College Park meetings and tours

Posted on 07.11.2017 by Regisseur

The Dartmouth reports on a letter from the Department of Physics and Astronomy urging the preservation of Shattuck Observatory.

The fact that Dartmouth’s astronomers feel the need to ask the college not to destroy its own observatory is pretty remarkable. The college’s response, that there is “no definitive plan” regarding Shattuck, suggests that removal is on the table.

And it’s important to oppose not only the destruction but also the moving of the 163-year old building. Opposing demolition alone gives the college an out, allowing it to claim to have “saved” the observatory by moving it to some other site.

Jack F. Mourouzis reports on a Sasaki dorm outreach or focus group meeting (“The Death of College Park?“, The Dartmouth Review):

The image on the Campus Services website is identical to a slide in architects’ PowerPoint presentation, save for one detail that is not present on the website: the upper half of the diagram — the grey space of College Park not covered by the circle labeled “Study Area” — is encircled, and labeled “Build.” I asked for clarification, and the explanation was unclear. From my best understanding, the northern area — where Dragon now stands — would be the area where dormitories themselves would be developed, and the area along the ridge behind Wilder would be made into “study areas.”

The “study area” label is probably just a reference to the current Sasaki study, but it is good to hear that the construction will be proposed for College Street north of Burke. If it does not harm the “study area,” then this dorm idea is not quite as absurd as it first seemed. But it is still short-sighted. The land north of Burke should be reserved for the physical sciences, for extensions of the Wilder-Steele-Fairchild-Burke complex. Dragon, of course, was only built in this remote location to get it out of the way of the construction of Berry.

And the underlying craziness of trying to cluster all 750 beds together is still there. This project would be a lot less awful-sounding if it were broken into five chunks and scattered around campus at appropriate sites.

The Dartmouth also had an article about an outreach meeting and site tour.

The October 30 construction update for the College Park dorm concept plan states:

An informational session for College Park neighbors will be held at 4 pm on Wednesday, November 15, on the west side of the Observatory. The group will spend 30 minutes walking the study area at College Park, followed by an informational session at Wilder Hall, room 115. In the case of inclement weather, the walking tour will be cancelled and the informational session will be held at 4:45 pm in Wilder 115.

Reading between the lines on Shattuck’s fate

Posted on 24.09.2017 by Regisseur

The September 19 letter from John Scherding to North Park Street neighbors¹ The letter is posted with the Valley News story. Dartmouth is treading lightly now that the Town has succeeded in stopping the Indoor Practice Facility. states that “if we decide to move forward, the Bema, Bartlett Tower, and the special character of the park would be preserved.” The same phrase appears in the FAQ. What’s missing? Shattuck Observatory.

In an interview with the Valley News, Rick Mills said “When you triage the things up there, the things that rise to the absolute top are Bema and the Bartlett Tower.” There is no mention of the historic observatory, designed by Ammi Burnham Young and built in 1854.

In the September 20 Dartmouth News story by Susan Boutwell, the Bema and Bartlett Tower are described in some detail, but Shattuck Observatory is not mentioned at all. The College Park project page has no mention of existing architectural resources — only “the distinct topography, ecology, and landscape” of the site. The map is described as showing “our residential neighbors and the natural spaces to be preserved.” Of course the map also shows Shattuck Observatory, but perhaps it is not to be preserved.

One needn’t belong to the frozen-in-amber school to sense that Shattuck really should remain where it is. What if its telescopes are removed and it is surrounded by new dormitories? Fine — make Shattuck into the Professor’s House of this new House Community. Turn it into a secret society hall; put a couple of offices in there for grad students; but do not remove it.² Green Templeton College at Oxford (Wikipedia), founded in the late 20th century, occupies a piece of land that includes an old observatory, the Radcliffe Observatory. The observatory is used as the college common room and serves as the architectural symbol of the college.

——————–

 [+]

References
↑1	The letter is posted with the Valley News story. Dartmouth is treading lightly now that the Town has succeeded in stopping the Indoor Practice Facility.
↑2	Green Templeton College at Oxford (Wikipedia), founded in the late 20th century, occupies a piece of land that includes an old observatory, the Radcliffe Observatory. The observatory is used as the college common room and serves as the architectural symbol of the college.

Building a dormitory wall in College Park

Posted on 22.09.2017 by Regisseur

The college has hired Sasaki Associates¹ If this complex is built, the college should get another firm to handle the design. Sasaki’s Modernist college residential buildings look nice enough (see Regis College and the N.C. State project page and aerial) but they do not belong on this site. to come up with a conceptual design for a massive dormitory complex to be shoehorned between the Wilder Lab and Shattuck Observatory, on the edge of College Park (College Park Conceptual Design page, Dartmouth News article, Valley News article ).

The design brief calls for a capacity of 750 beds. That is more than twice the size of the East Wheelock Cluster (now East Wheelock House), including the later McCulloch Hall:

Andres Hall		84 beds
McCulloch Hall		78 beds
Morton Hall		84 beds
Zimmerman Hall		86 beds² East Wheelock House site.
Total		336 beds

One of the goals of the conceptual design process is to “respect the ridge.” Keeping the buildings low, especially at the upper end of the site, will require the college to use all of the buildable land within the entire study area. This complex is likely to be a Byker Wall (Wikipedia, Google aerial).

(To truly respect the ridge, of course, the college would have to stack all of this dormitory space into a tower sited behind Richardson Hall. That idea was raised and dropped in the 1960s.³ As strange as a dormitory tower sounds in small-town New England, it was not too much for Bowdoin College (Google Street View).)

College Park has been encroached upon for decades and is significantly smaller now than when it was created. The park could be a necessary building site some day, but the college is certainly not there yet. (And construction costs will be higher than average here because of the limits on access, the necessity of protecting trees and historic buildings, and the fact that the whole site is made up of ledges of bedrock: there will be a lot of dynamite required.)

This site was chosen because it is the only one that can hold all of the 750 beds the college believes to be necessary. The college could stand to think more creatively — there are plenty of sites around campus where new beds could be built. There is space for hundreds of beds behind Mass Row and in front of Davis Varsity House, both sites that have been reserved for residential use for years. There is a site behind Fahey/McLane. Closer to College Park, Andres could be extended to the west. Ripley and Smith could be extended to the west and east. Richardson Hall could stand to have a rear ell added, incorporating an arched gateway to the park.

While a small building or addition at the bottom end of the College Park site would be a fine idea, a double-East Wheelock Cluster simply is not appropriate here. One would love to see the campus-wide master planning⁴ Recently, Beyer Blinder Belle completed a master plan for the campus and were brought back to create a framework plan for the west end of Tuck Mall. Sasaki Associates were hired to plan out the House Communities system and were brought back to design two temporary social buildings as part of that system. Some unreleased plan presumably shows College Park as the last big unused site on campus. Could it be that the planners are now rejecting the Mass Row and Davis Varsity sites because those sites are already reserved for the various permanent, on-campus professors’ dwellings and social halls that the House Communities will need to be fully realized? That plan would be an interesting one to see. that led to the conclusion that a great wall of buildings on a cramped site of such sensitivity and meaning was the best move to make.

———————

 [+]

References
↑1	If this complex is built, the college should get another firm to handle the design. Sasaki’s Modernist college residential buildings look nice enough (see Regis College and the N.C. State project page and aerial) but they do not belong on this site.
↑2	East Wheelock House site.
↑3	As strange as a dormitory tower sounds in small-town New England, it was not too much for Bowdoin College (Google Street View).
↑4	Recently, Beyer Blinder Belle completed a master plan for the campus and were brought back to create a framework plan for the west end of Tuck Mall. Sasaki Associates were hired to plan out the House Communities system and were brought back to design two temporary social buildings as part of that system. Some unreleased plan presumably shows College Park as the last big unused site on campus. Could it be that the planners are now rejecting the Mass Row and Davis Varsity sites because those sites are already reserved for the various permanent, on-campus professors’ dwellings and social halls that the House Communities will need to be fully realized? That plan would be an interesting one to see.

The wide-ranging Ammi Burnham Young

Posted on 14.08.2011 by Regisseur

Local architect Ammi Burnham Young (1798-1871) began designing federal custom houses in 1837 and was appointed Supervising Architect of the Treasury in 1852. His office designed federal buildings all over the country, from San Francisco to Cleveland to Galveston to Maine. Dartmouth awarded him an honorary degree in 1841.