Category Archives: Hanover Inn

The Inn’s Grand Ballroom

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There are still no published exterior photos of the Inn’s new grand ballroom with its new Hopkins Center entrance underneath.

Some interior photos have shown up on Flickr: one, another.

The Inn’s photostream has many interior photos.

The new ballroom blocks the glazed north wall of Alumni Hall. This view from Alumni Relations’ Flickr photostream shows Alumni Hall with the newly-blocked wall on the left. On the other side of the wall, the balcony that originally overlooked the Zahm Garden now seems to be a service corridor.

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[Update 02.10.2013: Inn photostream link added.]

Rebranding the Inn

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Korn Design of Boston and New York did the new branding for the Hanover Inn. Korn has also worked for the Charles Hotel and for Northeastern University, for whom it developed a proprietary typeface, Northeastern Baskerville, with Font Bureau (Wikipedia).

At the Inn, the firm seems to have done its homework: the White Mountains photos are by Eli Burakian and

The typography for the logo is adapted from an original Dartmouth woodblock cut typeface designed in 1969 by Will Carter and Paul Hayden Duensing.

Korn has a photo of the typography in action on the Inn’s porte-cochere.

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[Update 06.03.2013: Broken link to Font Bureau replaced with Wikipedia link.]

A Passion for Snow and other notes

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  • Here in Hanover ran a profile of architect Randall Mudge in its Spring 2011 issue (pdf).
  • David’s House at CHaD is adding a wing (Valley News).
  • This unusual stucco house at 28 East Wheelock has a whiff of Larson about it; it is owned by the college (see Dartmouth Real Estate):


  • A trailer for the upcoming Dartmouth ski documentary A Passion for Snow is available.
  • A map art company is selling a print of a stylized map of the campus.
  • Something big has happened to 8 Occom Ridge:

    The later aerial views from Google and Bing (below) appear to show a replacement:

  • A Dartmouth shirt sold on eBay says “Go Green and White.” Hmmm.
  • The Development Office has its own in-house PR firm, the Office of Development Communications.
  • An article on archeology in Columbia, Connecticut explains that the first building of Moor’s Indian Charity School still stands, on a later foundation.
  • Both the renovated Hanover High and the new Richmond Middle School have biomass plants. It is hard to imagine that any future Dartmouth heating plant would not rely at least in part on burning wood chips.
  • The Dartmouth Planner reports that the Town of Hanover is beginning to rewrite its zoning ordinances.
  • Last spring, van Zelm Heywood & Shadford helped renovate Burke Chemistry Laboratory (The Dartmouth).
  • A recent photo of the roof of the expanded Hayward Room at the Inn, taken with the Class of 1966 Webcam:

    roof of Hayward Room at expanded Hanover Inn

Minary room plans published

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The Inn has published floor plans (pdf) for the Minary Conference Center within the building. Bill Rooney Studio has posted interior designs, Cambridge Seven also has a new project page with a couple of photos of the completed work, and Here in Hanover1The fall issue (pdf) also has articles on Shattuck Observatory; a book-shaped granite sundial sculpted by Dartmouth alumnus Bill Nutt and donated to Linacre College, Oxford, by retired DMS professor and Linacre graduate Frank Manasek, author of Study, Measure, Experiment; King Arthur Flour; builder Peter French; and the new Dartmouth ski history documentary Passion for Snow. has a well-illustrated2The computer shown in the photo on the second page is curious: although one can substitute colored components on a Mac laptop, the body is machined from a single billet of aluminum. Somehow the sides of this computer were colored red without the surfaces around the ports and keyboard also being colored. Decals, perhaps? article on the Inn (pdf).

The smaller rooms have familiar names (Hayward, Drake, Ford Sayre), and the larger ones have the logical names Grand Ballroom, Ballroom East, and Ballroom West.

The Grand Ballroom, which occupies the old Zahm Courtyard space at the level of the lobby, measures 57 x 69 feet. This room is part of the third phase of the project and will open during November. One of the architects’ renderings of the new Hop entrance in the Zahm Courtyard, below the ballroom, showed the words “COLLEGE ENTRANCE” above the doors. It will be interesting to see whether the building ends up saying “HOPKINS CENTER” or perhaps nothing at all.

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References
↑1 The fall issue (pdf) also has articles on Shattuck Observatory; a book-shaped granite sundial sculpted by Dartmouth alumnus Bill Nutt and donated to Linacre College, Oxford, by retired DMS professor and Linacre graduate Frank Manasek, author of Study, Measure, Experiment; King Arthur Flour; builder Peter French; and the new Dartmouth ski history documentary Passion for Snow.
↑2 The computer shown in the photo on the second page is curious: although one can substitute colored components on a Mac laptop, the body is machined from a single billet of aluminum. Somehow the sides of this computer were colored red without the surfaces around the ports and keyboard also being colored. Decals, perhaps?

Inn updates, the story of Bean’s Art Store, and other notes

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  • The Dartmouth has a story on Bean’s Art Store, the little shop near the Hop (behind Ledyard National Bank) that has been furnishing Studio Art students with their squishy erasers and tubes of paint for decades.
  • Dartbeat has a post with photos on the progress at the Visual Arts Center. Big Green Alert Blog notes that the power lines along Lebanon Street are going under ground.
  • The Boston Globe links to a Valley News story on the completion of a large part of the Inn renovations (see also Dartmouth Now. The Rauner Library Blog has a post on the Inn’s predecessors on the site.
  • The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Interior Department has designated the Connecticut River and its watershed the first National Blueway in the country. The Valley News reports on the septennial perambulation of the riverine New Hampshire-Vermont border by the two states’ attorneys general.
  • The Valley News reports (again) that the Friends of Hanover Crew now have permission to build a rowing dock at Wilson’s Landing, a part of Fullington Farm. Hanover’s crews plan to move their boats out of Dartmouth’s boathouse and into a new boathouse to be built at the farm. An interesting report (pdf) from Engineering Ventures mentions that when the Friends of Hanover Crew bought their 2.4-acre portion of the farm from Dartmouth in 2008, they promised to allow Ledyard Canoe Club members to store 20 canoes and kayaks on the site, probably in the basement of the existing barn.

  • Dartmouth Sports announced some time ago that the new basketball office suite was completed in the old Kresge gym space in Berry Sports Center (via Dartmouth Now).

  • Thanks to Bruce for his proposal that as part of a Piazza Nervi project, the entrance to Thompson Arena should be redone (Big Green Alert Blog). This is a good idea, since Thompson’s entrance definitely needs replacing. But while one does notice that Thompson’s front facade is not parallel to Leverone’s, the lack of alignment is not necessarily a problem: plenty of urban spaces, especially in Italy, lack any right angles at all. And if the facades were made parallel, the difference in heights might become more noticeable. Who knows… The 2000 student life master plan (pdf) notes that the entry into Thompson Arena is obscured by existing houses along Park Street:

    There are, however, opportunities to reinforce the entry to Thompson Arena by moving or demolishing the College-owned houses on Park Street in front of the current entry. Doing so would relate the Arena to its cousin, Leverone Field House, both designed by Pier Luigi Nervi, and complete an intention planned but never realized.

  • The school’s Flickr page has a photo set showing the new ’53 Commons renovation of Thayer Dining Hall. The photos, along with plans, show that the red awnings in the main dining room have been removed and the bays opened up to allow free passage from north to south. Upstairs is where the real changes have taken place: there are lots of dining rooms up there now. The long, narrow Topside space is a dining room; the space above the leather-paneled Tindle Lounge/Paganucci Room is a private dining room; the spaces above the lobby (formerly offices?) look to be dining or meeting rooms. It is not clear where they put all the DDS offices that used to occupy the second level. At least some of the quadripylons out front were removed for the project (Street View): will they be replaced? Some kind of bollard seems necessary there, but the area might be more interesting with a different solution.
  • The 1994-era Lone Pine Tavern in the basement of Collis has been replaced by something called One Wheelock. It seems that a change in focus was needed, but did the room really have to be stripped bare? Perhaps people were stealing the memorabilia.
  • The Rauner Library blog has had too many interesting posts to count. See posts on the mathematics funerals and duckboards on the Green.
  • Dartmouth Health Connect opened a while back (The Dartmouth). It occupies the former Omer & Bob’s location following a renovation by Haynes & Garthwaite. It turns out that H&G designed Omer & Bob’s new location in Lebanon.
  • Lebanon is selling its Junior High School building, designed by Jens Larson (Valley News, Valley News). Note the similarities to Baker Library:



  • Some interesting things going on at other colleges: Yale is building a freestanding college in Singapore, designed by KieranTimberlake (Times article on the controversy). The University of Virginia is building a facility for its squash team at the Boar’s Head Sports Club, part of a fancy private resort (UVaToday). The Boar’s Head Inn is owned by the U.Va. Real Estate Foundation.
  • That Hanover war memorial that stands in front of the Town Building on Main Street? (Street View.) It was previously associated with the Green, where one would expect a war memorial, and shows up in front of the Inn in an old photo that was published in a recent story in the Mirror. It is interesting to note that a nearby space, just to the east of the Inn, later became a war memorial garden for the college.
  • “Chaste” might not be the right word, but “tasteful” is close: TruexCullins’ Buchanan Hall addition is very nice (Street View, school project page).
  • The Rauner Blog’s post on the Ski Jump features this photo of the jump’s outrun. The jump is gone now, but the Golf Course remains. Does that view show the same site as this one, from the Hanover Country Club’s map of the various holes? More historic images of the jump at Skisprungschanzen.com (via Big Green Alert Blog).
  • More information on the bypass mentioned here earlier, from page 14 of the 2002 Campus Master Plan (pdf):

    To reduce congestion, Hanover has explored alternatives to bypass the Inn corner. A Connector Highway linking Route 120, Route 10 and I-91 would be very desirable for both Hanover and the Medical Center, but Lebanon has not supported this proposal. The College should continue to study this and other by-pass proposals, making College properties available if necessary.

How “historic” is the Inn?

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The publicity around the Inn expansion constantly emphasizes the building’s “historic” nature. The label seems to come from the Inn’s inclusion in 2011 in the Historic Hotels of America, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

How does a hotel get into the program?

To be nominated and selected for membership into this prestigious program, a hotel must be at least 50 years old, listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places or recognized as having historic significance.

The nomination form states that “Properties must be a minimum age of 75 years” under the blank for “Year originally built.”

The main block of the Inn will not be 50 years old until 2016. The Inn is not listed on the National Register, and one doubts that any historian has determined the building to be eligible for listing. (If the dates on the main block and the subsidiary wing were swapped, that would be another story.) Nor does anyone, including the National Trust, appear to have recognized the Inn as having historic significance. The phrase “historic significance” refers to the fact that the building was “home to, or on the grounds of, a former home of famous persons or [a] significant location for an event in history.” This HHA definition is in line with one of the criteria for National Register eligibility.

What, then, did the Inn tell the National Trust in its application? Some clues might lie in the text of the HHA page provided for the Inn:

  • General Ebenezer Brewster, whose home occupied the present site of the Inn, founded the Dartmouth Hotel in 1780 but later [it] burned to the ground and was replaced two years later on the same site by the Wheelock Hotel.

As corrected, this sentence is adequate as an anecdote, although it makes one wonder who would care about something occurring “two years later” than an unspecified date.

To be a bit more accurate, the page might say that the inn established by Brewster was usually called Brewster’s Tavern. Around 1813, Brewster’s son replaced the building with a completely different building called the Dartmouth Hotel. That building burned in 1887 and was replaced in 1889 with a completely different building called the Wheelock Hotel. That building was demolished in the 1960s and is no longer standing:

Emil Rueb photo of Inn demolition, from the Flickr photostream of the Town of Hanover, N.H.

Mid-1960s photo by Emil Rueb of the demolition of the 1889 Inn, with the surviving 1924 wing visible in the background. Image from the Flickr photostream of the Town of Hanover, N.H. (where it is courtesy of Dena Romero).

To continue:

  • From 1901-1903, Dartmouth College carried out extensive renovations to the facility, which was then renamed the Hanover Inn.

This sentence could be worded better, but it is correct. What is not clear is why anyone would care about those renovations, since the renovated building no longer exists.

  • An east wing was added in 1924, followed in 1939 by an exterior expansion.

And that east wing is the oldest part of the Inn. The 1939 information is interesting but irrelevant.

  • In 1968 a west wing was added.

Another, more accurate way to put it would be to say that “in 1968, the historic 1889 Hanover Inn was completely demolished, leaving only the 1924 east wing.” The main block of the Inn today, the building standing on the corner, is not “a west wing” attached to something greater than itself: it is the Inn.

  • Before Dartmouth College became co-ed, the fourth floor of the Hanover Inn was a single women’s dormitory. The Inn provided chaperones for the single female guests.

These statements probably have some basis in fact. First, if the school was yet not co-ed, why were women living in a dormitory? Because they were Carnival visitors, in town for a few days each year. Second, if they were college-aged, why bother describing them (twice) as “single”? It cannot be meant to distinguish them from the veterans’ wives living in married students’ housing after WWII, since those women were not segregated by gender. Third, the statement about the chaperones is interesting, if true. But considering that Carnival dates at the Inn were not staying in a temporarily-cleared dormitory, and thus were paying for their rooms, the Inn must have found it cost-effective to station a few women in the halls to mind the furnishings.

  • The Hanover Inn is the oldest continuous[ly-operated] business in the state of New Hampshire.

That might be true, if the various hotels dating back to Brewster are considered as a single business. One might prefer Tuttle Farm, which has been operating since 1632 and apparently has been owned by just one family.

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[Update 07.14.2012: The Inn is now accurately emphasizing the fact that a hostel has existed on the site since 1780. See for example Dartmouth Now.]

A further update on the Inn addition

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The Valley News reports that the project’s first phase will finish by June, “even as the price of the project has skyrocketed and town officials say the college may have underestimated the scope of the work.” Google’s Street View sort of shows where the addition is going. The Town’s Flickr stream has a mid-1960s photo that shows a clean Scout driving in the foreground and the original 1880s Inn being demolished in the background. The Inn’s 1923 wing, also visible, still stands.

Images of selective demolition are on line from contractor Dectam, including photos of some guest rooms without walls, only bathtubs; a team of workers going after the exterior concrete pavers; and the demolition of the lobby plaza area wall.

Dana Lowe, a subcontractor on the project, died on March 13th after a construction accident involving a crane and a scissor-lift (The Dartmouth).

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Dectam replaced.]

The Inn’s new conference center to be named for John Minary

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From the April 23 press release (pdf):

November 2012: The Minary Conference Center opens, encompassing a grand ballroom with 3,933 square feet of meeting and event space capable of accommodating up to 330 people. The area also includes three executive meeting rooms.

The previous Minary Center was a 1928 house on Squam Lake that William S. Paley gave the college in 1970 honor of John Minary ’29. The college used it as a conference center until it sold the property in 2010.

Further details of the Inn’s novel features:

The November grand opening will introduce a new fitness center for Inn guests, 14 additional guest rooms including an oversized suite overlooking Main Street, for a total of 108 rooms. The Inn’s new signature restaurant, currently being designed by one of New England’s best-known chefs, will open, serving lunch and dinner in a prime location — at the corner of Main and Wheelock Streets. The smaller dining space will transition to serving breakfast only and will be available as additional reception space and for private events following the opening of the larger restaurant.

More on the Inn addition

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The rising cost of the Inn addition has been controversial lately, and The Dartmouth now has an article about it.

It seems strange to say that “[g]reat effort has been made to preserve the Inn’s exterior” when that exterior is undistinguished at best. Perhaps this is a reaction to negative comments from alumni, cited in a previous post.

The four buildings involved here may be seen in the plan provided by Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc.:

  • The west wing of the Inn (Larson & Wells, 1923), built with a donation from Randolph McNutt, is historic but undistinguished. It will contain the prefunction room and restrooms as shown in the plan.

  • The Lang Building (Larson, 1937) faces Main Street at the southwest corner of the site (the upper right of the plan). It is both historic and well done and is worth preserving. Its upper level will be given over to hotel rooms.

  • The Hopkins Center (Harrison & Abramowitz, 1959-1962) is a notable building by a world-class architect and must be modified carefully.

  • The main block of the Hanover Inn (William Benjamin Tabler, 1966-1967) is both unhistoric and undistinguished. While fairly effective at disguising the great bulk of the hotel, the Inn is only nominally Georgian in style.

Detail of plan of addition to Hanover Inn by Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc.

Detail of plan of Inn addition by Cambridge Seven.

The comment about preservation is especially interesting in light of the fact that one of the Cambridge Seven images proposes to add shutters to the windows of the main block:

Detail of perspective view of Hanover Inn by Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc.

Detail of perspective view of Inn by Cambridge Seven.

(Another view by the firm shows the Inn without shutters added.)

Big Green Alert: The Blog has a couple of construction photos.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Three broken links to C7A images removed, two replaced with generic links to firm page.]

The coach stop at the Inn Corner

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During the nineteenth century, horse-drawn coaches delivered people to Hanover by dropping them at the southeast corner of Main and Wheelock. Bus companies continued to use the stop, including Vermont Transit (which apparently dropped its competent dark-green identity in 2008) and Dartmouth Coach.

The college and the town are now working on expanding the transit stop and moving it to a more spacious site to the east, in front of the Zahm Garden (The Dartmouth; see also this Valley News story).

The new bus stop will include a shelter for the first time: the shelter is likely to follow the basic design set out on page 19 of the Advance Transit bus stop design study by ORW (pdf). (ORW also created the new Ped/Bike Master Plan (pdf), which is particularly relevant to the college; see the College Planner’s post on the plan.)

The design of the little shelter in front of the Zahm Garden might involve a variety of considerations:

1. The history of the Inn Corner and the south end of the Green. Moving the bus stop eastward gives a bus space to pull up but also reflect the loss of the pedestrian’s freedom to use the street, a result of the growth of the auto (see Christopher Gray’s “Streetscapes” article “The Pedestrian Loses the Way,” New York Times (Nov. 13, 2011)).

2. The grassy island that once occupied the center of East Wheelock Street. Possibly a remnant of the Green from before the corner was cut off, the median was the site of a substantial masonry traffic marker for a time. The bus stop study proposal notes that “[a] small median is an optional element that can serve as a pedestrian refuge and act as a traffic calming feature.”

Littig aerial litho

Turn-of-the-century image showing traffic island, possibly optimistic

3. The Wheelock Street crossing. The study does not seem to show the crosswalk to be the raised feature that The Dartmouth mentions, but students would benefit if the crosswalk were elevated to the level of the sidewalk. This could be just the beginning — if the sidewalks were protected with bollards, the raised walk could be extended to cover the entire street between Main and College.

4. Architectural concerns. The new shelter could be made of glass in order to be overlooked, or it could be designed as a proud pavilion that establishes an axis with Baker Tower. It should not be so valuable that it could not be replaced in the future by the Hopkins Center wing that really belongs on this site.

5. The Hop’s somewhat unsuccessful landscaping. The isolated patch of grass north of the Zahm Garden does little more than pointlessly narrow the sidewalks that surround it.

Just a thought.

The Inn addition as a Hop addition

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The Inn project, planned last spring (The Dartmouth, The Dartmouth), is getting under way.

The Inn Blog describes the

addition of multiple new suites and guest rooms plus the refurbishment of all existing sleeping rooms. The first floor will house a ballroom and junior ballroom with the current location of the Daniel Webster Room to become a pre-function space. The restaurant will be relocated to the Hayward Lounge and will include additional private dining rooms. Finally a half dozen or so “smart” conference rooms will be added on the lower level rounding out the renovations.

The architects are Cambridge Seven Associates, with interiors designed by the Bill Rooney Studio.

Renderings describe the most interesting part of the project, an infill addition in the Zahm Courtyard:

A crisp glass box floats within the historic arms of the old building, integrating a new 3,500 sf ballroom into the existing structure.

This glass box is in fact a new entrance to the Hopkins Center. The glass box is just where it should be, since, in some ways, the Zahm entry has always been the real entrance to the Hop. One might regret only the fact that the new entrance rests on the floor of the courtyard instead of using an interior ramp or stair to rise to the level of the street. The project has required the shifting of the Hinman Boxes (image).

The architects have made this entrance pavilion into a miniature version of the Hop’s most prominent entrance facade. There is no marquee here, but there is a glazed ground level topped by a little porch roof and above it a high, glazed second level divided into attenuated bays.

Behind the glazed chamber is a new “exterior” wall, presumably marking the edge of the ballroom. The architects initially intended the wall to be of brick but switched to zinc-coated steel panels (Planning Board minutes Sept. 6 (pdf)). The less-expensive material will probably provide a better visual marker of the joint between the Inn and the Hop.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to C7A renderings replaced.]

Designers of the Inn expansion identified

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Contrary to the implication on this site last month, the renovation and expansion of the Hanover Inn are indeed the work of Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc. The firm designed a stylish renovation of the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, N.H.

Interior design for the Inn is being handled by New York firm Bill Rooney Studio, Inc. Some snippets of the firm’s renderings show an interesting use of inscribed lines and geometric patterns.

The ongoing work has shifted some students’ Hinman Boxes, The Dartmouth reports.

Although the main block of the Inn is not even fifty years old, the Inn has been listed with the National Trust’s Historic Hotels of America. The Web information includes this novel tidbit:

Before Dartmouth College became co-ed, the fourth floor of the Hanover Inn was a single women’s dormitory. The Inn provided chaperones for the single female guests. The Hanover Inn is the oldest continuous business in the state of New Hampshire.

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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Radisson replaced.]

Reactions to the first view of the future Inn addition

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The Alumni Magazine published two letters critical of a rendering of the proposed Inn addition. (It is not clear that the rendering represents a final design.)

One writer laments the lack of a railing for putting one’s feet upon, although the rendering shows clearly that the existing railing, located within the arcade that screens the recessed porch where the rocking chairs are, will be retained.

The same letter called the design “nontraditional,” and that might be accurate. The most prominent part of the addition will be a new porte-cochere, and the rendering seems to show it as a Modernist structure. But look at the Inn itself: it features an uncharacteristic mansard roof; a lack of shutters; the omission of traditional building details such as quoining, lintels, or sills; and the absence of columns or much reference to the Classical orders. The main block of the Inn was designed by Hilton architect William B. Tabler and completed in 1967.

Hanover Inn pre-1967

The nineteenth-century Hanover Inn before its 1960s demolition

Adding to the Hanover Inn

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Dartmouth Now and print newsletters are publishing a rendering of the future Inn that shows a new porte-cochere, a modest expansion onto the Terrace, and, almost out of sight at the left, an expansion onto part of the Zahm Garden.

The rendering is by Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc., although it is not clear that the project will be undertaken by that firm.

The expansion could be very subtle and intriguing. It will put hotel rooms above the Gap on Main Street, in the existing upper level of the Lang Building. It will convert the Hopkins Center’s Strauss Gallery, at the northwest corner of the Hop, where the corridor makes a right-angle turn, into an entrance to the Inn (March 3, 2011 Building Code Advisory Committee minutes (pdf)).

[Update 07.17.2011: The Dartmouth reported Friday that the Inn has decided to close during construction, from December 2011 through April 12, 2012.]

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Radisson replaced.]

Unbuilt Dartmouth, an exhibit and an article

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A graphical article based on research by Barbara Krieger in the July/August Alumni Magazine nicely covers a larger exhibit in the History Room in Baker. It is good to see the site for the amphitheater named as Murdough rather than the Bema, which is the site that that drawing is usually said to describe.

One or two quibbles: the 1931 courtyard Inn on page 53 was meant not not the Robinson Hall area but for the Spaulding Auditorium site, as is shown on the exhibit’s Dartmouth House Plot Plan. The gateway shown in the Larson drawing would have faced east, and Lebanon Street is depicted on the left of the drawing. (The main block of the current Inn was completed in 1967 rather than 1887.)

The focus on the Dartmouth Hall cupola is a bit of a wild goose chase. The plans depicted are by William Gamble and show a masonry building that was never built. Dartmouth Hall was built from some other plans, long since lost, that almost certainly showed a cupola. Those plans might or might not have been by Gamble and probably were not by Peter Harrison. (The cupola that Tucker admired was probably a somewhat different midcentury replacement for the original.)

Here is an image that did not make it into the article, a pre-Leverone proposal for a field house by Eggers & Higgins:

Eggers & Higgins Field House proposal

Wow. That is a view to the southeast from above the gym. South Park Street runs behind the field house, and the field in the upper right corner is the site of the later Leverone Field House.

The article quotes Eisenhower on “what a college ought to look like.” Conan O’Brien recently paraphrased this commentary while adding something of his own:

It’s absolutely beautiful here, though. It is the quintessential college cam-… American college campus. It does look like a movie set.

(Video, at 1:27.)

Intriguing details of the Inn addition

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The upcoming $12 million project at the Hanover Inn has a number of intriguing aspects. The first detailed story about it appeared in the Valley News last week, and the news has been picked up by NECN and WCAX. The Dartmouth Real Estate Office is running the project but appears to have dropped its “projects” webpage.

This is the kind of project that planners have been thinking about for decades. According to Alex Hanson’s story in the Valley News, builders will erect 12,000 square feet of additions between the Inn and the Hopkins Center and over a portion of the existing terrace facing Wheelock Street.



The terrace will shrink; the existing parking garage under the terrace will expand by ten spaces, presumably beneath the Zahm Garden/Drake Room portion of the expansion; the Inn’s existing restaurants will be pulled from the bowels of the building to storefronts on both Main and Wheelock Streets, an excellent idea; and the existing upper-level conference rooms will be divided into guest rooms.

This part of the project, explained in last week’s Valley News story, is particularly interesting:

The renovation would create guest rooms where now there are offices and meeting space in the Lang Building — the brick building next to the inn on Main Street that houses The Gap. The inn and Lang are already linked by passageways, but the new project requires the building to be brought up to code. Building code doesn’t allow openings between buildings on separate lots, and the financing of the two buildings makes it impossible to combine the lots, college officials wrote in filings with the town.

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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Globe replaced with link to NECN.]

Preparing for the expansion of the Inn

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Dartmouth has obtained a minor lot line adjustment that annexes 22,400 square feet to the Hanover Inn’s lot, finally reflecting the building’s actual size. This will allow for future expansion (Planning Board meeting 4 January 2011 (pdf)).

From a newsletter of more than four years ago:

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. Carl Pratt, the Inn’s General Manager, together with the Planning Design & Construction (PD&C) Office, initiated master planning with the architectural firm Truex Cullins & Partners in Burlington, VT to identify structural deficiencies and to develop design ideas. The Inn is working with PD&C and the Real Estate Office to understand zoning implications for any recommended changes to the current building footprint.

“Changes at the Hanover Inn,” Dartmouth College Finance and Administration News 1:1 (16 January 2007), 3 (pdf).

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s campus architecture blog, Buildings & Grounds, last month linked to a story on the Inn’s new management.

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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to pdf removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to “Changes” article fixed.]

Inn project to include addition?

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Board chairman Stephen Mandel’s January 13th letter to the Dartmouth community mentions so many new spaces going into the renovated Inn that the building’s envelope surely must be expanding:

In addition, the “front door” to the College, the Hanover Inn, is planned to undergo a complete renovation beginning this summer. Every aspect of the inn will be touched and will result in a larger number of guest rooms, all updated, new and relocated restaurants, and modern conference facilities. The College remains the owner of the inn but we have hired a third party to manage the inn. The renovation will be funded with mortgage debt and the proceeds of the sale of the Minary Conference Center in Holderness, N.H.

The idea of having a standard conference center near Hanover has been mentioned in past master plans:

Finally, the College is exploring the feasibility of a regional conference center to further enable the dissemination of scholarship.

Lo-Yi Chan, et al., Dartmouth College Master Plan (2002), 10 (11.3mb pdf).

A conventional conference center could probably be a moneymaker, but it is hard to see how could fit on the corner of Wheelock and Main.