On December 13, 1769, Provincial Governor John Wentworth signed letters patent bringing Dartmouth College into being.
There is a transcript of the Charter at this site, along with information about the Charter. The 250th Website announces closing festivities for today.
The minutes for the October 18 meeting of the Alumni Council report on the presentation of Dean of Libraries Sue Mehrer:
The Call to Lead capital campaign proposes a rethinking of the Berry Library Experience; mapping programming needs; and developing design responses. Slides showed photographs of the assets and challenges of the current space, alongside renderings of the proposed renovations.
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A proposed option is to “stack” the floors into the workshop, fireside, the nexus, ideas lab, teacher/scholar, and the lookout. A connecting stair would be added to improve access and flow. Seminar spaces would be created for effective collaboration, along with visible research services support. There is a need to build for adaptability. The collections will never be completely digitized, and part of the goal of the redesign is allow more access to the diversity of the books and materials.
During 2014 this site noted the progress that Oxford University was making in its redevelopment of a large former hospital site in the north end of town. At the time, the site of the Blavatnik School of Government was a hole in the ground:
Seven years ago, the school officially announced “the selection of Boora Architects of Portland, Ore., to design a renovation and re-imagination of its Hopkins Center for the Arts.” Boora (now known as Bora) designed a stylish renovation and expansion.
In April of this year, the school announced the receipt of gifts sufficient to start planning. (The area that the school calls the Arts District is the one that this site in 1999 termed Hopland, obviously to no effect. The term “SoWhee” did not take off either.)
At the recent fall meeting of the trustees, according to a news release:
The board approved the allocation of $500,000 for a planning and feasibility study of renovations and potential expansion of the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The project — which recognizes the importance of the Hop and its artistic programming across the institution — would provide state-of-the-art performance and teaching spaces, improve and increase space and opportunities for rehearsal facilities, enhance accessibility, and address infrastructure and deferred maintenance.
There is no information on whether or how this upcoming project relates to the Bora design.
The D-Tree itself is nice, especially as an athletic logo, but it’s not a shield. And while the college might have good reason to take the midcentury Dartmouth shield out of its letterhead, it should commission a new shield for that purpose, as part of a new heraldic coat of arms. See, for example, this proposal from 1995.
Didn’t anyone find it notable that every one of the four Associated Schools now finally has a shield that depicts the Connecticut River in its base, just as the Dartmouth shield does?
First, the most important news: The college “will be decommissioning the current power plant, removing the stack and repurposing the building” (Planning Board Meeting Minutes 5 February 2019 pdf). That is reassuring. Naturally one would love to see the landmark 1958 stack retained as well and repurposed as a memorial column or a pedestal for public art, but we will take what we can get.
At a public meeting last month, the college revealed the three places that are in the running to become the site of the replacement heating plant (Valley News 22 May, Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth). The sites are:
1. The hill behind the Dewey parking lot, east of Rope Ferry Road and Occom Pond. This would not be the first power plant in the neighborhood, of course: the MHMH plant had a tall smokestack and stood in the parking lot behind 5 Rope Ferry Road (roughly behind the red BMW in this photo from Google Street View):
2. A site along Lyme Road by the Hanover Country Club’s maintenance facility garage at the south end of the golf course. This is the best we can do on Street View:
3. The third location is the former home of Trumbull-Nelson Construction Co., next to the Hanover Public Works Department, on Route 120.
The third option is the most distant and seems to be the only one that would not require trucks full of wood chips to drive through the center of town several times a day. That site would require a lengthy insulated underground pipeline to link up with the existing steam tunnel and pipe network, however. The pipeline can be no more than two miles long if it is to be efficient (Planning Board pdf). According to the map above, the route to the T-N site is about 1.6 miles, following roadways.
Because of its distance from campus and the possibility that it would keep some trucks out of town, the favorite site among the public seems to be the T-N site (Valley News 23 May).
The Valley News reports that the deep excavation for the new Thayer/Computer Science building has been made in the wrong place: it is ten feet to the south of where it should be. The hole for the parking deck that will underpin the building was dug to the correct dimensions but in the wrong location.
Ignore for the moment the implications for an engineering school of this magnificent error (as well as the possibility that the excavation is in the right place but that the Town-approved documents were never updated after some design change). The article presents two options: conduct new excavations to put the building in the right place, or accept the current site and rehash the Town of Hanover approval process. The second option might be less expensive. Once it is re-approved, the planned bridge to MacLean can simply be extended by ten feet.
Another interesting observation from the article1D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019). by D. Maurice Kreis about the new Hood:
Both outside and in the capacious lobby, the brickwork (made in Denmark) is off-white. You could infer that this is the museum making its stand on the Green, rebelling against its red-brick neighbors, but I see the milky color as an homage to the museum’s chief benefactors, whose fortune was originally made in dairy.
Another one of the smarter reviews so far is the one by Samuel Medina in Metropolis (21 March 2019).
A film of a talk that architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien gave at Dartmouth is very interesting. Williams and Tsien will receive honorary degrees at Commencement on June 9.
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| ↑1 | D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019). |
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Dartmouth plans to build a 20,000 sq ft stand-alone, purpose-built storage facility to house the library’s low-use print collections and College records. This facility, to be located on Dartmouth’s 56 Etna Road property in Lebanon, will replace the existing Library offsite storage facility[,] which is full.
The building’s owner, Jay Campion, said that the renovations are already well underway and should be complete by July, which will allow the three tenants to start setting up their shops. According to Campion, the renovation process has involved a complete makeover.“We’ll be rebuilding the entire storefront and have basically gutted the building,” Campion said. “We’re re-insulating and replacing the heating and air conditioning systems for this and dividing the space for the three separate tenants on the first floor.”
The master planning site is now seeking comments.
An article in The Dartmouth on the first master planning town hall meeting has this to say:
An article on the master plan in the Valley News has lots of interesting tidbits:
Here’s a scoop from a recent piece by D. Maurice Kreis1D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019). about the new Hood:
Showing off the expansion and renovation designed by the world-renowned New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Stomberg casually mentioned that the Hood opted to stick with its existing location at the center of campus rather than move to a more distant spot that had been offered, which he characterized as being near the Connecticut River.
Instead, Stomberg said, that’s where Dartmouth will put the new central heating plant it recently announced plans to construct so as to stop burning oil and start burning sustainably harvested wood.
That’s interesting. A site by the River? Could it be Rivercrest? Now that we know that grad student housing will be built in Lebanon, could Rivercrest be on the list of sites for the heating plant? Rivercrest is the next development along the River after CRREL:
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| ↑1 | D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019). |
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The college flag, which is flown from the flagpole on the Green (see this July 2017 Street View image), has for decades been a simple Lone Pine in white upon a green field. The Co-Op still sells a version of it.
Last year, the Original Champions of Design created a new overall visual identity for Dartmouth that included a relatively subtle update of the Lone Pine. Instead of substituting the new pine for the old on the flag, however, the college has created a new flag featuring the “D-Pine” logo that OCD also created. The new flag is now flying on the Green and is visible in the photo published with this article in The Dartmouth of February 13 (thanks for the tip, Jon). OCD did a mockup of such a flag (it appears around page 11 of their site for this project) but the college appears to have taken the suggestion literally.
One needn’t dislike the D-Pine logo to question its appropriateness on a flag: the official college banner just seems a bit less purely symbolic and a bit more commercial now. The new logo definitely says “I am a logo,” and as a result the new flag speaks more to a brand, a glossy trademarked identity, than did the old flag. There is also a hint of the athletic about it — again, appropriate for many situations, but not necessarily right for the college flag.
This flag was spotted at an Interstate rest area:
The phrase “the Thin Red Line” calls to mind the Battle of Balaclava (to a dedicated 1980s MilMod reader, at least). Lately it’s been applied to firefighters, following the pattern of “the Thin Blue Line” of the police. With this flag, spotted at a Highland Games, you get two for the price of one, and there’s no scrimping on the width of the line either:
At the same event, this Celtic collage (FOTW):
There are beer taps affixed to this depiction of the flag of Virginia, which itself displays the obverse of the great seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia:
Finally, here is an odd collection, including (l-r) the Virginia flag, a Pride version of the U.S. flag, the big flag of the River City Red Army, the flag of the City of Richmond, an ice cream flag, and an Australian flag defaced by a boxing kangaroo.
The road is about half a mile long. He stated they will be working within the existing asphalt and drainage swales in order to maintain the existing stone walls. Lighting along the road will be minimal. Fixtures will be spaced 80-120 feet apart. Better access to the loading dock at Murdough will be provided. From Wheelock Street, Old Tuck Drive will be a two way street and give access to the Ledyard Parking Lot. After the turn off to the parking lot, the drive becomes a one way access. There is a pedestrian crossing point marked by a raised speed table. Guardrails will be installed along Old Tuck Drive. There is a bike lane separated from vehicle traffic by a double yellow line. Close to Tuck Drive there will be sidewalks on both sides of the drive.
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Mr. Scherding stated the campus was open with busy streets and students were used to crossing streets and sharing roads. He stated the Director of Public Works suggested narrowing the road at pedestrian crossings to make it safer. Mr. Scherding said they talked about having a physical barrier between the vehicles and the bike lanes but currently it is not on the plans. ESMAY asked what the guardrail would look like. Mr. Scherding stated it would look like the existing granite bollards.
| ↑1 | See also California Gov. Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz of Bojack Horseman, introduced in S4E1: “It happens that I’m an excellent skier who won numerous medals in the sport when I raced for Dartmouth but, again, I am shocked that fact is relevant in the matter of selecting our state’s governor.” In Episode 7, he emerges after tunneling to reach a group trapped underground: “Vox Clamantis in Deserto. It is I, Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz.” |
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Master planning has started up again, this time with the word “strategic” (see the project page). Finally there is an explanation (in the press release) of what happened to the Beyer Blinder Belle plan:
The last campus master plan was completed in 1998 by architect Lo-Yi Chan ’54; it was updated in 2001 and 2002. In 2012, a comprehensive planning processes was started, but put on hold when then-President Jim Yong Kim left Dartmouth. Some planning has been done since 2012, including 2017 master plans for the west end of campus and the Tuck School of Business, in addition to a plan for Dartmouth’s energy future.
The press release does not say why the college needed to conduct a nationwide search for planners now if it had lined them up in 2012, but the continuity is reassuring:
The firms [of BBB and MVVA], which worked with the College on the west end and Tuck campus plans, were selected following a nationwide search for consulting teams that had experience working with complex campus settings.
