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The unidirectional kickoff

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One of the distinctive features of Dartmouth-Rules Football, a local soccer of the mid-nineteenth century, was the fact that the kickoff was unidirectional. Although scoring was permitted on either the east or west side of the Green, the kickoff (called “the warn”) always went eastward from the spot where second base would be located during baseball season.

schematic diagram of Old Division Football pitch, Dartmouth College

The rule might have been motivated by politics, courtesy, or efficiency. While there was nothing breakable in the college yard east of the Green, a row of professors’ houses stood on the west side.

The unidirectional kickoff was brought to mind recently with the news that the rules for the Illinois vs. Northwestern game at Wrigley Field had been changed to require all offensive plays to drive toward the west end zone. Although scoring was permitted in both end zones, when possession changed, the teams switched sides. Planners made this modification to reduce the number of plays taking in the east end zone, which is cramped by the baseball stadium’s right-field wall.

(Old Division Football basically evolved into the Football Rush, which can be seen at the 8:26 mark in this 1947 film. The arbitrary violence and utter lack of anything resembling game play suggest why the annual freshman-sophomore event later was turned into a tug-of-war and eventually was eliminated.)

The wartime origins of Sachem Village

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The Tuck School has a gallery of photos of Sachem Village, the married-student housing site south of Hanover.

One 1946 photo shows the earliest Sachem buildings when they still occupied their original location in Hanover, behind Thayer School. Some or all of the prefabricated buildings had begun as wartime housing for shipyard workers. The view from the west shows how the lower of the two types of buildings were arranged in a circle called Wigwam Circle. This quick composite of stills from a 1946 film linked from the Dartmouth Film Archive shows Wigwam Circle from the east looking west:

composite of stills from 1946 film showing Wigwam Circle west of Thayer School, Hanover, N.H.

The dorms that later occupied the site were initially called Wigwam Circle and later the River Cluster.

The two-story buildings visible in the rear of the 1946 photo linked at the top of this post appear again in a 1954 photo at the current location of Sachem Village. (I believe some of the other prefab buildings for married students ended up north of town at Rivercrest.)

Sachem Village has been redeveloped in recent years (see Trumbull-Nelson and Pathways Consulting), and I have no idea whether any of its wartime buildings remain. It seems unlikely.

To confuse matters, the name of the present Sachem Village appears to have come from Dartmouth’s other group of prefab buildings for married students — the counterpart to Wigwam Circle — which stood on Lebanon Street next to Hanover High. Here is a composite of stills from the same 1946 film showing this housing project, the original “Sachem Village”:

composite of stills from 1946 film showing Sachem Village, Lebanon Street, Hanover, N.H.

A 1947 film from the same collection has some good closeups of Wigwam Circle and the original Sachem Village on Lebanon Street at the 8:57 mark.

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[Update 11.23.2014: Images adjusted, cropped.]
[Update 11.21.2010: Link to 1947 film added.]
[Update 11.20.2010: Images and links to film added.]

Recent Dartmouth-related notes not involving construction

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Various tidbits not related to construction:

  • Google has supplemented its car-based Street View coverage of Hanover and Lebanon by sending in a tricycle-mounted camera (The Dartmouth). New images will be up next year. Meanwhile some places, such as the University of Texas, are getting 45-degree aerial views, presumably taken from an airplane.
  • Professor Schweitzer’s Occom Circle Project involves digitizing and posting Samson Occom’s writings (The Dartmouth, Dartmouth Now). The project doesn’t seem to have a page yet.
  • Rauner’s blog has a copy of an early-1900s broadside advertising a ban on nude swimming near Ledyard Bridge, and a bit on the legendary Doc Benton.
  • As everybody knows, BlitzMail is going away. An oblitzuary.
  • Ask Dartmouth writes about the Old Pine Lectern.
  • Ken Burns wrote in American Heritage that his favorite baseball photograph is an 1882 image showing a Dartmouth-Harvard game on the northwest corner of the Green. Photographer Joseph Mehling has paired that photo with shots from a recent softball game on the northeast corner, with President Kim pitching.
  • This excellent fantastical map of the campus by Matthieu and Zachary Pierce is called “Dartmouth Dreaming.”
  • Administrative reports and presidential announcements, such as the Reaccreditation Self-Study, now regularly mention the planning for the 2019 Quartomillennium.
  • The Dartmouth Sports site has been redesigned and is now a little less busy.

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[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to Google post at the blog of The Dartmouth removed; broken link to 1992 American Heritage article removed.]

VAC excavators hit a ledge

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The Visual Arts Center project is starting to move along:

  • Bruce Wood at the Big Green Alert Blog had a photo of the VAC excavation in a post back in August (direct link to photo). Ephemeral views like this one showing the Hood’s rear facade are always interesting.
  • The Dartmouth had interesting news on the discovery of a larger-than-anticipated granite ledge under the Visual Arts Center site. One gets the sense that to a North Country builder, a “ledge” is a very particular thing, and always under ground. Since the nineteenth century there have been lawsuits over unexpected ledges, and contractors had to use dynamite to create a foundation for Richardson Hall in College Park.
  • The Dartmouth notes some of the future building’s features in a construction-related issue of The Mirror.

    Building items

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    News notes on construction projects old and new:

    • An anonymous donation has named the fitness center recently installed in the old gymnasium space at the top of Alumni Gym for former Trustee Charles Zimmerman ’23 Tu ’24 (The Dartmouth, Bloomberg).
    • An article in the Valley News on Harris Trail at Hanover and the Class of 1966 Lodge.
    • Health Facilities Management has named the DHMC complex an “icon” and the subject of one of its case studies. The SBRA announcement notes the hospital’s adoption of the shopping mall form.
    • For an example of a remarkable and appropriate setting for a Beverly Pepper sculpture that shares some of the attributes of Thel, see the Weisslers’ amphitheater in New York (New York Times). See also the BLDGBLOG post on Buried Buildings.
    • A building-related issue of The Mirror has some details on the Life Sciences Center.
    • One hopes that the OPDC will get the chance to add a Class of 1953 Commons page to its list of projects.
    • Another Titcomb Cabin update.

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    [Update 07.06.2013: Sluggish link to SBRA announcement removed.]

    Thayer is becoming the Class of 53 Commons

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    Hidden in a story about Fahey-McLane in The Dartmouth is this information:

    As part of the renovations, the booths and platforms were removed from Homeplate, increasing the dining capacity of the space, according to students who had used the renovated facility.

    […]

    Construction will continue until the estimated completion date in Fall 2011, according to a June update.

    A later story has a photo of the new Homeplate. It’s hard to remember what it looked like with the risers in place.

    [Update 10.19.2010: The Mirror has more details about what’s moving where.]

    The Life Sciences Center and its copper cladding

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    Dartmouth Now posted an update on campus construction back in June. The first photo (larger version on Flickr) shows the busy east end of the Life Sciences Center.

    There is also a podcast covering the LSC and sustainability, and the webcam continues to show the state of the work.

    Dartmouth Now, by the way, is from the Office of Public Affairs and appears to be the new and peppier face of the college on the Web, up since about January.

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    [Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to webcam removed.]

    A new cabin next to the Ravine Lodge

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    Cary Bernstein of the Class of 1984 led a group of five architect classmates in designing the new Class of ’84 Crew Cabin at Moosilauke. David Hooke ’84 led the volunteer construction (Dartmouth Now). Photos from the college Flickr stream show the cabin standing next to the Ravine Lodge itself, set back a bit behind the trees. Note the rustic coat hooks.

    Rebuilding Titcomb Cabin

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    Students built the original Titcomb Cabin on Gilman Island, downriver from the bridge, in 1952. It was a replacement for several Ledyard Canoe Club cabins whose sites were being submerged by the river as the water rose behind the new Wilder Dam. It seems that the power company even helped with the construction.

    Someone burned Titcomb last year (The Dartmouth) and a group mostly made up of students has started the work of erecting a replacement (The Dartmouth).

    The Rebuilding Titcomb blog has some superb photos. Joe Mehling’s photos at Dartmouth’s Flickr stream show Safety & Security using their boat to help raft logs to the island.

    [Update 09.25.2010: The Dartmouth has an update.]

    Small items of interest

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    • There is an unusual aerial view of the north end of campus in the Dartmouth Medicine magazine. It is a view from the north looking south, and it hints at the way Main Street used to cross the Green on a diagonal. The photo makes the Green’s northeast-southwest path appear to be an extension of College Street.
    • There are far to many changes in planning, development, and regulation of suburban sites in the Upper Valley to keep up with on line. Here is just one example: the Valley News reported on a new development proposed for the edge of Centerra.
    • Naturally Vermont has a Marble Museum (New Hampshire does not appear to have a Granite Museum…) and it is mentioned in a Rutland Herald story on the pervasive use of marble at Middlebury and other schools.
    • The completed addition to Spaulding Auditorium includes extra storage for the Band’s instruments, notes the construction management firm. Interesting.
    • The Valley News had a story on blazes marking the Appalachian Trail in downtown Hanover.
    • The Dartmouth reports that double rooms in Fahey and McLane will be converted to triples. It seems only a couple of year ago that Fahey and McLane were built to allow the rooms in other dorms to decompress from triples to doubles.

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    [Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to construction management firm (Berry) removed.]

    Thayer alumni on design

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    As a rough parallel to the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine article on alumni architects (a post here), Thayer School’s Dartmouth Engineer magazine has an article in which eight alumni designers speak about design.

    The focus of this particular article is product design rather than building design. Thayer School, incidentally, was founded as the Thayer School of Architecture and Civil Engineering (see the 1868 Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education) but has always focused on the engineering part of its mandate. The school dropped the word “architecture” from its name early on.

    Architectural salvage

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    In the Upper Valley, architectural elements saved from old buildings seem to wind up at Vermont Salvage in White River Junction.

    An interesting large-scale example of salvage and reuse was linked recently from the frequently-updated facilities blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education: At Dickinson College, a 1950s Georgian cupola is being turned into a birdhouse (Dickinson photo).

    The cupola’s original building, which was demolished, was called “the Levinson Curtilage” — a name with a story behind it if ever there was one. The Web is not immediately forthcoming.

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    [Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to birdhouse article replaced replaced.]

    Dartmouth’s new school

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    President Kim has announced the establishment of the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science (press release, The Dartmouth, Valley News).

    Following the habit of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice or “T.D.I.,” the new institution is being called “T.D.C.,” for “The Dartmouth Center.”

    T.D.I. already awards master’s degrees, and T.D.C. is planning to do so. Even if the former institution were not expected to be absorbed by the latter, one might predict that a name change will be in order soon.

    The word “Center” suggests a policy office or programming fund. (Cf. the Georgetown University Law Center, which is a law school rather than a legal aid clinic.) Dartmouth’s existing centers — Hopkins, Collis, Rockefeller, Dickey, Leslie and Visual Arts do not award degrees. The foundations that do award degrees are titled “College” or “School.” Only the word “Institute” is used in more than one way, by the degree-granting Dartmouth Institute, as noted above, and by the Ethics Institute, which is grouped formally with the centers. The new foundation seems to refrain from calling itself an “Institute” because that name is already taken.

    President Kim’s foundation could be a Tucker-caliber move, an early identification of a need for a novel form of graduate-level education. The new foundation will be prominent and could end up with a public character more like that of the Tuck School than of T.D.I. Therefore one might predict that the name eventually will be changed (a) to refer to the donor, who is anonymous at the moment; (b) to omit the word “Dartmouth” or move it to the end (“the ____ Center at Dartmouth College”); and (c) to reflect the institution’s ambitions and authority by becoming an actual “School,” or at least an “Institute.”

    At the very least this new foundation will occasion a change in Dartmouth’s academic heraldry:

    Detail of Dartmouth academic heraldry from T.D.C. website
    Detail from T.D.C. website.

    The professional schools have been adopting coats of arms in parallel to that of Dartmouth over the past 60 years, most recently at Thayer School. Neither T.D.I. nor the Graduate Studies Program, which is not yet a school, has joined the pattern. But at least G.S.P. has its Lone Pine; T.D.I., with only a logotype, would seem to be the only degree-granting body left out of the group. The above grouping includes T.D.I. and the medical center because it is meant to identify the partners of T.D.C.

    [It seems to appropriate to mention the example of the “Harvard Chief” and its role in unifying Harvard’s various frank and memorable coats of arms, such as those of the Schools of Engineering and Law.]

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    [Update 06.09.2013: Broken link to Harvard Engineering arms replaced.]

    Changes at the Inn

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    Dartmouth, which owns the Hanover Inn and the mostly-1960s building it inhabits, recently decided to get out of the business of running a hotel and will turn over the Inn’s management to Carpenter & Co. (The Dartmouth, Valley News, more Valley News, press release on the search).

    The Inn has had plans for what appears to be an interior renovation for some time now. It is not clear how the switch affect these plans.

    The outsourcing of the Inn’s management is part of a long and shifting relationship. The first tavern on the corner was officially sited by Dartmouth, which conveyed the land to Ebenezer Brewster for the purpose. Brewster was a careful selection: he was made the Steward of Dartmouth College and was granted a tavern license by local authorities who were friendly to the college and in some cases would have been Dartmouth professors.

    That was in the 1770s. Buildings came and went on the same site on the corner. After about 40 years the tavern, which had probably always housed paying guests, became the Dartmouth Hotel. It continued for another 85 years or so as an “independent” operation.

    After the Dartmouth Hotel burned in 1887, the college bought the land. The college had a succession of intentions. At first it seems only to have wanted to sell the land to a sufficiently reputable hotelier and let him replace the building. Then it decided to erect the building itself and lease out the hotel to an independent manager. (I think it did try leasing out the building in this way for a time.) Eventually the school decided that it would not only own the building but operate it too.

    Dartmouth operated the Wheelock Hotel in its new building, renaming the hotel as the Hanover Inn in 1902. The Inn’s operators played up Brewster’s history, putting an image (or a supposed image) of him on the Inn’s sign. The same jolly man of girth also appeared on the sign of the Inn’s motel — the Hanover Inn Motor Lodge — and lent his name to a nearby dormitory for Inn employees.

    Dartmouth demolished the 1887 Inn in 1966 and hired a hotel architect to replace it.