Category Archives: all news

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Wilson Hall elm removed

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Ask Dartmouth has an article on campus trees, a popular topic; this one mentions that the elm in front of Wilson Hall (the tall one on the small grass oval surrounded by the paved path?) had to be removed. The OPDC also had a notice about this:

6/30/08 – IMPORTANT NOTICE:

The elm tree in front of Wilson on East Wheelock Street was diagnosed with Dutch Elm Disease. In order to prevent the spread of the disease to other adjacent elms on campus and in the town, the tree will be removed today, Monday June 30th, by the Town of Hanover. In some cases,trees can be saved with treatment and removal of the affected areas, but in this case the disease was too widespread as determined by the College and Town staff working together.

Someone should document Clement Hall

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The former automobile dealership of Clement Hall, whose main block was built in 1914 using mill construction, will be demolished within days. The Dartmouth. Many governments require landowners seeking permission to demolish historic buildings to mitigate the effects of the destruction of history at least somewhat by documenting the building to HABS standards. While Dartmouth has announced its voluntary compliance with regulations designed to protect the natural environment, it seems to lag behind others, including state schools, when it comes to the cultural environment. One hopes that a basic set of large-format black and white photographs, at least, will survive after Clement Hall is torn down.

Arts Center — another view

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The article in The Dartmouth has a depiction of the Visual Arts Center from another angle:



visual arts center

image from The Dartmouth

The story in the Valley News, in which one person on a College committee of town advisors calls the building “hideous,” has been picked up by the Nashua Telegraph, the Boston Globe, Burlington’s WPTZ tv, the [Laconia?] Foster’s Daily Democrat, and others.

It is unfortunate that the materials presented to the committee are not available on line, and that readers have only the two images from which to judge the design. It is also unfortunate that some of the committee members quoted failed to give thoughtful reasons to object to the design. Dartmouth will probably ask for more than unsubstantiated, unsophisticated gut reactions before it considers redesigning this building.

For example, calling the design too “urban” is like calling the Green too “grassy.” The site is urban, as is all of downtown Hanover. This part of Hanover is not a traditional New England village, it’s an ex-automobile dealership located between an industrial heating plant and a faux-industrial auditorium. The site is presently occupied by a parking lot, some College lawns, an industrial building, and a prettified one-time workers’ housing unit. A portion of Lebanon Street might be a part of the campus in a technical sense, but it is not in an aesthetic sense. The arts center does not belong on the site of Parkhurst, and Parkhurst does not belong here.

Critics who term the design “Southwestern” might be reacting to the way the wall colorings are depicted in the renderings. The renderings available on line do not do justice to the complex natural coloration of the building’s large panels of slate cladding. These panels are probably black lace rust slate from Norway and can be seen in photographs at Vermont Structural Slate and in the Harvard architects’ design for a branch of the Boston Public Library (Flickr search; a particularly nice photo). People will walk up to this building just to touch it.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to Telegraph and WPTZ removed.]

Visual Arts Center design unveiled

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Dartmouth has presented the latest design for Machado & Silvetti’s Visual Arts Center on Lebanon Street. Valley News; permalink to same article in Concord Monitor.

visual arts center

view from southeast, from Valley News

There are some obvious differences from the tentative version that appeared in the Basis of Design (pdf). The big multistory glass projection over Lebanon Street, for one, and all the faceted studio bays on the east side, for another.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to image fixed.]

4 Currier Place, Dartmouth’s latest downtown office building

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The Real Estate Office page has the best information on the new three-level commercial building about to go up across from the parking garage behind 7 Lebanon Street, sort of across from the Howe.

The Valley News reports that site prep begins today and will involve the demolition of two frame houses behind C&A’s Pizza.

Businessweek also has a short report that explains, as the others do, that the building’s first occupant will be the Studio Art Department once Clement Hall is demolished.

The one view of the building available on the Real Estate site unfortunately does not suggest that it will live up to the standard set by Childs Bertman Tseckares at 7 Lebanon.

Historic Moosilauke Ravine Lodge under demolition threat

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The Moosilauke Advisory Committee recommends that Dartmouth demolish the historic Moosilauke Ravine Lodge (Richard Butterfield, 1938-39) near Warren, New Hampshire.

The article on the Committee’s recommendation in The Dartmouth does not suggest that the Committee has consulted with an accredited preservation architect, or an architect who is familiar with historic log buildings. The reasons given for demolishing Dartmouth’s most unusual and most sustainable building are not yet very convincing:

Reason   ::   Typical solution
logs cracking   ::   seal them
logs rotting   ::   replace them
current building codes   ::   upgrade/overlook – most old buildings fail
not large enough   ::   add on by extending the Great Hall

The idea that the building was “built to last 50 years” is especially insidious because every building has such a number. No one in 1938 planned for Moosilauke to be demolished in 1988 any more those who built Moore or Berry in 1998 planned to have it torn down in 2048. A “lifetime” number exists for every building and simply describes the period after which significant elements will need replacement. Swapping out logs or replacing a roof is nothing a competent construction crew cannot handle.

Dartmouth should not let the cost of proper maintenance justify destruction, even if an historic log building might cost a bit more to maintain than the cheap imitation that would replace it. The Lodge was built by volunteers and low-paid local loggers, during the Depression, which means that Dartmouth has been enjoying the savings of a low initial purchase price for 70 years. A little extra expense today would be well justified.

Destroying the Ravine Lodge would also waste all of the energy the building embodies, and by rights it should prevent any replacement from claiming to be “green.” The Lodge was constructed using sustainable local timber hauled by horses. All of its systems are indefinitely replaceable and will not tie up valuable metals or harmful chemicals in landfills when they are thrown away after failing suddenly at the end of their useful lives, as the parts of a new building will do.

ravine lodge

The college that is gearing up to celebrate the centennial of its Outing Club, that is sincerely dedicated to meeting voluntary “green” regulations, and that produces graduates such as William McDonough should be embarrassed to consider destroying the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. Just as with any other National-Register eligible building, if parts of it are broken, they need to be fixed. Before any demolition takes place, I’d hope that Dartmouth justify such a decision by reporting no that federal and state historic preservation laws will be implicated; that a certified preservation architect with log building experience has written off the building; and that the replacement will not seek any kind of LEED certification.

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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to McDonough removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to McDonough and image fixed.]

Campus Guide available

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At the beginning of June, Princeton Architectural Press published Dartmouth College: The Campus Guide. At the moment it is available from Barnes & Noble and the press.

book cover

As is the case with any book, a few errors have crept in, and they are being collected in this pdf document. Readers are encouraged to email comments, error sightings, and updates to dartmo@gmail.com.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Press fixed.]

Extensive trove of planning documents available

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The Planning arm of the OPDC has expanded its Web content lately. Now there are historic maps and aerial photos available. The College Planner, Joanna Whitcomb, even has a blog.

Most interesting is the very extensive file of planning documents of the last decade. There are some remarkable items here:

  • Machado & Silvetti’s 2006 presentation on the Visual Arts Center to the Board of Trustees (pdf);
  • Kieran Timberlake’s 2006 Basis of Design for the Thayer Dining Hall Replacement (pdf) (good news: at least at the time of that presentation, the demolition of South Fairbanks was not part of the proposal; instead the architects presented a clever plan to close the south end of Mass Row and loop vehicles from Wheelock Street behind the church and back to the street);
  • Saucier & Flynn’s 2007 Landscape Master Plan (pdfs) (interesting proposal to establish a public square or plaza between Leverone and Thompson)
  • Centerbrook’s SLI study (pdf) (including intersting things reported but not shown on line in the late 1990s, such as an idea for a building to join Collis, Robinson, and Thayer; and the big building idea that led to Floren);
  • Photos of a model of the ’53 Commons pdf) emphasizing the glassy tower;
  • Dartmouth’s 2002 Master Plan (pdf) (mentions the idea of building a regional conference center, probably not in town; the Trustees’ long-held goal of demolishing the entire River Cluster; the one-time consideration of building an off-site commissary to serve all dining halls; the idea of putting a parking garage on the lot next to Cummings; and, strangest of all, the rejection of a proposal to move Thayer School to Lyme Road!).

New Hanover book

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The third Images of America book about Hanover by Frank J. Barrett, Jr. is now available: Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover. Its coverage of the old frame buildings that preceded today’s brick commercial blocks downtown is excellent. There are photos of obscure campus buildings, Rowley Hall and Allen Hall, and rare photos of relatively temporary or mundane buildings such as the Hanover Diner and the first Sachem Village, both on Lebanon Street. Hanover before 1900 or 1920 seems to have been characterized by jumbled small-scale clapboard-sided buildings — the level and density and great variety of materials and details visible at the level of the pedestrian was extremely high.

Life Sciences clears latest hurdle

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The county court has upheld a pair of Town decisions permitting the Life Sciences Center to go ahead. The Dartmouth, press release. The zoning complaints raised by the Occom Pond Neighborhood Association are fascinating because they take the form of a direct and quantifiable challenge to Dartmouth’s mix of teaching and research (or college and university).

The auditorium in the ’78 Life Sciences Center will be named for Arvo J. Oopik, M.D. ’78. The Dartmouth.

Latest fraternity additions

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The Fuller Audits conducted under the Student Life Initiative about ten years ago pointed out the building-code failings of each student society house. Almost every fraternity, sorority, or co-ed house needed an enclosed exterior fire stair and possibly an elevator. Since then, the College has altered or added onto the nine or so society houses it owns, one society has built itself a new house, and about sixteen other groups have been working independently to add to their own houses.

The variety of approaches is relatively small. Long brick buildings designed as fraternities usually get extended at one end, while frame houses closer to a square or a tee in plan are given a rear ell. Almost every addition is “contextual” and attempts to harmonize with the building to which it is attached. The two latest additions represent the extremes.

Theta Delta Chi is extending to the north its north-south oriented building adjacent Thayer Dining Hall using a design by the Portland, Maine firm of Arcadia Designworks. Arcadia’s outlook is broader than most — the firm also handles industrial design and apparently created an improved lobster trap — and its addition to Theta Delt is unusually “contemporary” in style.

Theta Delta Chi addition

The extension avoids both the brick construction and the roof form of the historic house designed by Putnam & Chandler of Boston. If Hanover had a Design Review Commission, as many cities these days do, it probably would not approve this addition.

Zeta Psi, on the other hand, has commissioned a firm intimately familiar with the work of Jens Larson (Smith & Vansant Architects of Norwich) to expand its house in several directions. Saucier & Flynn, the College’s landscape architects, are handling the landscape design. The conceptual drawings (pdf) include floorplans bearing a notation rarely seen in architecture, an indication of the designers’ familiarity with the client: “Pong tables shown for scale.” The alterations include an extension to the west end of the house and a new gable over the two-level portico at the rear. Hanover’s zoning authorities have approved the project (pdf).

Zeta Psi addition

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Smith & Vansant fixed; broken link to 6 March 2008 zoning board minutes removed.]

Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park announced

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The diamond at Red Rolfe is being completely rebuilt, and, with a grandstand, dugouts, and a press box, will become part of Biondi Park. Press Release; Project page. Clark Companies and Gale Associates are the field consultants, and Lavallee Brensinger, designer of the gym renovation, is designing the grandstand. The project page has a perspective rendering available.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Clark fixed.]
[Update 07.12.2008: The plans page also includes a nice site plan (pdf), and Big Green Alert Blog has a post with an aerial perspective rendering and a view of the entrance gate.]

Thayer replacement details, delays

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Several major projects, including ’53 Commons, the Thayer Dining Hall replacement, and the Visual Arts Center, have been delayed, The Dartmouth reports.

Kieran Timberlake has already shown preliminary designs for the Thayer replacement. The Dartmouth quoted Associate Provost Mary Gorman as noting that the building will be taller than Thayer — tall enough to see over the trees in the cemetery and into Vermont — and will have a nice outdoor space in front of it.

South Block redevelopment continues

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The Valley News recently noted that Dartmouth’s real estate office is planning to build a commercial building on Currier Place, which marks the eastern edge of the South Block project.

In an article on an unrelated topic, The Dartmouth published a photo of 68-72 South Main Street, which is the largest commercial building in South Block. The western (Main Street) facade occupies the right side of the photo.

The Dartmouth has reported and provided a brief on a three-level, 72-room hotel planned to open on South Street around 2010. It is not clear whether this is the Currier Street project above, but it does not seem to be. Olympia Development has a rendering of the hotel.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Olympia removed.]
[Update 07.16.2008: These are two different projects. The Dartmouth Real Estate Office is building a commercial building at 4 Currier Street, diagonally opposite the northeast corner of the South Block.]