance should be brought up to date to reflect the real purpose of an athletic scoreboard.

No comment on the possibility of a video display (one of the thrills of seeing a college football game in person is the presence of it: there is no replay, so you have to pay attention), but the idea that the scoreboard at Memorial Field could be redesigned is intriguing.

A generous donation of the Class of 1966, the scoreboard is informative, traditional, and appealing — but it could be made even better. The number of typefaces could be reduced from five or so to three. The various vertical surfaces could be brought into the same plane. The “TIME OUTS LEFT” text could be aligned in a more balanced way. A little more space could be given inside some of the white borders, and the general crowding and busyness could be reduced.

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[Update 06.09.2013: The text of the ordinance, as found in the March 12 Planning Board minutes (pdf), prohibits advertising:

Athletic scoreboards may display:
A. Information pertinent to the event and facility
B. Recognition of donors and sponsors by name only
C. Other general athletic or institutional information
D. Any other information customarily displayed on contemporary scoreboards, but not to include commercial advertising.

That should remove some concerns.]

From Kiewit to…

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Correct me in the comments if I’m wrong, but after Dartmouth demolished Kiewit, it gave Computing Services an office in Baker Library, outside the Tower Room:


In 2011, however, the college apparently gave that space to the undergraduate deans and shunted Computing Services to the first floor of Berry.

Now the deans have joined Computing Services in the first floor of Berry (The Dartmouth, see floorplan pdf), and the Computer Store has been displaced to the basement of McNutt (Dartbeat).

Advanced Surgery Center addition to open in summer

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  • The Advanced Surgery Center addition to the north end of the DHMC complex will open this summer (Thayer School News). A presentation about the ASC reveals that it will have a distinct circulation route for animals.
  • Thayer School’s $300 House Project from a while back has been written up in The Guardian:

    After the contest, a workshop was held at Dartmouth University where selected designers and architects further sharpened their ideas. Jack Wilson, team leader at Dartmouth, is now preparing to build two pilot projects in Haiti, one rural and the second urban.

  • Not related to anything on campus, but an interesting idea encountered while perusing aerial views of Berlin, Germany: K.F. Schinkel’s pioneering 1830s Bauakademie building (Wikipedia), demolished by the East Germans, was recreated as a cloth-covered scaffolding in 2005. It appears in current Bing low-angle aerial views.
  • Charlottesville architect William McDonough ’73 (Wikipedia) shares an anecdote about attending a Dartmouth talk by Buckminster Fuller in a blog post at the Times.
  • Phase I of the Collis renovation, focused on the café, is finished (The Dartmouth).
  • The Dartmouth Club of New York (at the 1915 J.G. Rogers clubhouse of the Yale Club) had a pong tournament last month (more).
  • New information about the 2005 SBRA master plan for DHMC is coming to light:

    An analysis revealed that the original DHMC organizational structure is reached its limits, necessitating a new way of organizing the campus. To provide an effective way to unify a larger assemblage of buildings, the master plan proposes a new circulation paradigm, employing a perimeter loop road that provides a sense of orientation and hierarchy to the dispersed building sites on land owned by DHMC and Dartmouth College.

Site updates:

  • The fifteen-year backlog of linkrot has been tackled. All 270 or so broken links have been fixed or eliminated since November. Mobile formatting has been added and the old “Links” page was removed 11.17.2012. The html version of the “Notes toward a Catalog…” was deleted today.
  • Sorry about the login screen popping up for comments. It is not supposed to appear.
  • If this site proves too exciting, head over to the Lamb & Rich, Architects site. Small improvements and sometimes a few discoveries have been creeping into each iteration of the catalog of the firm’s buildings.
  • Please do click on the new advertisements on the right-hand side of this page.
  • Thanks to Bruce at Big Green Alert for linking to the book at Google Books and this site in a post last month about “Dartmouth University.”

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[Update 06.09.2013: Broken link to presentation removed.]

Who dares wins: graduate studies proposals

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One of the Strategic Planning reports suggests that Graduate Studies be given a lounge:

The lack of any identifiable social space on the Dartmouth campus is quite striking, in comparison to all our peer institutions who have endowed graduate student centers. The ideal location for this space would be near the center of campus so that it would be easily accessible and also a visible reminder of the presence on graduate students and research on the campus.

(Graduate Education for the Future Working Group Final Report (June 2012), 13.) This desire has surfaced previously in the inclusion of a graduate suite in the original proposal for a ’53 Commons north of Maynard Street (pdf).

Compare this idea proposed by a different working group (WG) focused on research, scholarship, and creativity (RSC):

To meet all these goals, our WG recommends that Dartmouth consider the formation of a new school, the first in over 100 years. The School of Advanced Studies (SAS) would be the first-in-the-nation school focused broadly on advancing RSC for faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and undergraduates. Led by a new Dean reporting directly to the Provost, SAS’s remit would be to advance RSC at Dartmouth across all disciplines and all schools. It would invigorate the research environment at Dartmouth, spearhead better organized decisionmaking on RSC, help attract top talent to Dartmouth from all over the world, create more inclusive and enriching environment for graduate students and post-docs, and foster crossdisciplinary collaboration among faculty as well as undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students. We envision a new facility on central campus that would house SAS and its associated programs, as well as housing for visiting scholars and conference attendees, conference space, and common spaces.

(Research, Creativity and Scholarship Working Group Final Report (June 2012), 5.)

This sounds a bit like the famous Institute for Advanced Study, which occupies a Jens Larson building near Princeton University, but that organization is independent of its local university (see also Wikipedia).

A new house on Occom Ridge

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The Dartmouth reports that the college is planning to build a new sorority house on Occom Ridge in the gap between Epsilon Kappa Theta and Delta Delta Delta (Ridge House).


The house will be built for the Kappa Delta sorority during the fall of 2014.

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[Update 06.10.2013: The announcement of the Trustees’ approval (Dartmouth Now) clearly puts the house at 1 Occom Ridge. That suggests that the house will face the street. The two halves of the Tri-Delt duplex, originally numbered 1 and 3 Occom Ridge, apparently will be known collectively as no. 3.]

[Update 06.09.2013: The March 12 Planning Board minutes (pdf) state that the house, with 23 single rooms, will be built “immediately south of the Roth Center.” Does that mean it will be in the interior of the block rather than facing the street? Ugh.


This aerial shows how much space is available southwest of Tri-Delt and how suburban a house would be if it were marooned in that clump of trees.]

Organic Farm master planning, other topics

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  • The Planner’s Blog announced that Maclay Architects of Vermont is working on a master plan for the Organic Farm north of campus. One proposed land-use diagram mentions a possible site for a child-care center.
  • Dartmouth Now has an article on the new restaurant in the Inn, located right at the southeast corner of the intersection of Main and Wheelock.
  • Wikimedia Commons has a nice reproduction of the unbuilt 1923 addition designed by Larson & Wells. Surely the firm’s only design in the Egyptian mode, the rear range placed perpendicular to the original building is difficult to read as anything but living quarters; the firm did a similarly large and even more domestic proposal for a newbuild Dragon around the same time.
  • The Rauner Blog has a post on George Stibitz and his remote operation of a digital computer in 1940. The terminal in Hanover was located in McNutt.
  • Vermont Public Radio has a story on the Ice Chimes sculpture. See also the unrelated Alumni Relations post on Carnival snow sculptures.
  • The Victor C. Mahler 1954 Visiting Architects Lecture is now bringing one architect to campus each year for a lecture, starting with J. Meejin Yoon (Dartmouth Now).
  • The Williamson is moving ahead at the DHMC complex (The Dartmouth, Green Building Council profile).

Finally, a photo of the Inn’s ballroom addition

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The school’s Flickr photostream has a new set of photos covering the renovation and expansion of the Hanover Inn. As noted here a year ago, the construction of a “Grand Ballroom” in the Hopkins Center’s Zahm Garden seems as much an addition to the Hop as to the Inn.

The first photo of this addition foreshortens the composition somewhat — the glass pavilion actually projects from the metal-clad box — but it explains the relationship of the various building masses.

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Update 05.03.2013: Another photo showing the new Hop entrance pavilion in the distance.

Orozco Murals a National Historic Landmark

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A week ago, the Orozco Frescoes in Baker’s Reserve Corridor were designated as a National Historic Landmark (National Park Service, The Dartmouth, Dartmouth Now, NHPR). The nomination was noted here last November. The Planner’s Blog has some information on the effort.

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Update 05.03.2013: An article from The Dartmouth.

Collis renovations wrapping up

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The Dartmouth reported on March 4:

At this month’s meeting, the Board of Trustees also voted to allocate $38 million to ongoing projects to improve existing facilities, including the Collis Center and Baker-Berry Library.

The Planner’s Blog has a post with photos of the servery nearing completion in the renovation of the Collis Center.

While you weren’t looking, they changed the name of the Collis Center to “the Collis Student Center,” and then they changed that to “the Collis Center for Student Involvement.”

Kendal is buying the Chieftain

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The Valley News reports that Kendal at Hanover will purchase the Chieftain Motor Inn (see also The Dartmouth. As the News reports, the fondly-recalled 23-room motel was built during the early 1950s on a 10.7-acre parcel along the River just beyond what is now the Kendal continuing-care retirement community:


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[Update 11.11.2013: Broken link to the Chieftain removed.]
[Update 04.07.2013: Link to The Dartmouth added.]

The University admits defeat, 1819

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NOTICE.

The students and friends of Dartmouth University are informed that its immediate officers have resolved to suspend the course of instruction in that seminary. It is due to the public that the cause of this resolution should be explained. A few days ago the Rev. F. Brown requested me to give him possession of the Chapel &c—A request with which of course I could not comply the legal controversy being yet unsettled. Last evening I received from him a note, saying “the government of the College after consulting gentlemen of legal information have concluded to occupy the Chapel tomorrow morning.” Accordingly this morning the Chapel which was under lock and key was entered and wrested from the University by force. In like manner have been taken the tutors rooms and other apartments. I have nothing to say in regard to the motives which induced this determination to outstrip the steps of the law and to retake by force the buildings for the recovery of which a suit against me, by way of writ of ejectment has been brought by Charles Marsh Esq. of Vermont (the lessee of this very property under “The Trustees of the College” so-called) and is still pending in the Court of the United States. But being thus deprived of the Chapel and other conveniences, the officers of instruction in the University are reduced to the necessity of suspending the discharge of the duties in which by authority of the State they have been engaged.

blankWILLIAM ALLEN, President.

DARTMOUTH UNIVERSITY
Monday March 1st, 1819.1William Allen, “Notice,” New Hampshire Patriot (9 March 1819), reprinted in John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College 1815-1819 (Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1913), 164 (available at Google Books). A copy of the notice is found in Box 2, Folder 15 of the Papers of William Allen in Rauner Special Collections Library.

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References
↑1 William Allen, “Notice,” New Hampshire Patriot (9 March 1819), reprinted in John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College 1815-1819 (Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1913), 164 (available at Google Books). A copy of the notice is found in Box 2, Folder 15 of the Papers of William Allen in Rauner Special Collections Library.

The “Dartmouth University” proposal

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The strategic planning report for the “Global Dartmouth” working group (June 2012), released today, makes six proposals, including this one:

6. Rename Dartmouth for international audiences, by:
-Using “Dartmouth University” or some equivalent to refer to the institution as a whole.
-Using “Dartmouth College” to refer to the undergraduate school of Arts and Sciences.
-Maintaining existing labels for other schools.

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03.07.2013 Reactions:

One must presume that the working group is not completely tone-deaf and is instead exaggerating for effect. If international public relations is such a problem, then the solution is more or better public relations. The facts that Imperial College London is at number 8 and King’s College London is at number 57 in the Times rankings tend to suggest that this is the case. Each of those “colleges” is a public research university ranked at least 60 places above Dartmouth.

If a name change really were needed for the international market, one would imagine that the first step would be to continue to deemphasize “College” (for example, “William & Mary” is listed as such by the Times) and the second step would be to add an explanatory tagline to the website and other publicity materials provided outside the U.S.:

Dartmouth, an Ivy League University

Dartmouth College, a Small Research University

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

The Sunset, a Small Motor Inn

On the other hand, if the proposal were taken seriously, this is how it would play out: the Board would announce, as part of the Sestercentennial1The College of New Jersey, known colloquially as Princeton College, changed its name to Princeton University at its Sesquicentennial in 1896. It still polices the use of the College of New Jersey name. in 2019, that the arts and sciences undergraduate program would always be Dartmouth College but that the historic umbrella institution, which had never had a name of its own, would be called Dartmouth University.

shields of Dartmouth University

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References
↑1 The College of New Jersey, known colloquially as Princeton College, changed its name to Princeton University at its Sesquicentennial in 1896. It still polices the use of the College of New Jersey name.

Minor updates on building renovations, other items

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  • Rauner’s blog has a nicely-illustrated post on Upper-Valley photographer George Fellows, who died in 1916.
  • The Dartmouth on the Collis renovation:

    The new cafe will have an expanded serving area and new cooking equipment, including eight burners at the hot-food station instead of the previous six. The space will feature a larger salad bar, and a Freestyle Machine with over 100 different sodas. The sandwich station will be larger and may feature more filling options.

  • While the ground-level space in the Grange building (Rosey Jekes) is unoccupied, a tapas place called Candela is moving into the coffee shop space in the basement (The Dartmouth).
  • Page 7 of the Winter issue of the Hood Quarterly (pdf) has a guide to public art at Dartmouth: a map with a dozen works listed.
  • Hanover has received the findings of a parking consultant (The Dartmouth).
  • Student slang: The adjective grim makes an appearance in this year’s Carnival theme, “The Grimmest Carnival of Them All” (Mirror cover). On a related note, did anyone else wonder whether the word “joe” in this Sports Illustrated piece on Adam Nelson ’97 was meant to be written with a lower-case j?

    A few days after that win, I met with him at his training base at Stanford, where he explained the mechanics of shot putting with the memorable description: “Little Joe makes the ball go,” while patting his round belly.

  • The New York Times has an interesting travel article on skiing the old CCC trails in New England. It mentions Dick Durrance.
  • A post about Ross Ashton’s Five Windows projection at Dartmouth gives new details on the effort that was required for the show. Each of the windows on the front facade of the Hop was covered with a custom-made Spandex shade attached to the steel window frame by magnetic strips.
  • On the expansion of the Hood Museum:

    We have received a tremendous response to the last issue of the Hood Quarterly, in which we began coverage of our ambitious plans for the museum’s future by interviewing Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the architects chosen by Dartmouth College to renovate and expand the museum’s current facility, as well as the adjacent historic Wilson Hall. Planning for this project, which will see the museum double its gallery space and triple the number of its classrooms through the addition of a new Museum Learning Center, is well underway. I look forward to sharing Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s breathtaking and highly innovative designs for the expansion with you in an upcoming issue of the Hood Quarterly.

    Michael Taylor, “Letter from the Director,” Hood Museum of Art Quarterly (Winter 2013), 2 (pdf).

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Ashton post removed.]

Alpha Phi photos up

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The firm of Haynes & Garthwaite has photos of the new Alpha Phi sorority house. There is an interesting selection of models available to the prospective sorority builder: the nineteenth-century frame domestic buildings in which several sororities are housed, the early-twentieth century Georgian clubhouses of the fraternities, and the twentieth-century suburban houses with which many students will be familiar.

(Another project page that’s coming up is that of the Hood expansion by Williams Tsien.)

The Inn’s Grand Ballroom

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There are still no published exterior photos of the Inn’s new grand ballroom with its new Hopkins Center entrance underneath.

Some interior photos have shown up on Flickr: one, another.

The Inn’s photostream has many interior photos.

The new ballroom blocks the glazed north wall of Alumni Hall. This view from Alumni Relations’ Flickr photostream shows Alumni Hall with the newly-blocked wall on the left. On the other side of the wall, the balcony that originally overlooked the Zahm Garden now seems to be a service corridor.

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[Update 02.10.2013: Inn photostream link added.]

Elevation drawings for the Williamson

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Lebanon planning documents for the Williamson Translational Research Building (pdf) locate the site on the west side of the hospital, south of the main entrance. The building will project westward from the Rubin Building into the C-shaped area north of the Borwell Building.

The big building will be clad in metal panels, like the rest of the complex, but its form should exhibit a bit more variety than is found in most of its neighbors. It will contain laboratories as well as an auditorium.

The architect is listed as HDR Architecture, Inc., a giant global firm whose website has a section not only for translational health sciences buildings but also for vivaria. This building appears to be the firm’s first in New Hampshire. It seems that the hospital’s 55-year collaboration with Shepley Bulfinch, still active as late as 2010, might be ending.