Photos from the Office of Planning, Design and Construction show the Varsity House in relation to the gym and, on August 31, with its steel frame completed.
Varsity House framing complete
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Category Archives: all news
Conceptual designers of Life Sciences Building
Back in May of 2005, the school mentioned that the Cambridge firm of Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, Inc. was handling the conceptual design for the Life Sciences Building north of Gilman. The school presumably then sent that design to other firms for proposals to build the building itself.
New aerial available
The aerial view of Hanover on Wikimapia is highly detailed and only a matter of months old.
Architects’ page for Varsity House
Centerbrook has a New Varsity House page up with information already available elsewhere.
Fred Harris Cabin [II?]
A flurry of publicity has marked the ongoing construction of the new Fred Harris Cabin (Vox; The Dartmouth).
The articles describe this cabin in relation to the first cabin the Outing Club built, one that went up during 1913 and apparently collapsed during the 1990s. Hooke lists the first cabin as Cow Moose (1913, demolished 1941) and he describes Fred Harris Cabin as completed during 1951 and still in use in 1987. It’s still not clear what’s what.
Varsity House making progress
Varsity House construction photos are available, including several depicting the dismantling of part of the East Stands at Memorial Field.
Maps now label the old Davis Varsity House as “Davis Field House.” A dedicatory plaque inside the building also seems to use that name, so perhaps the “Varsity” part has been inaccurate all along.
Canadian houses come to Hanover
Every one of the 37 new two-story buildings in Sachem Village has been escorted from the Canadian border by Vermont State Police and then from the New Hampshire-Vermont border by the the New Hampshire State Police to Lebanon.
No word on which model the College has selected, whether the Verlaine or the Foucault.
See Bruce Wood, “Modular Grows Up,” [Trumbull-Nelson] Constructive Images (Spring 2006).
Pong on film
Is the film Beerfest (2006) the first film to depict the playing of pong? (See The Dartmouth;Wikipedia.) The characters appear to use paddles, but the film’s creators learned the game at Colgate.
Daniel Lindsay, director of a post-9/11 documentary titled Why U.S.?, is directing a film meant to document pong and its history on a national scale, according to an article in The Dartmouth. He and producer Josh Otten were in Hanover gathering material in November.
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[Update 11.10.2012: Broken link to Stanford Daily regarding Why U.S.? removed, broken link to The Dartmouth fixed.]
[Update 12.12.2006: Documentary information added.]
The Lodge will be demolished
Dartmouth acquired the Sargent Block, which contains the Hanover Inn Motor Lodge (Brooke Fleck, 1960), and it plans to redevelop the entire block. As with the South Block, this means demolishing most of the buildings.
Although the Lodge has been used for the last twenty years or so as a dormitory, it will be closed during the 2006-2007 year. The very attractive new campus map featuring dormitories also omits the Lodge.
These seem to be the first public signs that the Lodge is about to go. It will be interesting to see what the school builds in its place and how closely it follows the Town’s bold vision for the block.
[Update 08.03.2006: text corrected]
[Update 08.09.2006: “Sargent” added]
“On Campus-Making in America”
Stefanos Polyzoides‘ perceptive essay “On Campus-Making in America,” which appeared in Moore Ruble Yudell: Campus & Community (Rockport, Ma.: Rockport Publishers, Inc., 1997), is available at his firm’s website.
Names for five new dorms not announced
The school seems not to have announced very loudly at the end of last month that the new Tuck Mall dorms will be named (from west to east) McLane Hall and Fahey Hall.
What happened to the old McLane Hall in the River Cluster? It has been renamed Judge Hall.
The three remaining dorms in the new McLaughlin Cluster will be named Thomas, Goldstein, and Rauner Halls (see map). Rauner will be the northernmost in the eastern trio, of which Bildner and Berry were named previously; Thomas and Goldstein Halls will be the northern and central buildings, respectively, in the western trio, of which Byrne II already has been named.
The historic Hanover Country Club House
The Hanover Country Club would seem to be Dartmouth’s oldest athletic building, a nineteenth-century barn remodeled as an Arts & Crafts clubhouse by Homer Eaton Keyes in 1916. It is still in excellent shape and well used, although there has been talk for several years of replacing it, presumably with a clubhouse some distance from campus on Lyme Road.
(The school’s oldest intercollegiate athletic facility must be the Alumni Oval of 1893, which was remodeled as Memorial Field and is being remodeled again this summer — meaning that the site and the form have been replicated through the years but that none of the original materials survive.)
[Update 09.12.2006: clubhouse remodeling date corrected.]
New Varsity House in perspective
The first perspective rendering of the Varsity House is available.
The building’s information page states that “[t]he facility is designed in a simple, contemporary style but highlights traditional Dartmouth elements with its brick exterior and white windows.” It may be a bit minimalist for the school’s taste.
The Athletic Department has photos of the field renovation.
DHMC expansion reviewed
Architecture critic Donald Maurice Kreis has a thorough review in Dartmouth Medicine of the most recent expansion of the DHMC, a massive 2002-2006 project. The article also includes several short videos.
Bartlett Hall’s Wheelock Memorial Window, in the bathroom
Frances Cha has examined the remarkable Wheelock memorial window in Bartlett Hall in The Dartmouth:
The window depicts John the Baptist and quotes him: “Vox Clamantis In Deserto Parate Viam Domini.” In doing so, the window recalls Wheelock’s invocation of that message in his suggestion that the college motto be “Vox Clamantis in Deserto.” (Meacham photo)
[Update 04.12.2010: Parate inserted.]
A Curious Internet Rumor about “Harry Bates”
A curious Internet rumor is spreading, but it does not seem to have left the borders of Hanover:
Someone read the name “Harry Bates Thayer, [Dartmouth class of]
1879” to mean “Harry Bates, Thayer [School of Engineering Class of]
1879.” The real Harry Bates Thayer was a long-time AT&T executive, prominent leader among Dartmouth’s Trustees, and the namesake of Thayer Dining Hall. No one named “Harry Bates,” on the other hand, graduated from any branch of Dartmouth before at least 1910. The only person in Thayer’s graduating class of 1879 was Ray Gile.
What’s oddest is that “Harry Bates” got put in the shoes of Herman Hollerith, the famous punch-card man. The excellent Computing at Dartmouth timeline attributes to “Harry Bates” the 1887 design of a punch-card compiling apparatus, the incorporation of the Tabulating Machine Company, and the 1911 sale of the company, which later became IBM.
But it was Hollerith who registered “Art of Compiling Statistics,” U.S. Patent No. 395.781 (1889, filed 1887); who formed the Tabulating Machine Company (see IBM Archives Exhibit); and who sold the company in 1911.
Also picking up on “Harry Bates” are the DTSS Timeline; Here in Hanover magazine (Winter 1998) [pdf]; and the Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science (Spring 2001) [pdf].
[Update 08.09.2006: Timeline was fixed last week.]
McKenzie Hall image
McKenzie Hall, perhaps Dartmouth’s most obscure building, was built as a dairy east of the Heating Plant around 1931. It now houses the headquarters of the Department of Facilities, Operations & Management.
Tuck Living-Learning Center plans refined
New plans for Tuck’s Living-Learning Center, to be built on the site of Hinman Hall, are available. For the first time, the basement-level plan confirms that this building, like all of the others in the Tuck School, will be accessible by tunnel.