Category Archives: Baker Library

About the Baker Memorial Library, designed by Jens Fredrick Larson and completed in 1928.

Dorms on Lyme Road?

Posted on by
Reply

Dartmouth News and the Valley News report on the college’s interest in developing the land north of the Life Sciences Building, including parts of the golf course. The possibility of such development was spelled out in the master plan some time ago, but the noteworthy new detail is that the college is considering building dormitories on some part of the site.

First reaction to the dorm idea: This is an unserious proposal, a negotiating tactic, like the College Park dorm idea. It is a silly idea. The ten-minute walking radius from Baker is not just a guideline, it is a crucial rule of campus composition. Plans for transit do not eliminate the ten-minute walking radius, and it just does not seem appropriate to have students riding the school bus to class in a place as small as Hanover.

After a closer look: From Baker Library to the Dewey Field parking lot site might be a half-mile and take nine minutes to reach on foot, making it technically acceptable. It is about as far away as the River Cluster was — not an admirable standard, but a Dartmouth precedent. One hopes that the Dewey Field site is the only one they are talking about for a dorm, because any site beyond it would be unacceptable.

(What about the college-related buildings that are not part of the everyday life of students or faculty? Storage libraries and development offices and various back-office functions would be perfect for the golf course sites. They would be much better sited here than in the sprawl of Centerra or in towns around the region.)

If not on Lyme Road, where could the increasing number of students be housed? (The proposed Crosby Street dorm will be ignored, because it will be used as swing space to house students from existing clusters as they are renovated.) Here are some available sites, some of them identified in the current master plan:

  • A second Mass Row
  • The Gilman site (offered in the College Park dorm siting discussion)
  • The Maynard and Rope Ferry corner (or any site on any side of Maynard Yard)

Might it be the case that the number of additional students to be housed, say 350 students, would be too large to fit on one of those sites? Yes. That is a good thing, both for Hanover’s urbanism and for the students who end up living in the new hall. Instead of building a giant barracks, the school should add additional beds to the existing campus at a combination of smaller sites within the ten-minute walking radius, including:

  • Additions to and eventual replacement of the Choates
  • An addition to Wheeler Hall
  • A dormitory range on the outer edge of College Park between RipWoodSmith and Andres
  • A dormitory range west or north of McLane Hall

Obviously these new additions will have to join existing house communities; there is nothing wrong with that. Creating a subtle and sensitive series of additions to historic buildings will be more expensive than dropping a single giant complex on a distant lot, but it will be worth it. It seems that the desire to add beds to the campus exclusively in the form of one entirely new house community at a time is driving the push to build dorms outside of town, and it is harmful.

Dartmouth Unbuilding and other topics

Posted on by
Reply

  • The smart brick rear ell of Wheelock House, a century-old two-story-above-basement book stacks addition built for the Howe Library, was demolished last month by the Eleazar Wheelock Society.

  • Commencement this year took place at Memorial Field for the first time since 1995. The stage was at the opposite end of the field this year. It would be interesting to learn whether the Commencement canopy is the same one that was first acquired for that 1995 ceremony and has been used every year since. Perhaps there have been different ones.

  • Frank J. Barrett’s new book is called Lost Hanover, New Hampshire (Amazon.com). Julia Robitaille has a Q and A with the author in The Dartmouth (2 July 2021).

  • The Dartmouth Indoor Practice Facility is now the Graham Indoor Practice Facility.

  • Photos of the CECS show it really taking shape. The Irving is also coming along. The Call to Lead has a page on new projects on campus that includes a West End video showing interior models of the two buildings (as well as close-ups of the globe finial following the removal of Baker’s weathervane).

  • DHMC Patient Tower, an appealingly midcentury hospital building by HDR (designers of The Williamson), is slated to stand at the north end of the hospital and join the main building between the bastions of the existing patient towers (Vermont Digger). The site is visible at the right of this iconic aerial.

  • At the trustees’ meeting in June, “[t]he board approved the expenditure of $2.89 million to advance designs for energy infrastructure projects and $1.65 million to support campus housing renewal design development. Board members also voted to allocate $6.9 million for information technology infrastructure work.”

  • The college website is being redesigned (Dartmouth News).

  • The IEEE has put up a plaque on the exterior of Collis (College Hall) to commemorate its importance as the site where BASIC was developed in the 1960s (Dartmouth News). The plaque would be better if it were actually written as a BASIC program, thus proving the simplicity of the language, but this is still good to see. (The BASIC highway marker, because of the limitations of the state’s marker program, is distant from the site where the event actually took place.)

  • Harvard Law School has replaced its old heraldic shield with a new shield in the form of a logo.

———–

[Update 09.13.2021: A reference to a “new” globe finial replacing the Baker weathervane has been corrected. The globe previously underpinned the weathervane and was left in place when the weathervane was removed.]

The Dartmouth Archaeology Station

Posted on by
Reply

The Valley News article on the archaeological dig at the Choate House site saves this important news until the very end:

The Dartmouth Archaeology Station, a new facility near the Ledyard Bridge in Norwich will have an exhibition and visitor space in the front, and Casana said there are plans for a dig community members can participate in during September 2021, National Archaeology Month.1Jasmine Taudvin, “College dig reveals 19th century infection,” Valley News (6 June 2021).

How fantastic is that? It’s amazing, when you think about it. Dartmouth has never had the space or the self-regard necessary to maintain a museum dedicated to its own history, but this sounds like a good start.

The College History Room (opened in 1965 in the west end of Baker) is a special place but really could be called the College History Nook. The Historical Society (1961) has its collection of antiques in Webster Cottage, but it is not intended to interpret the history of the college. The best prior effort was probably the historical room in the college library (Wilson Hall), which was described around 1910 as containing the Civil-War era banners of the Dartmouth Grays and the Dartmouth Phalanx; Wheelock’s honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh; and invitations to commencement balls from a variety of periods.2Kenneth C. Kramer, “The Dartmouth College Archives,” Dartmouth College Library Bulletin (April 1994). President Nichols apparently wanted to save a door lock from Wentworth Hall to put into a collection of objects removed from old buildings around 1912. Webster Hall was planned as a prescriptive alumni hall of fame that would contain a large apsidal mural depicting Daniel Webster arguing the Dartmouth College Case and possibly a museum of college history below the balconies.3The Dartmouth 29:? (22 October 1907), 76. As far back as 1873, students were suggesting that “[a] Historical Society would do much toward collecting and putting in proper form such documents and letters as would be of interest and value to those who wish to learn the history of the College.”4“Editorial Department,” The Dartmouth 7:9 (November 1873), 374.

While Rauner does a brilliant job of conserving objects and documents from the history of the college, it cannot take on too many architectural antiques, and it lacks the space for a permanent display. And Dartmouth might have a particular penchant for losing artifacts that are too big or too uninteresting to be accessioned by Rauner. The WWI cannon from Memorial Field (which somehow made it into the hands of a private individual, although with the implication that it would be returned to its owner upon request); the masonry from the Butterfield Museum that has been dug up from beneath Baker’s lawn during various landscaping or maintenance projects; most of the best bits of the old operating theater or main building of the MHMH; the foundations of the WWII-era prefabricated shipyard housing units used as dormitories (“Wigwam Circle”) that were uncovered in the 1990s; perhaps even the big brass revolving front door of Baker library (was it sold by Vermont Salvage? I do not know, but other Dartmouth architectural elements of lesser importance have been sold there).

The Archaeology Station will presumably occupy the historic brick house in Lewiston, Vermont that the college has used as its pottery studio. Naturally its mission will not include the display of architectural elements salvaged from demolished buildings (as opposed to items uncovered by excavation), but there is always hope, and it is certainly a step in the right direction.

 

References
↑1 Jasmine Taudvin, “College dig reveals 19th century infection,” Valley News (6 June 2021).
↑2 Kenneth C. Kramer, “The Dartmouth College Archives,” Dartmouth College Library Bulletin (April 1994).
↑3 The Dartmouth 29:? (22 October 1907), 76.
↑4 “Editorial Department,” The Dartmouth 7:9 (November 1873), 374.

Various topics including two West End flythroughs

Posted on by
Reply

Symbols, including weathervanes and flags

Posted on by
Reply

Baker Tower Weathervane. The Valley News has been reporting on the petition calling for the removal of the Baker Tower weathervane and the college’s plan to remove it (see also Dartmouth News). A crane crew removed the weathervane on June 25 (Dartmouth News).

The college plans to create a replacement; George Hathorn has suggestions. The June 25 Dartmouth News piece by Aimee Minbiole states that “Vice President for Communications Justin Anderson will assemble a working group to consider designs for a new weather vane and whether other changes in iconography across the institution are necessary.” If that iconography includes the college seal with its depiction of Native Americans, one solution would be to adopt an heraldic seal based on an heraldic coat of arms.

The cascading effects of the weathervane’s deprecation are interesting. The Guarini shield, less than a year old, contains the tiniest imaginable depiction of the weathervane, but it will apparently be changing. (It is even less visible than the Indian head cane that was removed from the pre-2012 DMS shield.) The Town of Hanover is also changing its official logo, which contains a line drawing of Baker Tower that also features a small version of the weathervane. Remarkably, the Valley News story, citing Town Manager Julia Griffin, states that some variants of the town logo already render the two human figures as trees: “Griffin said via email that many of the logos in town show three pine trees on the weather vane, rather than the more troublesome figures. For now, those logos won’t be changed, she said.”

The original 1928 copper exterior of the Baker Tower weathervane is already in storage. The exterior was recreated, according to the Valley News story of June 12, as part of the tower renovation project of 2016, less than four years ago. Compare that missed-opportunity-in-hindsight to the travails of U.Va., which updated its athletics logo in April and two months later finds itself tweaking the new design to get rid of the twisted hilts of the crossed sabers. What is the symbolic significance of a twisted hilt? It is not clear that it has any independent meaning at all, but the promotional verbiage that was put out with the spring update pitched the twisted hilts as a reference to the serpentine walls that line the back gardens of the university’s original buildings. Those walls’ connection to enslavement is the prompt for the latest change.

(One would think that the bigger problem is the association with the Confederate cavalry saber — the crossed, curved cavalry sabers are much more typically seen as an emblem on a mid-19th century slouch hat than in connection with a 17th-century cavalier — but the designer of the U.Va. logo in the mid-1990s says he did not intend it to refer to the Civil War.)

Flags. A lot is going on with flags these days. Mississippi has dropped its flag and will consider the Stennis Flag among the possible replacements. The 9/11 “Freedom Flag” (spotted in the wild here) is the subject of a bill, sponsored by Reps. Spanberger and King, proposing to make it the official flag of 9/11 remembrance (WTVR News). The flag is to be flown on federal buildings from September 11 through 30 each year. Finally, CNN has a piece on the Juneteenth Flag. Maybe looking at the Freedom Flag encourages one to view every flag as a map, but the zig-zag “burst” lines on the Juneteenth Flag can also be read as the plan of a 19th-century star fort. One might prefer a version of the date that omitted the comma, but the specificity of putting the date on the flag in words is appealing.

Other symbols, including plaques. There is an official climate emergency tartan (Scottish Register of Tartans). The FCC has a new seal (see Brand New, also FCC announcement pdf). The eagle has post-Homeland Security wings; the antenna feed line, which curved realistically in the old FCC seal, is made into a rigid line of division of the shield — ouch.

Finally, because this site is always on the lookout for a rogue plaqueing, a link to Kevin Levin’s Civil War Memory post on the series of unofficial historical markers erected by activist historians on Monument Avenue in Richmond. Some of the markers apparently have been ripped up already (WTVR News). Three of the four city-owned statues of defeated rebels have been removed in recent days, and only Stuart remains. Here is a windshield snap taken yesterday; the statue is not expected to last another week. It does feel like Europe in 1989:

Stuart statue by Meacham 07.03.2020

The new Guarini shield

Posted on by
2

The Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies has a new shield by OCD.

The prior shield (see the post at this site) was adopted in 2011 after a low-budget crowdsourcing project. It shows the mandatory river lines in the base as a pair of helping hands, a bit reminiscent of the United Way logo. Some versions of the shield included the year 1885, when the first graduate degree was awarded at the college.

The new shield displays the year 2016, the year the school was formally established, in the base. It is not clear whether the sans serif typeface is the required National 2, but the extra height it gives the numeral 6 suggests that these numerals were not hand-drawn.

Above the year are the waves of the river, and on the left side of the shield, emerging from the river — not yet swamped! — is the upper portion of the cupola of Baker Tower. This might be called the Day After Tomorrow shield. Stanley Orcutt’s Wheelock and an Indian under the Pine weathervane bumps up against the very thick border of the shield, and the rest of the shield is occupied by a representation of the constellation Cassiopeia, as the news item explains:

The designers worked with the School to create an image of Cassiopeia, one of the constellations that one could have seen when standing on the green at midnight and looking north at Baker on the night the Board of Trustees voted to establish the School, on July 1, 2016.

Major renovations on the horizon for Berry Library

Posted on by
2

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.

[…]

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.

Replacing the River stair, the one made of earth and wood, and other topics

Posted on by
Reply
  • Dartmouth News reports that the college has dedicated Baker’s main interior hall “in honor of Richard Reiss Jr. ’66, who made a $10 million gift to pursue innovative means to explore, analyze, and create knowledge.” Good news, and the lettering (“REISS HALL”) below the lunette at the end of the old Catalogue Room looks great. This was going to be a comment about the confusion of “hall” (meaning “building”) for “hall” (meaning “room” or “corridor”) but it looks like the WPA Guide to New Hampshire (1938) calls the Catalog Room “the Delivery Hall,” so it might be that there is no harm done.
  • The college is demolishing the erratic old timber stair that runs from the boathouses up the hill to the River Cluster:
    In its place will be a metal slat stair that is raised off the ground (Planning Board minutes 2 April 2019 pdf). This project seems long overdue, but as usual one is compelled to praise the old stair, which was dark, irregular, organic, and integrated into the terrain, with an aesthetic more Moosilauke than Main Street. It provided a fitting transition between the slick campus buildings and the dangerous Connecticut River.
  • The college intends to build the Irving Institute “on top of an existing structure and renovate portions of that building” (Planning Board minutes 7 May 2019 pdf). That’s interesting. The old Cook Auditorium in Murdough will still exist, and the plaza on top of it (the characteristic brick-surface landscaping of Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty) will support the floor of the Irving atrium.
  • The Eleazar Wheelock Society has applied “to remove additions, renovate main block, and construct new ell, with associated site improvements” at the Wheelock Mansion House (Planning Board minutes 7 May 2019 pdf).
  • Creating a Port of Hanover as an entrepôt for produce coming downriver from the Organic Farm is unrealistic, but a College Barge would make a plausible addition to the waterfront. Not necessarily the Oxford type of barge (see St. John’s Barge), though that would be great for viewing boat races, but more akin to a broad houseboat, meant to provide temporary dormitory space when it is needed. In the Bronx, there is a permanent prison on a barge:
  • Abbott-Downing’s Concord Coaches at Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.
  • This is another post on Campus Galli, the project to build a monastery following the (idealized and possibly just metaphorical) Plan of St. Gall, a centuries-long undertaking. Hyper-long term projects are appealing in this modern age; see also Agnes Denes’ Tree Mountain in Finland, intended to be maintained for 400 years.
  • A fascinating history of the ska-man emoji.

Various construction topics

Posted on by
Reply
  • An Architectural Digest story on the Hood by Elizabeth Fazzare again refers to a gray brick supposedly used in the original building, this time stating that it was used in the iconic trabeated gateway. The gateway was made of concrete, however; Moore originally intended it to be of granite.
  • The Indoor Practice Facility weekly update includes an aerial image showing the building’s footprint.
  • Van Zelm Engineers, a firm that worked on the 1978 Life Sciences Center and has built some very interesting heating plants over the years, are working on the Irving Institute. Their project page shows a basic footprint for the Institute for the first time: it really is a screen building. The college project page now includes renderings of the side facades and a new interior view.
  • A flythrough video of the Thayer/CS building by Wilson Architects suggests that the complex will have quite a retaining wall on the west side; one hopes it’s made into “engineering” or at least faced in granite.
  • The Thayer School Parking Garage project page has some cute computer images of various stages of future excavation. Turner Construction has a camera on MacLean showing the construction site.
  • Campus Services reports on a project to remove diseased trees from Pine Park.
  • High-Profile and North Branch Construction have information on the renovation of Blunt into an academic building.
  • The Dana renovation remains an interesting project. There is a video flythrough at the Leers Weinzapfel Associates site, and it shows a little pedestrian bridge on the west side of the building. A glimpse of the building’s lobby shows the Guarini shield on an office door and a “graduate lounge” occupying a part of the building, possibly a holdover from the similarly-named space called for in the giant unbuilt dining commons that MRY and Bruner/Cott proposed for a site a few yards to the southwest. The glassy Dana frontispiece will be topped with a patio; the penthouse has a flat canopy roof that is covered in solar panels and almost gives the building the air of a pagoda.
  • Some Tuck Drive details from the July 3 minutes of the Planning Board (pdf):

    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.

    […]

    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.

  • A report of the September trustees’ meeting describes a renovation project in which “the College intends to improve learning spaces throughout Dartmouth Hall to ensure that the building can meet the needs of faculty and students in the 21st century. As part of the planned construction, the College will restore some of the structure’s historic elements, overhaul the building’s systems, and upgrade its energy efficiency.”
  • Revision Energy has a page on its solar installations at the college. Some of the dormitory installations really do transform the appearance of the buildings.
  • Bruner/Cott has a page on its renovation of Baker Tower. The interior graffiti appear to have been removed.
  • The automated parking system of the UK Architects addition to the rear of the Bridgman Building is drawing some attention (ACPark.com, Parking-Net.com).
  • There is more news on the off-campus (or edge-of-campus?) heating plant project (Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth). Although a nice spot for it would be the Dewey Field parking lot (orange), my money’s on a few Lyme Road sites, shown in red:

Speculative map of potential heating plant sites

What happened to the Irving Institute? The architects are off the project.

Posted on by
Reply

In November of 2016, KPMB Architects of Toronto were announced as designers of the new Irving Institute building at a crucial site at the west end of Tuck Mall. The college’s project page stated that schematic design would begin during November of 2016 and that construction would begin in June of 2018.

During the summer and fall of 2017, KPMB architect John Peterson was “currently working on the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society at Dartmouth College” (Wayback archived page).

At some point, contractor Transsolar stated on its “in progress” page that the building’s completion date was 2020 and that Le Messurier would be the structural engineer, vanZelm the HVAC contractor, and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates the landscape architect (the firm handled the landscape angle of the BBB master plan).

A year into the project, KPMB showed its latest design to the Board of Trustees. The Office of Communications stated on November 5, 2017, that “The board heard an update from KPMB Architects, designers of the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society building. […] Board members approved funding $6.5 million to complete the design phase, with a specific focus on modifications to the building’s exterior.”

One might speculate that “modifications to the building’s exterior” is code for “more Neo-Georgian, less Modernist” or “more masonry, less glass.” The Irving Institute will both screen the view of the Murdough Center from Tuck Mall and provide, for the first time on this site, a sympathetic response to Baker Tower.

Then something happened. There is no news on the Institute’s news page.

Architect Peterson is listed as “currently working on” facade improvements for Robertson Hall at Princeton University. The Irving Institute page lists no architect at all for the building and says that the project is still in the schematic design phase, with the construction schedule to be determined.

Moosilauke Ravine Lodge construction continues

Posted on by
Reply

  • David Kotz has some nice photos of the construction of the new Ravine Lodge.

  • The Rauner Library Blog has a post on the great railroad artist Howard Fogg ’38.

  • Spotted this flag at a Richmond, Virginia, area high school:

    Photo of flag at Freeman High, Richmond VA by Meacham

    The star recalls the WWII Army Air Force insignia or the Chrysler Pentastar of the Eighties. Or it could be a battlefield map depicting a star fort surrounded by infantry units. The variety of bar widths is unusual. Flags of the World explains that it is “an official symbol of remembrance of September 11th” and that when it is hoisted vertically, the wide bars are meant to be seen as the Twin Towers.

    It turns out that the flag’s designer owns a restaurant very close to the school, and that he has also designed a monument to the flag (in the shape of the flag, hoisted vertically) for a traffic island nearby. “Given that it is the home of the Freedom Flag, Henrico County is the natural choice for the location of the Freedom Flag Monument and Virginia 9/11 Memorial.”

  • Dartmouth Now seems to have changed its name to Dartmouth News.

  • Other college buildings based on Independence Hall are found at Brooklyn College:


    and Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. (see the Google Earth 3D image).

  • Amherst has chosen as its mascot the Mammoth. The blurb explaining the Mammoth proposal notes that “The Beneski Museum of Natural History famously displays the skeleton of a Columbian mammoth, unearthed by Professor Frederick Brewster Loomis and brought to the College in 1925.” Museum specimens always provide good mascot options. Dartmouth’s museum displayed both a stuffed zebra and a set of curious elephant (i.e. mammoth) bones during the late eighteenth century.

  • The University of Virginia is celebrating its 200th anniversary and will feature bicentennial-logo zipper pulls on this year’s graduation gowns.

  • The city of Krakow has a new logo in the form of a city plan.

  • Last year the New York Times published interactive articles on mapping the shadows of New York and which existing Manhattan buildings could not be built today.

  • A Times obituary of March 13 noted the passing of the architectural historian and author of the Streetscapes column Christopher Gray. I was never able to meet him, but I was honored to have my site mentioned in his column on Lamb & Rich, and I enjoyed visiting the Office for Metropolitan History to do research in his compilations of 19th-century Times building permit notices (now they are in an online database provided by OMH, an amazing resource). The New Yorker ran an article about how Gray had left his skeleton to his school, St. Paul’s. What a character —

Image of new Ledyard; selecting Ravine Lodge timbers

Posted on by
Reply


Co-Op Food Store in Centerra

———

11.28.2016 update: DEN project page link added.

A Thayer garage on Wheelock Street?

Posted on by
Reply

  • Planning for the Sestercentennial is starting in earnest (Dartmouth Now).

  • Check out the West Wheelock massing study by UK Architects, part of the gateway district process.

  • The locker rooms in the Sports Pavilion, one of the only buildings on campus that is not named for anyone, are slated for enlargement (Valley News interview with Harry Sheehy).

  • The school has considered expanding Thompson Arena by excavating under the stands (Valley News interview with Harry Sheehy).

  • The Rauner Blog has a post on the centenary of the death of Richard N. Hall.

  • Don’t forget about the 1966 Webcam on the roof of the Inn.

  • The Dartmouth song “Son of a Gun for Beer” would seem to share a history with this song about the Hebron YMCA recorded on a wax cylinder and described as a Harvard song. “A Son of a Gun” with its current arrangement by Crane appeared in the 1898 Dartmouth songbook attributed to an anonymous author1Edwin Osgood Grover and Addison Fletcher Andrews, Dartmouth songs: a new collection of college songs (1898), 60. Historian Patricia Averill connects the song’s origin to the “Itsy Bitsy Spider”! That song originated in 1817 as “The Rambling Soldier” and was published in 1870 referencing a “son of a gambolier.”2Patricia Averill, Camp Songs, Folk Songs (author, 2014), 232 There is an 1891 reference to “A son of a gambolier, / A son of a gun for beer.”3Henry Collins, “Notes from an Engineers’ Camp,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine (September 1891), 374, available at Google Books. Georgia Tech’s “Rambling Wreck” version was printed in 1908.4Averill.

  • Thayer School is thinking of putting a parking garage on West Wheelock Street in place (presumably) of the college-owned apartment buildings there (Planning Board minutes 17 November 2015 pdf). Interesting!

  • Neat topics that are covered in Wikipedia: moonlight towers, low-background steel, Manhattanhenge, ghost stations, trap streets and other fictitious entries (copyright traps), and freedom of the city.

  • In the discussions of Dartmouth’s Lone Pine let’s not forget another piece of stylized vegetation from the Sixties: the flag of Canada.

  • Details on the Baker Tower renovation (Planning Board minutes 3 November 2015 pdf):

    The project includes: replacing the roof, restoring windows, replacing clock
    controls/hands/glass, replacing lighting and addressing issues with lighting, installing electronic controls for the bells, replacing the spire, stopping water infiltration, and cleaning masonry grout.

———

 

References
↑1 Edwin Osgood Grover and Addison Fletcher Andrews, Dartmouth songs: a new collection of college songs (1898), 60.
↑2 Patricia Averill, Camp Songs, Folk Songs (author, 2014), 232
↑3 Henry Collins, “Notes from an Engineers’ Camp,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine (September 1891), 374, available at Google Books.
↑4 Averill.

Baker Tower is being remade

Posted on by
Reply

The tower of Baker Library will be rehabilitated if not replaced starting next summer (as noted in The Dartmouth and discussed in the Valley News). The design appears to be by Bruner/Cott & Associates of Boston.

The Valley News writes that “with the renovations will come built-in LED illumination that will highlight architectural details ‘in a really elegant way,'” quoting Lisa Hogarty. The lighting design is by Lewis Lighting.

The article describes renovations to the upper, wood-framed portion of the tower, and as usual it leaves out the dirty word “demolition.” But sentences like this one sure make it seem as if the school is planning to demolish at least part of the tower and then replicate it:

Hogarty said the plan was to rebuild the bell tower to “as close to the original architectural details as we can[.]”

Does that mean that just the open cupola with the balcony will be replaced? It is not clear.

The old frame tower and cupola are not finely-worked structures meant for close-up viewing, so the school should be able to replicate precisely those parts that it cannot preserve. One does hope that the school will document before demolition,1The graffiti inside the tower really should be photographed. salvage for another use some of the historic materials that cannot be retained in the new structure, and try to avoid using synthetic materials on the exterior.2The warranty for Hardieplank Artizan HZ10 siding, for example, is limited to thirty years and does not apply in New Hampshire (pdf).

——–

 

References
↑1 The graffiti inside the tower really should be photographed.
↑2 The warranty for Hardieplank Artizan HZ10 siding, for example, is limited to thirty years and does not apply in New Hampshire (pdf).

Building projects budgeted for; other news

Posted on by
Reply

  • The Town budget includes funding for construction of walk/bike path along Lyme Road to the Reservoir Road roundabout. The paved path will be separated from the road by a tree lawn (The Dartmouth).

  • Tri-Kap appears finally to be tackling its Fuller Audit improvements, planning to erect an addition designed by Domus Custom Builders (Zoning Board minutes 22 January 2015 pdf).

  • Earlier this year, the Hood Quarterly reported that work on the museum’s addition and renovation would begin during the Spring of 2016.1”Anonymous $10 Million Gift Will Transform Teaching at the Hood Museum of Art,” Hood Museum of Art Quarterly (Winter 2015), 10, available at http://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/docs/2015webreadyquarterly.pdf. The college trustees met last week and approved a capital budget that includes $8.5 million “for completion of design and preconstruction activities for the Hood Museum of Art renewal and expansion project” (Dartmouth Now). The Hood project, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien, “is being coordinated with a Hopkins Center for the Arts planning study” by Boora Architects.

  • Also in the new capital budget (Dartmouth Now) are:

    – Funds for the planning and design of a restoration project for Baker Tower.

    – “$11.75 million for design and construction of facilities related to initial work on the configuration of new residential housing communities.” That is likely work by Sasaki Associates, with the funding presumably going to build something less than the total number of dining-hall additions, faculty houses, or other “neighborhood” improvements the firm is proposing.

    – “$100,000 for planning and conceptual design for the Ledyard Canoe Club replacement project.” The growth of mold in the clubhouse has sealed its fate; the designer of the replacement has not been named.

    – “$200,000 for schematic design for renovation of Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.” After Maclay Architects studied the feasibility of preserving or replacing the Lodge, it was not known which route the board would take. Maclay even sketched a design for a possible replacement. Now it seems that the Lodge is going to be preserved.

  • The Planner’s Blog mentions that there are more than 42 types of bollard on campus. Almost as impressive is the fact that all the bollards have been cataloged and are being evaluated in a critical way.

  • Dartmouth Now has a nice post on the Book Arts Workshop in Baker.2Hannah Silverstein, “Book Arts Workshop: Hands-On Learning, Global Reach,” Dartmouth Now (25 February 2015), at
    http://now.dartmouth.edu/2015/02/book-arts-workshop-hands-on-learning-global-reach/.

  • The feasibility study for that future Mass Row renovation was conducted a couple of years ago by Lawson Bell Architects.

  • Miller Chevrolet Cadillac, down on Route 120 not far from Fort Harry’s, has been sold, and its site is to be redeveloped:

    Although Cicotte declined to identify the buyer, she said it wasn’t a hotel developer, Dartmouth College, or Hanover developer Jay Campion. The Miller Chevrolet Cadillac property, which is accessed on Labombard Road, is adjacent to the New Hampshire National Guard Armory on Heater Road. The property is also next to a planned hotel and conference center under review by Lebanon planning authorities, and near a natural gas depot under development by Campion.

    One possible buyer mentioned is Dartmouth Coach, which has a facility on nearby Etna Road.

    (Valley News). If I’m not mistaken, Miller is the dealership that eventually acquired Rodgers’ Garage, the REO/Packard/Chevrolet dealer on Lebanon Street where the VAC now stands.

  • That natural gas project is by Campion’s Valley Green Natural Gas, which plans to transfer gas from tanker trucks on Route 120 and then send it by pipeline to Hanover, particularly to Dartmouth (Valley News 18 May 2014, 4 November 2014). Dartmouth will finish analyzing a possible fuel switch this fall (Valley News).

—————————-

 

References
↑1 ”Anonymous $10 Million Gift Will Transform Teaching at the Hood Museum of Art,” Hood Museum of Art Quarterly (Winter 2015), 10, available at http://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/docs/2015webreadyquarterly.pdf.
↑2 Hannah Silverstein, “Book Arts Workshop: Hands-On Learning, Global Reach,” Dartmouth Now (25 February 2015), at
http://now.dartmouth.edu/2015/02/book-arts-workshop-hands-on-learning-global-reach/.

In the archives of the Alumni Magazine

Posted on by
Reply

Some fun things are to be found by rummaging indiscriminately in the new on-line archive:

Harrison’s first design for the Hop appeared in a remarkable illustrated article from 1957.1”The Hopkins Center,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1957), 17-21, 25. This is the boxy, pre-arcade version of the building. The Top of the Hop was to have a cylindrical glass-walled void running through its center, all the way from the roof to the theater lobby. This seems to have evolved into the modest Barrows Exhibition Rotunda at the building’s entrance.

Ray Nash wrote on the college seal in 1941.2Ray Nash, “Rediscovering the College Seal,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1941), 17-20. Speaking of the seal, “Hanover’s best skylight… is found in Parkhurst Hall” according to a “best-of” list written in 1984.3”Hanover’s Bests,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1984), 42. The skylight, which depicted the seal, was removed during a interior renovation and seemed to have been lost by May of 2006. Was it ever returned?

An article on the Rockefeller Center included architectural commentary by designer Lo-Yi Chan.4Donald McNemar, “Rockefeller Center: The Ideal of Reflection and Action,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (June 1981), 30-33.

In the election of John Steel to the board of trustees, the alumni association counted its ballots on May 23, 1980. The board put off its vote of June 6, however, asking the association to investigate “any irregularities” in the campaign. On July 28 the association recommended action on the nomination, and the board elected Steel on August 16 — a delay of about ten weeks. He was seated at the board’s November meeting.5Editor, “The College. Steel Elected,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (September 1980), 26. Compare Todd Zywicki, “History of Trustee Election Rules,” Dartmouth Review (6 October 2006), 2 (“In 1980 a man named John Steel ran as a petition candidate for trustee and was elected in a landslide. Efforts were made by the College and the board at the time to refuse to seat him and after protracted litigation, he finally prevailed.”).

George Hathorn wrote a well-illustrated article on “Unbuilt Dartmouth” in 1978.6George Hathorn, “Unbuilt Dartmouth: Castles in the Clouds,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1978), 29-33.

The master plan for Memorial Field appeared in a 1920 article.7James P. Richardson, “The Plans for Memorial Field,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (February 1920), 640-643.

Noel Perrin wrote an observant 1974 photographic study of Hanover-area sprawl.8Noel Perrin, “The College in the Suburb,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1974), 18-23.

—–

 

References
↑1 ”The Hopkins Center,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1957), 17-21, 25.
↑2 Ray Nash, “Rediscovering the College Seal,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1941), 17-20.
↑3 ”Hanover’s Bests,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1984), 42.
↑4 Donald McNemar, “Rockefeller Center: The Ideal of Reflection and Action,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (June 1981), 30-33.
↑5 Editor, “The College. Steel Elected,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (September 1980), 26. Compare Todd Zywicki, “History of Trustee Election Rules,” Dartmouth Review (6 October 2006), 2 (“In 1980 a man named John Steel ran as a petition candidate for trustee and was elected in a landslide. Efforts were made by the College and the board at the time to refuse to seat him and after protracted litigation, he finally prevailed.”).
↑6 George Hathorn, “Unbuilt Dartmouth: Castles in the Clouds,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1978), 29-33.
↑7 James P. Richardson, “The Plans for Memorial Field,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (February 1920), 640-643.
↑8 Noel Perrin, “The College in the Suburb,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1974), 18-23.

A black hole telescope; other news

Posted on by
Reply

  • An earlier post here expressed concern about the plaque added to the Orozco Room after the National Historic Landmark listing. Dartmouth Digital Orozco depicts the plaque, a very dense text panel, on what it calls the “National Historic Landmark Pillar” near the center of the room. The other pillar is labeled “Manton Pillar” and bears the nice stone plaque created earlier.

  • CRREL site manager Larry Danyluk, paraphrased in the minutes of a Planning Board meeting:

    Expansions planned include another wing of offices, a new cold room and, in partnership with the Smithsonian, a radio telescope for black hole research. The telescope will be installed for 2-3 years, then moved to Greenland. Ten to twelve people will be added to staff the telescope project.1Planning Board, minutes of meeting (4 June 2014), pdf, 5.

  • The Dartmouth has an article on student-made graffiti, murals, and decorative painting in society buildings.

  • The renovation of Home 37 by ADD Inc. as the temporary location of Dana library gets a mention in Architect, the AIA magazine. ADD Inc. is the firm of Fred Kramer ’77 (DAM class notes).

  • Kresge Library is turning 40.

  • The Rauner Blog has a post on George Ticknor and the Ticknor Room.

  • The Times has a story on an interesting project at Brown, the recreation of part of a 19th-century natural history museum. Dartmouth also gave away much of its own collection, but a lot of it went to the Montshire Museum. One wonders whether enough dinosaur skeletons and mounted fauna remain there to supply a project in Wilson Hall like the one at Brown.

  • The Dew Construction Corp newsletter for June 2013 (pdf) mentions the Heater Road Medical Office Building and the Dana Library project.

  • The Class of 1974 Bunkhouse at Moosilauke (“the 74tress”), designed by MacLay Architects, has been completed, according to a post at TimberHomes LLC. The default construction mode at Moosilauke has shifted from log (or, in the case of the older bunkhouses, what seems to be conventional balloon framing) to substantial post-and-beam timber framing. If the Ravine Lodge ends up needing to be replaced, will its replacement even be a log building? What wonders could TimberHomes accomplish if it were given the once-in-a-lifetime project of erecting a Ravine Lodge to last 500 years?

  • A resident of the Lyme Road/Richmond School area, commenting at a recent neighborhood planning party:

    There should be a bridge between I-91 and DHMC. That would divert a lot of through traffic away from our neighborhood.2Planning Board, minutes of meeting (4 June 2014), pdf, 2.

  • Will the architects of the West Stands replacement incorporate any quotations into the new concrete terraces or pediments? Whose woods these are I think I know.

—-

 

References
↑1 Planning Board, minutes of meeting (4 June 2014), pdf, 5.
↑2 Planning Board, minutes of meeting (4 June 2014), pdf, 2.

New surgical wing; other topics

Posted on by
Reply

  • The college recently unveiled a plaque announcing the Orozco Frescoes’ status as a National Historic Landmark (Dartmouth Now). No images yet.

  • Dartmouth Engineer has a story on the new Center for Surgical Innovation. This addition to DHMC is one of the few parts of the complex not designed by SBRA (post).

  • A Kendal news release on master planning refers to the acquisition of the Chieftain. A future expansion of the retirement center could make a neat feature out of the Chieftain’s rowing dock.

  • The New York Times has a story on the planned demolition of the Folk Art Museum to make way for an expansion of MOMA next door. (The architects of the Folk Art Museum, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, are designing an expansion of Dartmouth’s Hood Museum that preserves and reuses Wilson Hall next door.)

  • Enjoy the retro poster (via Big Green Alert Daily) for round one of the Varsity Cup rugby tournament, held at the Rugby Clubhouse. Dartmouth won the match.

  • CurbedNY has a bit on the Guastavino family. The one grandly-scaled Guastavino-tiled space at Dartmouth, the surgical theatre at the old hospital, no longer exists, but the firm’s vault in the hospital’s one surviving wing remains on Rope Ferry Road. Also check out the entry vestibule of McNutt Hall, likely a Guastavino structure (post).

  • UPNE is listing a publication of a partner called Voice of the Åland Churches by Åsa Ringbom. How about that. Åland (Wikipedia) is an autonomous island province of Finland located in the Baltic partway to Sweden. It has its own stamps and a striking flag that reflect its largely Swedish ethnicity.

  • Dartmouth needs to name at least one building for the building’s architect. This is not an uncommon practice, although only one example comes to mind, the Norman Shaw Buildings at Parliament in London (Wikipedia; W&M’s main building was not designed by Christopher Wren). The designers who need recognition at Dartmouth are Charles A. Rich and Jens F. Larson. The bulk of the campus was created by these two College Architects in succession between about 1895 and 1939. The one building on which both architects did extensive work is the Heating Plant, which Rich built as a one-story building and Larson raised by one story. Maybe when the Heating Plant is taken over by the college museum, these artists can be credited and the building can be known as the Rich-Larson Wing of the Hood Museum of Art.

  • Brown started up its 250th anniversary celebration last month. Dartmouth’s ex-president Jim Yong Kim, a 1982 Brown graduate, gave a lecture at the Opening Celebration. The “Traditions” section of the 250th website explains that Brown chose the brown bear as its mascot in 1904 and in 1905 brought a live bear to a football game — the Dartmouth game — for the first time. Dartmouth won. (Brown doesn’t call the anniversary a “quartomillenium” or “sestercentenary” but a “semiquincentenary.”)

  • DUSA (Dartmouth Uniformed Service Alumni) has an informative page devoted to its symbols. As is traditional, the shield has the wavy lines representing the Connecticut River in the base. One wonders whether every organization, including the college, would benefit from depicting the River as a set of wavy bars thick enough to have their own colors, perhaps blue or even white (alternating with the green color of the field).

  • Interface: News and Information from Dartmouth Computing Services is back. One might recall the nice paper magazine iteration of Interface from the late 1990s.

  • The football team will wear an alternate helmet design at some point this fall, notes Tris Wykes in the Valley News. Perhaps influenced by trends in cars (Financial Times, Autoweek) or the Pro-Tec helmets worn by skateboarders or special operators, matte black seems to be gaining popularity in football. Examples are found at Cincinnati and Oregon; Missouri seems to have been an early proponent in 2009 with its Nike Pro Combat uniform (see Uniform Critics).

—–

Update 05.22.2014: Banwell architect Ingrid Nichols’s resume (pdf) states:

Banwell has joined forces with a national Kendal design architect, RLPS and together are completing a master plan for a new 20 acre abutting parcel they have recently purchased. We are also completing a master plan for their existing campus including: Additions for independent living, nursing, health center, fitness center (pool, locker rooms, exercise rooms and activity room).