Category Archives: all news

All posts at Dartmo.com; the main page.

The Black VAC film

Posted on by
1

In the school’s official video, the shots of the Visual Arts Center start at 3:19. Several of the shots of the rooftops of the Hop appear to have been made with a radio-controlled helicopter: a private drone surveils Hanover.

In the section of the film called The Builders [8:04], the emphasis is on cross-disciplinary work. That was one of the original goals of the Hopkins Center as well, but now that the visual arts have moved to their own building, the Hop seems to be left with just the performing arts for cross-pollination.

Ken Burns has a nice quotation: Art “turns out to be the bright burning sun of this particular solar system called Dartmouth.”

Alex Hanson’s thorough article in the Valley News adds yet another possible name to the hat: The Black VAC.

Dartmouth has an announcement of the installation and one-year loan of Crouching Spider.

Moskow Linn’s Ice Chimes

Posted on by
Reply

Dartmouth Now writes:

This winter, Dartmouth plans to install the Ice Chimes, a weather-responsive sculpture that unites science, art, architecture, and music, by Dartmouth alumnus Keith Moskow ’83 and Robert Linn of Moskow Linn Architects. The sculpture amplifies both the beauty and the sound of icicles over the course of their existence, as they sway in the wind, clinking and chiming until they grow heavy with their own weight and fall into the collection bucket below.

The sculpture has an electrical heating element at the top that melts snowfall. The resulting water alters or produces sound by coating the hanging copper chimes with ice that later falls into the sheet-metal bucket. The sculpture will be on display this winter near the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center (Dartbeat).

——
[Update 11.04.2012: Location info and Dartbeat citation added.]

The school’s master planning site is up

Posted on by
Reply

The blog that will be the focus of the outreach effort is up, and it links to the actual master planning website.

One of the initial posts at the blog has a link to the 2003 video When Dartmouth Builds (cf. “When Smokey Sings“).

Another post links to the large online collection of maps of Hanover maintained by the Evans Map Room. One item is a group of 43 topographic maps from stadia surveys of Hanover made by the Thayer School classes of 1903 to 1920, and the maps are amazing. The Larson-era plans for the development of the campus are both thrilling and frightening (ca. 1923?, 1928).

——
[Update 11.04.2012: Link to planning website added.]

The Collis renovation is starting

Posted on by
Reply

The Dartmouth:

Renovations will also allow Collis joint usage of the air handler that currently supplies the Class of 1953 Commons with air conditioning and heating. The Collis Center is frequented by students year-round, but the lack of air conditioning minimizes usage during the warmer months, according to Ramsey.

The Oudens Ello project will expand the cafe and reorganize other interior spaces. It is interesting how the same pattern has recurred two or three times over the last 25 years: (1) The food is popular, and the food-service area becomes way too crowded; (2) when the cafe is finally expanded, it is time to take an off term.

Repurposing Rollins

Posted on by
4

The seeming underuse of Rollins Chapel prompts one to ask whether it is finally time to devote the building to a more productive function; whether Dartmouth, without damaging the building or making a change that cannot be undone, should use Rollins for some purpose that serves the academic mission of the school.

Rollins would make a fantastic library reading room or simply a study space, for example. Students would actually have a reason to experience the building on a regular basis and appreciate its recent restoration.

Churches have been turned into libraries at Haverford College in Pennsylvania (below); at St. Edmund’s Hall in Oxford (St. Peter in the East, see interior photo provided by the college); and at Lincoln College in Oxford (All Saints Church, see interior photo by Martin Beek). And from the photos (more), the Modernist bookstore inserted by Merkx + Girod into a 13th century church in Maastricht is simply astounding.

Haverford College library interior
Haverford College library interior.

Dartmouth would continue to provide worship space, especially for student religious groups that do not have independent student centers and denominational chapels somewhere in town. There is little reason, however, for this generic worship space to occupy a prime site at the heart of a secular institution. To use its resources efficiently and help keep its most-used buildings within ten minutes of the Green, Dartmouth could easily justify the removal of its official worship space to a site that is relatively cheap and distant.

Dartmouth might consider building a noble and uplifting timber-framed building, simple and undecorated — perhaps in the form of an octagonal or round barn (Wikipedia), a vast English aisled barn (like Harmondsworth Great Barn, in Wikipedia), or a discount version of Thorncrown Chapel. The building might stand between EKT and Tri-Delt, or it could occupy one of the vacant sites west of the President’s House. It would be the sort of place where alums could hold weddings and the college could hold memorials.

Once the new hall opens, the college could sensitively furnish Rollins as a study space, like the ’02 Room, or as a new home for one of the smaller libraries.

Rollins Chapel
Rollins Chapel. See also the excellent interior photo by Stephanie Wales.

Removing the recent interior lights from the roof trusses would take Rollins closer to its original appearance, and replacing the existing movable chairs with high-quality lighted study tables or carrels would make Rollins into a highly useful building.

——

[Update 05.12.2013: Broken link to Merkx-Girod replaced, additional Maastricht photo link added.]

[Update 11.04.2012: Jacobs Consultancy, a firm working with the college on the new master plan, provides

detailed analysis and feasibility testing of the activities and occupants of a facility or complex, coupled with the analysis of existing buildings, their current, plus potential capabilities and capacities. This process identifies shortfalls and excesses in spaces controlled by various occupant groups, and suggests “highest and best use” scenarios with matches and mismatches by current occupants.

It will be interesting to see what they say about Rollins Chapel.]

The Visual Arts Center and the Maffei Arts Plaza

Posted on by
Reply

The Board has opened a new front in the struggle to give the Black Family Visual Arts Center an informal name:

Two weekends ago, we celebrated the opening of the Black Family Visual Arts Center (BVAC). Not only is it a spectacular building, but its presence has also transformed the plaza between the BVAC and the Hop into one of the most beautiful and inviting spots on campus, enhanced by Ellsworth Kelly’s “Dartmouth Panels” on the brick façade of the Hop. The arts district formed by the Hop, the Hood and the BVAC creates a distinctive magnet for our campus and provides a splendid backdrop for the Year of the Arts at Dartmouth.1Board Chairman Stephen F. Mandel, letter to alumni (26 September 2012).

Whether called the Black Arts Center or the BVAC, the building is remarkable. The dedication was noted in the Buildings & Grounds blog of the Chronicle, and the first review of the building has appeared, in Hyperallergic. Unique photos of architectural models for the building are posted at Dartbeat. Donald Kreis has a perceptive review on Vermont Public Radio.

The accompanying plaza, built by specialized contractor Landshapes, is visible in a number of photos from the school’s Flickr photostream. There are also photos of the installation of Louise Joséphine Bourgeois’ giant metal spider sculpture in the plaza.

It is difficult to believe that Dartmouth was content to maintain a parking lot on this site for the last several decades:

Brewster Hall and parking lot, site of Maffei Arts Plaza

The new arts plaza is one of those places that changes its site radically and yet seems inevitable.

——-
[Update 11.04.2012: Kreis review link added.]
——-

 

References
↑1 Board Chairman Stephen F. Mandel, letter to alumni (26 September 2012).

Another odd use of history, at Six South

Posted on by
Reply

The welcome addition of a new hotel in town, Six South Street, has raised interesting questions about the uses of history and college nostalgia. The place is new and sophisticated, but it needs to appeal to the green plaid pants crowd. It was presumably for this reason that the hotel’s decorators put a large drawing of Hanover in the early 1960s on one wall of the lobby (from the hotel’s appealing website):

Detail of website of Six South Street Hotel, Hanover, N.H.

The drawing was done by Aldren A. Watson in 1964 and a version of it was published in the back endpapers of Ralph Nading Hill’s book College on the Hill. Rauner Library holds the original drawing and the Trustees hold the copyright.

The hotel must have its reasons for displaying a drawing that emphasizes the Hanover Inn and omits South Street. But why reverse the view? Yes, this view is backward: the lobby decoration, which appears elsewhere on the hotel’s website, puts Dartmouth Row on the west and Mass Row on the east. [Update: The image is on glass and is oriented properly when viewed from the other side.]

Image from website of Six South Street Hotel, Hanover, N.H.

—–
[Update 04.23.2014: The Watson image is etched on glass and is correct when seen from the Media Room; note added.]

A Passion for Snow and other notes

Posted on by
Reply
  • Here in Hanover ran a profile of architect Randall Mudge in its Spring 2011 issue (pdf).
  • David’s House at CHaD is adding a wing (Valley News).
  • This unusual stucco house at 28 East Wheelock has a whiff of Larson about it; it is owned by the college (see Dartmouth Real Estate):


  • A trailer for the upcoming Dartmouth ski documentary A Passion for Snow is available.
  • A map art company is selling a print of a stylized map of the campus.
  • Something big has happened to 8 Occom Ridge:

    The later aerial views from Google and Bing (below) appear to show a replacement:

  • A Dartmouth shirt sold on eBay says “Go Green and White.” Hmmm.
  • The Development Office has its own in-house PR firm, the Office of Development Communications.
  • An article on archeology in Columbia, Connecticut explains that the first building of Moor’s Indian Charity School still stands, on a later foundation.
  • Both the renovated Hanover High and the new Richmond Middle School have biomass plants. It is hard to imagine that any future Dartmouth heating plant would not rely at least in part on burning wood chips.
  • The Dartmouth Planner reports that the Town of Hanover is beginning to rewrite its zoning ordinances.
  • Last spring, van Zelm Heywood & Shadford helped renovate Burke Chemistry Laboratory (The Dartmouth).
  • A recent photo of the roof of the expanded Hayward Room at the Inn, taken with the Class of 1966 Webcam:

    roof of Hayward Room at expanded Hanover Inn

The graphical Green; arts events

Posted on by
Reply

As seen at Dartmouth Now, the Year of the Arts logo initially reads as a cluster of cinema searchlight beams:

But of course it is a map of the paths on the Green, with north to the left. A larger version of the logo at the festival’s website takes on the appearance of a print, or perhaps a painting.

Coverage of the opening of the Visual Arts Center may be found in The Dartmouth and Dartmouth Now. Hood Director Taylor speaks about the Kelly sculpture and its aircraft-grade aluminum in video. The Valley News has a story on the Hop at 50, and the Year of the Arts site has a timeline of the arts on campus beginning with 1962.

The new Alpha Phi house

Posted on by
Reply

From some angles, Haynes & Garthwaite‘s new Alpha Phi sorority house on North Park Street recalls the old Sigma Phi Epsilon house on Webster Avenue:

Meacham photo of Sigma Phi Epsilon and The Dartmouth photo of Alpha Phi

Top: Sigma Phi Epsilon (1896 and 1963, demolished 2010). Bottom: Alpha Phi (2012), photo by Tracy Wang courtesy of The Dartmouth.
More photos are available at Trumbull-Nelson.

In other North Park news, The Dartmouth reports that the school is planning to create an LGBT house on the street. The Valley News writes:

Hanover — Dartmouth College will move forward with plans to open a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender student residence in 2014, a project that has been the longtime goal of a college advisor who has been working on the plan for more than a dozen years.

——
[Update 11.04.2012: T-N photos link and VN quote added.]

Wilder to be plaqued

Posted on by
Reply

Dartmouth Now reports that Wilder Laboratory has been added to the American Physical Society’s list of historic sites. More than 110 years ago, Ernest Fox Nichols and Gordon Ferrie Hull conducted experiments in the building to measure the pressure of light. Their work will be the subject of a symposium during October.

The building’s history certainly deserves recognition. One hopes, however, that Dartmouth isn’t actually planning to alter Wilder’s historic and “largely unchanged” front facade by bolting a commemorative plaque to it, as is suggested by the Dartmouth Now article. Perhaps a freestanding granite monument or an interior wall would be the most respectful place for the plaque.

Photos of the Black Family Visual Arts Center

Posted on by
Reply

Nice photos by Eli Burak, including the first interiors, at Dartmouth’s Flickr photostream. See also the straight-on view of the Hood across the plaza. Big Green Alert also has photos.

The building uses two or three different typefaces in the exterior lettering, interior donor plaque, and room numbers.

The building will be dedicated on the 14th (Dartmouth Now).

Masting Pines

Posted on by
Reply

Governor Wentworth’s 1771 grants of land to Dartmouth and Wheelock contained this interesting condition:

That all White and other Pine Trees fit for Masting our Royal Navy be carefully preserved for that use & none to be cut or felld without our special License for so doing first had & obtained on penalty of the forfeiture of the Right of the Grantee in the Premises his Heirs & Assigns to us our Heirs and Successors as well as being subject to the Penalties prescribed by any present as well as future Act or Acts of Parliament.1John Wentworth, Grant to Dartmouth College and Eleazar Wheelock (19 December 1771), in Albert Stillman Batchellor, ed., State of New Hampshire. Town Charters Granted within the Present Limits of New Hampshire (Concord, N.H.: Edward N. Pearson, Public Printer, 1895), 87-88.

Wheelock apparently got into some trouble later when pines fit for masting were discovered downriver with his blaze on them.

——

 

References
↑1 John Wentworth, Grant to Dartmouth College and Eleazar Wheelock (19 December 1771), in Albert Stillman Batchellor, ed., State of New Hampshire. Town Charters Granted within the Present Limits of New Hampshire (Concord, N.H.: Edward N. Pearson, Public Printer, 1895), 87-88.

Minary room plans published

Posted on by
Reply

The Inn has published floor plans (pdf) for the Minary Conference Center within the building. Bill Rooney Studio has posted interior designs, Cambridge Seven also has a new project page with a couple of photos of the completed work, and Here in Hanover1The fall issue (pdf) also has articles on Shattuck Observatory; a book-shaped granite sundial sculpted by Dartmouth alumnus Bill Nutt and donated to Linacre College, Oxford, by retired DMS professor and Linacre graduate Frank Manasek, author of Study, Measure, Experiment; King Arthur Flour; builder Peter French; and the new Dartmouth ski history documentary Passion for Snow. has a well-illustrated2The computer shown in the photo on the second page is curious: although one can substitute colored components on a Mac laptop, the body is machined from a single billet of aluminum. Somehow the sides of this computer were colored red without the surfaces around the ports and keyboard also being colored. Decals, perhaps? article on the Inn (pdf).

The smaller rooms have familiar names (Hayward, Drake, Ford Sayre), and the larger ones have the logical names Grand Ballroom, Ballroom East, and Ballroom West.

The Grand Ballroom, which occupies the old Zahm Courtyard space at the level of the lobby, measures 57 x 69 feet. This room is part of the third phase of the project and will open during November. One of the architects’ renderings of the new Hop entrance in the Zahm Courtyard, below the ballroom, showed the words “COLLEGE ENTRANCE” above the doors. It will be interesting to see whether the building ends up saying “HOPKINS CENTER” or perhaps nothing at all.

——

 

References
↑1 The fall issue (pdf) also has articles on Shattuck Observatory; a book-shaped granite sundial sculpted by Dartmouth alumnus Bill Nutt and donated to Linacre College, Oxford, by retired DMS professor and Linacre graduate Frank Manasek, author of Study, Measure, Experiment; King Arthur Flour; builder Peter French; and the new Dartmouth ski history documentary Passion for Snow.
↑2 The computer shown in the photo on the second page is curious: although one can substitute colored components on a Mac laptop, the body is machined from a single billet of aluminum. Somehow the sides of this computer were colored red without the surfaces around the ports and keyboard also being colored. Decals, perhaps?

Revealing the spaces within Wilson Hall

Posted on by
Reply

Billie Tsien, in an interview in the latest Hood Quarterly (pdf):

After walking through Wilson Hall, I just can’t wait to clean out everything and take a look at the bones. There are some incredibly beautiful and very powerful spaces in Wilson Hall, and stripping it down will help us to see, for example, the height of the top floor and the skylight. People are really just going to be blown away.

This 1894 photo shows the building’s front entrance.

Wilson Hall entrance 1894

1894 photo of Theta Delta Chi chapter, from Omicron Deuteron, The Shield [of Theta Delta Chi] 10:1 (March 1894), 52 (from Google Books).

“Goat Room” and other terms

Posted on by
2
  • A thorough post on the use of goats in fraternity imagery covers the use of the term “goat room” to describe a meeting room. That term has been used a number of Dartmouth houses including Tri-Kap, Beta Theta Pi, Phi Gamma Delta, Zeta Psi, Sigma Nu, and Psi Upsilon. The first Goat Room built by Beta is visible at the far right of a photo on the Town’s Flickr photostream.
  • Bob Donin’s 2011 oral history interview with William Jenkins ’43 and his wife Mary contains these linguistic observations on page 18:

    MARY: […] And the other thing that’s interesting—and I’ve talked about this to my few good friends who are still around who grew up here—when we said campus, we meant the Green. And it was never called the Green.

    DONIN: Oh, it wasn’t called the Green back then?

    MARY: Well, at least not by any of us. Never used the word Green. And when we said campus, which was an incorrect use of the word obviously, we meant the Green. I’ll meet you on campus. I’ll meet— you know, use it in that context. And it’s very interesting to see the evolution. And another thing that’s different: When you were in college and I was dating and stuff, the word “frat” was considered to be a state university word, and everyone looked down their nose at it, and they never under any conditions would use the word “frat,” meaning fraternity. And now it’s I think commonly used.

    DONIN: So what did you call—oh, you called it a fraternity.

    MARY: A fraternity. Or by the Greek name.

  • A Valley News blurb refers to plans “for a six-story addition just south of the main entrance” of DHMC, for research. Presumably this is the Williamson Translational Research Center.
  • A nice history of the building of the Ray School.
  • A new Maine Heraldry Blog is promising. Go moose-deer!
  • Rauner Library is allowing visitors to lick one of the books in its collection.
  • Thanks to Robert Goodby for citing the Notes toward a Catalog… in the 2006 Lebanon Slate Mill conservation study (pdf). Thanks for the citations to Halls, Tombs and Houses by Blake Gumprecht in The American College Town (UMass Press, 2010) and Carole Zellie in the University of Minnesota Greek Letter Chapter House Designation Study (2003). Glad the Review has adopted this site’s analysis of the new Inn addition.
  • Brilliant. Another post in praise of the aerial photo provided by Bing:

——-
[Update 11.04.2012: Beta photo link added.]

A remarkable discovery about the EBA’s building

Posted on by
Reply

Frank Barrett’s book Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover explains on page 110 that Charles Nash and Frank Tenney built the Inn Garage at 5 Allen Street in 1922. It is the gambrel-roofed building on the right, half way down Allen Street:


(An excellent view of the building appears on page 111 of the book, but that page is not in my Google Books preview. Page 111 is visible in Amazon‘s “Search inside This Book” — search for “Nash.”)

Barrett goes on to note this amazing fact: the old garage building is still there. In its heavily-modified present form, it houses EBA‘s on most of the ground level and one of the Bookstore’s several annexes on the second level:



The former garage at 5 Allen Street.

This is the new discovery: the original garage, now hidden under all that brick, was designed by Larson & Wells.1The American Contractor 42:14 (2 April 1921), 67. Larson & Wells were the official campus architects during the two decades before WWII and designed Baker Library. While their many campus projects are well known, their utilitarian buildings remain obscure.

——-

[Update 05.12.2013: Broken link to EBAs replaced.]

——-

 

References
↑1 The American Contractor 42:14 (2 April 1921), 67.