Category Archives: Hanover Inn

The gates of Dartmouth

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Although Dartmouth seems to take some pride in having a campus without any gates, it could still benefit from the exercise of defining a campus boundary and identifying the major entrances to the academic precinct. A sketch from several years ago:

map of Dartmouth boundaries and possible gates

This is all fairly obvious, but it does not seem to receive much attention in writing. The greatest coherence (and the greatest support for the idea of walkability) seems to be achieved by reducing the number of gates and pulling them inward.

The only site where two gates would stand close to each other is at the southwest corner of the Green. Pulling the gates toward the center would allow them to share a single gatepost on the Green itself, but that would detract significantly from the Green and would interfere with the tree on the corner. Here, the gates should spring from the Inn and C&G (south gate) and from Collis and C&G (west gate):

map of possible gates

Again, this is not a proposal, and Dartmouth does not need any more* gates.

However, if this sort of project were built, and if it were differentiated from its direct ancestor, Charles McKim’s wonderful gates at Harvard, the builders couldn’t go wrong with a set massive rusticated granite piers supporting a timber truss. This would refer to the Connecticut river bridges, especially Rufus Graves’s arched truss of the late eighteenth century.

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* Tuck Drive was built with a brick gateway at each end. The lower example survives. More recently, Scully-Fahey Field was erected with a large freestanding gateway.

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The other Hopkins Center

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Wallace Harrison’s Hopkins Center is not just the latest in a long line of buildings planned for the spot south of the Green, it is the third of three theater complexes honoring Ernest Martin Hopkins proposed for that site. The first was designed in the late 1930s, and the second was a refreshed version of the first put out after the war, both by architect Jens Larson. The postwar version was put on hold, and by the time momentum increased again in the early 1950s, Larson had left, the Georgian idiom had gone out of fashion, and new people (notably Nelson Rockefeller) had become involved.

1. photo of model of proposed Hopkins Center at Dartmouth from 1947 film

A 1947 film about Dartmouth made available by the college has several shots of a large model of Larson’s postwar Hopkins Center design. The shots begin about 9:38 into the film.

The men shown discussing the model are identified as Treasurer Halsey C. Edgerton and advisory building committee chairman Professor Russell Larmon, with Hopkins Center Committee executive secretary Robert Haig also appearing.

This plan of the 1939 version is marked with the locations of the photos below. (The plan and a section are from Warner Bentley’s article “The Dartmouth Theatre,” Theatre Arts Monthly 22:4 (April 1939), 306-309.)

photo locator map

The narrator tells us that the proposed $3.5 million Ernest Martin Hopkins War Memorial Center will have a main auditorium seating 3,000 and ancillary spaces for music, drama, radio, “and allied activities.” When the present Hop was built, the site was enlarged, the film and broadcast functions were reduced or eliminated, and the auditorium was reduced and swapped with the theater at the bottom of the site. Perhaps the most notable difference is in the way the projects treated College Street: the model in the film not only preserves the street but places the entrance to its Little Theatre on it.

2. photo of model of proposed Hopkins Center at Dartmouth from 1947 film

3. photo of model of proposed Hopkins Center at Dartmouth from 1947 film

4. photo of model of proposed Hopkins Center at Dartmouth from 1947 film

5. photo of model of proposed Hopkins Center at Dartmouth from 1947 film

6. photo of model of proposed Hopkins Center at Dartmouth from 1947 film

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Dartmouth Traditions by William Carroll Hill (1901)

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Download a pdf version of William Carroll Hill’s 1901 book, Dartmouth Traditions.

About the Book

William Carroll Hill (1875-1943?), of Nashua, N.H., received his Bachelor of Letters degree, a degree offered only between 1884 and 1904, in 1902. He was the historian of his class and wrote the Chronicles section of the the 1902 Class Day volume, a book that the printer gave the appearance as Dartmouth Traditions. Hill became an antiquarian, genealogist, and historian and apparently wrote a history of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Dartmouth Traditions was published when Hill was a junior. The book is not really about traditions and probably would be better titled Dartmouth Worthies. It is a collection of essays written by students and alumni. While the essays on Daniel Webster and other known personages are not very useful, some essays appear the contain information that is only available in this book. Examples are the report on the investigation into the history of the Lone Pine and the first-person account of the drowning death of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s son.

About this Project

The transcription of this somewhat hard-to-find book began in 2003. The book has since become available in Google Books, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the project. The Google Books version has the great advantage of reproducing the attractive typography of the original, but its computer transcription is not as accurate as that of the version presented here.

[Update 05.13.2011: The Rauner Library Blog has a post on Hill, highlighting the Stowe episode.]

[Update 12.21.2010: Link to pdf posted.]

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Renovating the Hanover Inn

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The board finally gave the word to start the planned $13 million renovation of the Hanover Inn in the spring of 2011. The Valley News states that the work “will add 16 guest rooms, consolidate conference space at street level and relocate a restaurant to the most visible part of the building.” The Dartmouth reports that the work will take about a year and will not require the closure of the Inn.

The design is probably the work of TruexCullins, but this has not been confirmed.

The inn’s much less prominent sibling, the Hanover Inn Motor Lodge, has served as a dormitory for decades and was the subject of a profile by C.J. Hughes in the current Alumni Magazine.

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[Update 08.31.2013: Broken link to Truex Cullins interiors boards webpage removed.]

Changes at the Inn

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Dartmouth, which owns the Hanover Inn and the mostly-1960s building it inhabits, recently decided to get out of the business of running a hotel and will turn over the Inn’s management to Carpenter & Co. (The Dartmouth, Valley News, more Valley News, press release on the search).

The Inn has had plans for what appears to be an interior renovation for some time now. It is not clear how the switch affect these plans.

The outsourcing of the Inn’s management is part of a long and shifting relationship. The first tavern on the corner was officially sited by Dartmouth, which conveyed the land to Ebenezer Brewster for the purpose. Brewster was a careful selection: he was made the Steward of Dartmouth College and was granted a tavern license by local authorities who were friendly to the college and in some cases would have been Dartmouth professors.

That was in the 1770s. Buildings came and went on the same site on the corner. After about 40 years the tavern, which had probably always housed paying guests, became the Dartmouth Hotel. It continued for another 85 years or so as an “independent” operation.

After the Dartmouth Hotel burned in 1887, the college bought the land. The college had a succession of intentions. At first it seems only to have wanted to sell the land to a sufficiently reputable hotelier and let him replace the building. Then it decided to erect the building itself and lease out the hotel to an independent manager. (I think it did try leasing out the building in this way for a time.) Eventually the school decided that it would not only own the building but operate it too.

Dartmouth operated the Wheelock Hotel in its new building, renaming the hotel as the Hanover Inn in 1902. The Inn’s operators played up Brewster’s history, putting an image (or a supposed image) of him on the Inn’s sign. The same jolly man of girth also appeared on the sign of the Inn’s motel — the Hanover Inn Motor Lodge — and lent his name to a nearby dormitory for Inn employees.

Dartmouth demolished the 1887 Inn in 1966 and hired a hotel architect to replace it.

Graphic design downtown

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Speaking of graphic design, the new hotel on South Street (behind Hanover Park, where Panda House used to be) has been named Six South Street and has been given a logo by Vreeland Marketing & Design.

detail of Six South Street logo

Detail of logo

While the hotel is to be welcomed and its builders admired for their boldness and attention to urban design, the logo deserves some criticism:

The word “Street” really should be written out. While “South St.” might be part of an address, the thoroughfare that gives its name to the hotel is “South Street.” The word “Six” seems to have been spelled out to add formality or pretense, the way it is in “The Wall Street Inn” (not the plain-old “Wall St. Inn”). So the word “Street” should be as well. Only an address plaque on the building should read “6 South St.” After all, both “Six” and “South” have shorter versions that could have been used but weren’t. And even though “Hotel” is on its own line, it still makes the logo seem to refer to a “Saint Hotel” (“St. Hotel”).

When a word is abbreviated, it requires a period. Probably to prevent the letters “ST” from appearing to retreat from the righthand edge, the logo omits the period. This should have been solved some other way.

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[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to MCHG image removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Vreeland fixed, two broken links to MCHG removed.]

Inn Renovation could include expansion

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A College newsletter says “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” and names Truex Cullins & Partners as the architects. The Inn is considering expanding its footprint (Dartmouth College Finance and Administration News 1:1 (January 16, 2007), 3, [pdf] (viewed November 19, 2008)). The Inn’s website also notes that “[w]e are planning a full renovation of The Hanover Inn within the next few years and we intend to pursue our commitment to make this a model hotel for environmental concerns” (Hanover Inn, “Environmental Commitment” (updated October 21, 2008, viewed November 18, 2008)).

This project is among those whose planning was put on hold recently.