The Skiway is overhauling its snowmaking system with a gift from four alumnae among the nine daughters in the skiing-and-snowmaking Dupré family (news release, Valley News).
[Update 01.10.2009: Vermont Business Journal notes other work on the Skiway, including some blasting.]
The Alumni Relations Office has devoted a small stand-alone website to Dartmouth’s trees.
The Council of Independent Colleges maintains detailed building-by building information in its Historic Campus Architecture Project. Â One interesting revelation is that Charles Augustus Young, the Dartmouth graduate of 1853, well-known Princeton astronomer, and participant in the design of Dartmouth’s Shattuck Observatory with his uncle, architect Ammi Burnham Young, is listed as the designer of the 1881 Williston Observatory at Mount Holyoke College. Â The interesting shingled building does not appear to follow the plan of Shattuck.
Cornell’s marching band has been the subject of a parade in Manhattan since the mid-1970s. Â Although it has grown from one block to six blocks in length, it is still New York City’s shortest parade, Cornell reports. Â This year it followed the Cornell-Columbia football game.
Polemicist-architect Leon Krier has seen a small number of his buildings built around the world. Â The few in the U.S. include what is probably his first university building in this country, the Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center at the University of Miami (2005). The bright white, rather Byzantine building is unconventional, although it does not seem to have been given a particularly transformative site (the campus map [pdf] shows it at L-6). Â See the extensive photography by Mary Ann Sullivan and article by Andres Viglucci, “Architecture: A Building Apart,” CNU Florida (posted October 16, 2005).
U.N.H. Professor Blake Gumprecht’s book The American College Town has been published. Â The U.N.H. press release provides some information about the book, and Inside Higher Ed interviewed the author.
Moore Ruble Yudell, designers with Bruner/Cott of Dartmouth’s McLaughlin Cluster, Kemeny/Haldeman Hall, and the upcoming ’53 Commons, continue to work on major campus projects around the world, as explained in an article in Metropolis. Â Here in the U.S., the South Lawn project at the University of Virginia attempts to continue Jefferson’s Lawn beyond its termination at a set of existing buildings, carrying the space across a street and around a corner. Â In Dublin, Ireland, the firm is designing the transformation of the large parklike grounds of a former insane asylum (Grangegorman) into a campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Metropolis also has an article (pdf) on the “post-American campus” in the Middle East, which is experiencing a boom in construction of American-influenced universities. Â American University of Kuwait, the school Dartmouth has chosen to create extensive partnerships with since it opened in 2004, is planning a new campus of its own. Â A preliminary proposal depicted on page 4 of the AUK Chronicle (June 2008) (pdf) suggests that the campus will be secure and auto-oriented and might share more with the early-ninth century St. Gall Monastery Plan than a typical American campus.
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[Update 05.11.2013: Broken link to Metropolis article repaired; broken link to “post-American campus” removed.]
[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to Newsday article on Cornell parade replaced; broken links to Perez Architecture Center and AUK Chronicle pdf removed.]
The Valley News reports that the outpatient surgery center (2008-2010) is going ahead but confirms that the Koop Medical Science Complex is on hold.
The November 13 letter from Barry Scherr and Adam Keller (pdf) stated: “We will complete planning already under way for projects which would then require additional financial resources before proceeding to the next phase: Class of 1953 Commons and the C. Everett Koop Medical Science Complex.” The three-part complex planned for the south end of the hospital is shown in a November 3, 2006 announcement and is explained in detail on its capital campaign page.
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[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to campaign page removed.]
A College newsletter says “The Hanover Inn is in the early planning stages of building renovations to include the guest rooms, 1st floor conference rooms, and main floor kitchen, dining and lobby areas” and names Truex Cullins & Partners as the architects. The Inn is considering expanding its footprint (Dartmouth College Finance and Administration News 1:1 (January 16, 2007), 3, [pdf] (viewed November 19, 2008)). The Inn’s website also notes that “[w]e are planning a full renovation of The Hanover Inn within the next few years and we intend to pursue our commitment to make this a model hotel for environmental concerns” (Hanover Inn, “Environmental Commitment” (updated October 21, 2008, viewed November 18, 2008)).
This project is among those whose planning was put on hold recently.
Theta Delta Chi is naming its addition to the north for Marc Fragge ’87. Several photos of the construction are available, including one showing the site in relation to Thayer Dining Hall’s west end. A November rendering of the addition shows the flanking walls lowered to reveal more clapboarding.
David Williams ’79 of Davis Brody Bond Aedas is the architect of the Tri-Kap renovation, The Dartmouth notes.
Zeta Psi has its own construction photos on line. This house is seeing some of the most extensive interior alteration of any Fuller Audit project.
The Dartmouth recently depicted Chi Gamma Epsilon with a roofed steel fire stair at its east end that looks like an incomplete Fuller Audit addition, but it is hard to tell.
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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken links to TDX news on naming and photos removed; broken links to Zeta Psi info replaced.]
[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Davis Brody repaired.]
[Update 01.05.2013: Three broken links to The Dartmouth repaired.]
Dartmouth has planned to replace the concrete stands that make up most of Memorial Field’s main western stand for some time. The recognizable brick arcading and memorial arch will remain. The OPDC recently put a plan (pdf) and front and rear elevation drawings (pdf) on the project’s web page.
The Fleck & Lewis design preserves the street facade of the Larson building, including the tall brick attic story added above the entry in the 1950s (?) to screen the press box. Low brick cheek walls that appear to be new will flank this attic story to screen the wider replacement press box, but they are imperceptible and improve the transition from the tower to the parapet.
The field facade includes a straightforward-seeming set of replacement concrete seat risers and a new, squatter-seeming press box. The press box appears more dignified than its predecessor: its roof seems lower, and its bottom level appears to rest on a lower seating level than the old box’s did. It is certainly broader. New stair towers flanking the box introduce brick into this historically concrete facade. Like the old box, the new one will be faced in green-painted panels.
The project also appears among landscape architects Saucier & Flynn’s works in progress, and the historic field was the subject of a recent “Ask Dartmouth” query.
Now that the economic collapse has depressed Dartmouth’s endowment (story in The Dartmouth), the school has put the Memorial Field project on hold for two to six weeks to determine whether to go forward, Provost Barry Scherr and Executive V.P. Adam Keller announced on the 13th. The other projects on hold are the Visual Arts Center and the Truex Cullins renovation of Buchanan Hall (story in The Dartmouth).
The updates page for the stands renovation (updated November 3) is still announcing the start of construction as November 17.
The Valley News reported that the lease under which the Army Corps’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory occupies its complex on Dartmouth-owned property is ending. Both sides expect to negotiate a new lease with a higher rent. The federal installation is not subject to local zoning.
The delay in construction of the Class of 1953 Commons north of Maynard Street is due to trouble obtaining permits, The Dartmouth reported last month, but the building is still going ahead (October 31 article) and will be built between August 2010 and August 2012 (Capital Projects Schedule October 13, 2008 [pdf]).
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[Update 01.05.2013: Two broken links to The Dartmouth repaired.]
[Update 11.18.2008: With the endowment drop (story in The Dartmouth) requiring budget cuts (story in The Dartmouth), some projects are being put on hold, but “We will complete planning already under way for projects which would then require additional financial resources before proceeding to the next phase: Class of 1953 Commons and the C. Everett Koop Medical Science Complex” (November 13 letter from Scherr and Keller).]
More photos of the Tuck Living and Learning Complex are available. The flanking elements of the three-building complex will be named, from west to east, Achtmeyer Hall and Pineau-Valencienne Hall. The connector portion, with its dining and lecture halls, will be named Raether Hall. (The front facade image available for some time now indicated the names of Achtmeyer, Raether, and “Donor.”)
The Dartmouth reports on the completion of this large project, and Willy Black comments positively in the CV Spectator.
Construction on the hotel going in south of the Post Office (north of Umpleby’s on South Street) will begin in 2009. The building will have an underground garage.
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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Olympia hotel info removed.]
One learns from an abstract of a Quebec conference paper titled “Le Remplacement du Pont de Ledyard” that each of the four piers and abutments of the late-1990s Ledyard Bridge required a different type of foundation construction, since the riverbed and bedrock at that crossing are so irregular.
Red Rolfe Field has been changing by the day, to judge from the large number of photos posted on line recently.
The OPDC posted photos on September 5 and October 31. Bruce Wood at the Big Green Alert Blog posted photos on November 2, November 4 (and again), and on November 5.
What was the unreported cause of that delay during the initial excavation? OPDC Senior Project Manager Joseph Broemel was quoted in The Dartmouth: “Plus we found out about a steam vault underground where the bleachers would be which made it difficult to build.”
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[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to The Dartmouth repaired.]
The Hill Winds Society is producing a book on school traditions with an organization called the Sphinx Foundation. The foundation is connected with the Sphinx Senior Society but not the College, as an editorial in The Dartmouth explains. It has Professor Emeritus Jere Daniell speak on different Dartmouth history topics now and then and sponsored his recent talk on the Wheelock Succession (article in The Dartmouth). The foundation apparently sends letters to incoming students.
The Dartmouth Outing Club Centennial is approaching at the beginning of 2009 and the club now has a page up with an ambitious schedule of activities.
Erik Anjou’s and Mark Bernstein’s documentary Eight: Ivy League Football and America has been released (The Dartmouth, Big Green Alert Blog). The official page suggests that the film shares with Bernstein’s book the shaky contention that the first intercollegiate football game was played in 1869. There was a “football” game played that year, but it was “football” in the English sense, what Americans now call soccer. The first college football game (ancestor of today’s American/gridiron football) was not played until 1874, when McGill’s rugby team played Harvard.
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[Update 05.11.2013: Broken link to Parents News article on Hill Winds removed.]
[Update 11.12.2012: Broken link to documentary replaced.]
Dartmouth’s Real Estate Office is finishing 68 South Main, the most prominent building in the South Block project. Its neighbor, the frame building in the drawing, is number 72.
The latest rendering of the hotel planned for South Street is an improvement over the plainer, more prefab first version.
“The Chimneys,” Ledyard Bank’s building at 2 Maple Street, is finished.
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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Olympic Companies rendering removed.]
Although Dartmouth’s proposed acquisition of the high school would have deprived the town of an important element, it would have given the College a large tract of land very close to the campus. Part of the property was already in the form of sports fields, and the high school itself always seemed like it could make a good rugby clubhouse. The swap did not go through.
An unreleased proposal from a few years ago shows that someone was at least thinking of using the property for a new baseball field (putting something like Biondi Park there would have allowed Centerbrook to expand Alumni Gym) and, more interestingly, for faculty or graduate student housing. The ranks of buildings were to stand next to St. Denis Church.
The plan appears in a 2007 presentation (pdf) by architect David Bagnoli of the Washington, D.C. firm of Cunningham | Quill and might have been created by that firm.
What is most remarkable about this plan is that it nearly replicates a housing development that once stood on the same site, the wartime Sachem Village (it was the precursor to the present Sachem Village). A nice aerial of this original Sachem Village appears on page 90 of Frank Barrett’s latest book, Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover.
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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to images fixed.]
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