The 638-bed apartment complex in Lebanon known as Summit on Juniper began accepting residents in August (Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth). The complex is a joint project of the college and Michaels Student Living.
Common Juniper
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Category Archives: Hanover/Leb./Nor’ch.
Designs for Lyme Road apartments revealed
After a pause in the face of town and gown opposition, the project to design and construct an off-campus undergraduate apartment complex at the intersection of Reservoir Road and Lyme Road is well underway. The college moved the building site from the east side of Lyme Road to the west side and unveiled a complete-looking design by Ayers Saint Gross (project page).
(Calling this site a part of “the North End” is not accurate. The north end of the campus ends at the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center. This site is practically in Lyme Township.)
The Valley News quotes alumnus and retired track and field coach Barry Harwick as he hits the nail on the head:
Although Harwick contends there are other approaches to addressing the student housing shortage, some of them at sites in town the college has identified in the past, he believes Dartmouth’s plan is being driven by expedience over other considerations.
“I think that the reason they’re building this out there is that they want a flat piece of land that they already own that can be built on quickly,” he said.
John Lippman, “Dartmouth College tweaks agenda for Lyme Road housing meetings,” Valley News (23 July 2022).
Other articles on the project include: John Lippman, “Dartmouth calls time out on plan to build dorm complex in field along Lyme Road,” Valley News (22 February 2022); John Lippman, “Dartmouth College revises housing plan with student apartments crossing Lyme Road,” Valley News (23 June 2022); “Plan for Student Housing Moved to West Side of Lyme Road,” Dartmouth News (23 June 2022); “Community Session on North End Housing Draws 150 People,” Dartmouth News (12 July 2022); “Community Meeting Discusses Green Space in North End,” Dartmouth News (27 July 2022); “Third North End Meeting Focuses on Transportation,” Dartmouth News (2 August 2022); “North End Meeting: Building the Student Experience,” Dartmouth News (9 August 2022); “North End Meeting Discusses Design and Performance,” Dartmouth News (16 August 2022).
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Update 10.24.2022: The latest news was left off the post. The apartment project will go before the Hanover Planning Board on November 1 (“North End Housing Project Goes to Hanover Planning Board,” Dartmouth News (19 October 2022)).
Reservoir Road commuter apartment complex going ahead
The board has voted to go ahead with the ill-sited commuter apartment complex on Reservoir Road (article from Dartmouth). The proposal was paused after faculty objected (Dartmouth, Valley News, The Dartmouth) but those objections seem to have been insufficient to put the project in the bad-ideas bin with the College Park dormitory proposal.
Campus Services has a good explanation of the project (pdf), and the planners have done a thorough job of explaining to neighbors what their goals are (presentation video). There is an emphasis on smart growth and so on — which is exactly right for the neighborhood. That area does need a building at the corner of Lyme and Reservoir Roads. But the idea of busing undergrads out there — of filling the apartments exclusively with people who should be living with their peers on the walkable campus that is centered more than a mile to the southwest — is completely contrary to the new-urbanist principles behind the village centers idea. Bizarre.
And this means that the entire College Park dormitory siting process was for naught. The result of that process was the rejection of College Park in favor of a great site near the heart of the campus, on Crosby Street. That is where this new student housing was meant to be built, and where it should be built.
What happened to Sasaki’s Crosby St. dorm?
Sunday’s post asked what happened to the “swing space” dorm proposed for Crosby Street. Professor Nyhan, quoted in an article in The Dartmouth,1Parker O’Hara, “New undergraduate housing on Lyme Road to break ground by end of year,” The Dartmouth (25 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-undergraduate-housing-on-lyme-road-to-break-ground-by-end-of-year. pointed out the availability of the Crosby Street site. Now Ben Korkowski of The D has an explanation, quoting V.P. for institutional projects Josh Keniston:
“It is a tough site to build on: There is a steam line that runs through it, the Onion and tennis courts are there and it is a relatively tight space,” Keniston explained.2Ben Korkowski, “New residence hall set to replace the Onion placed on indefinite suspension,” The Dartmouth (27 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-residence-hall-set-to-replace-the-onion-placed-on-indefinite-suspension.
The housing crunch of the moment does seem to have a lot to do with the long-term decision to throw up a hasty plastic dorm off campus.
Let’s say the Crosby Street swing space takes two years longer to build than the school-bus dorm on Garipay Fields will take. Wouldn’t it be better to put up some Tree Houses in Maynard Yard and on the Gilman site for a few years while building on Crosby Street and then end up with a real, permanent brick dormitory at the center of campus?
| ↑1 | Parker O’Hara, “New undergraduate housing on Lyme Road to break ground by end of year,” The Dartmouth (25 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-undergraduate-housing-on-lyme-road-to-break-ground-by-end-of-year. |
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| ↑2 | Ben Korkowski, “New residence hall set to replace the Onion placed on indefinite suspension,” The Dartmouth (27 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-residence-hall-set-to-replace-the-onion-placed-on-indefinite-suspension. |
College planning dorms in the back of beyond
The planning effort for the Lyme Road South precinct now has its own project page and has a serious team behind it:
Project Manager: Joanna Whitcomb
Planner/Architect: Beyer Blinder Belle
Landscape Architect: Michael Van Volkenburgh Associates
Environmental Design Consultant: Atelier Ten
The planners have sent out a Dear Neighbors newsletter (pdf) letting the neighbors know that a dormitory cluster — a group of “apartment-style” residences for 300 students, presumably seniors — is planned for their area.
Included in the college’s report of last Thursday’s community meeting is a map showing the site of the proposed cluster. The site is south of or upon Garipay Fields, southwest of the Rugby Club and presumably encompassing the driving range of the old HCC Practice Area:
That site is much further away from campus than, say, the Dewey Field Parking Lot, itself a barely acceptable site for a remote new dorm.
Google Maps says it takes 20 minutes to walk from Baker Library to the driving range south of Garipay Fields.
The proposed dorms will be used as swing space during a period of at least 10 years as existing dormitories on campus are renovated. After those renovations are complete, one hopes that the college will turn over the apartments to graduate students rather than expanding undergraduate enrollment to fit the available housing. Perhaps that ability (and commitment?) to abandon the dorm after its use by undergrads is the only thing that could make the plan acceptable.
Taking a piecemeal approach to the expansion of existing dorms (mentioned in this post) would certainly be better for the campus than erecting a distant, school-bus dependent cluster on Lyme Road. Even building a single 300-bed swing space cluster at the corner of Maynard and Rope Ferry would seem far superior to the Lyme Road idea. Once the 10-year renovation project is completed, that swing space can become a combination of offices and graduate student housing — just as Chase and Woodbury Halls at Tuck and 37 Dewey Field Road were all converted from housing to offices. (And whatever happened to the “swing space” dorm proposed for Crosby Street? Wouldn’t it obviate the need for the Lyme Road project?)
It seems that folks are in a hurry, and a grassy, vacant site allows for hastier construction.
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Update 01.24.2022: The Valley News has an article on neighborhood opposition.
Dorms on Lyme Road?
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.
More observations about the final strategic master plan
The college released the final (November 2020) version of the master plan (pdf) in July of 2021 (Anna Merriman, “Dartmouth master plan calls for growth along Lyme Road,” Valley News (2 July 2021)). The plan is not getting enough press or enough praise, so here are some observations:
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As noted earlier, the possibilities for growth in the central campus look great (page 38).
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The north end opportunity sites are all super. Old Hospital Quad will be an incredible space 130 years in the making (pages 42-43). Fairchild Tower always did seem more than necessary for its purpose; it is really a signpost building (pages 44-45).
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Putting student housing in Remsen-Vail might be touchy. If you wanted to reuse a dull Sixties building as housing, you should have done it with the DHMC tower. Remsen-Vail could be appropriately used for academic purposes, however (page 44).
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Lyme Road development is inevitable, but it is not clear how realistic it is to show such development without parking lots (pages 46-47).
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When it comes to the West End, the novelty in this plan is the meander of the Cemetery Bridge (Thayer Viaduct). It is more like a boardwalk on a nature trail and does not appear to be a suspension bridge at all — but won’t it be extremely difficult to put bridge footings in a cemetery? (Pages 48-49).
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More on the West End: Again, the original Tuck School building here could make an amazing undergraduate dormitory, but one would hate to see Tuck School vanish into the suburbs (pages 48-49).
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South End and Downtown: The athletics promenade between Lebanon St. and Thompson Arena is excellent and long overdue. It could be a fine linear work of landscape architecture. Annexing Davis Varsity House as a part of the “house community” for the Crosby Street swing space dorm could be a superb move. The reasoning behind the focus on wellness for an expanded McKenzie is not clear — couldn’t it be used for anything, including arts uses? — but it makes no difference as long as the building is saved. McKenzie might present a real opportunity to create a new building within the historic brick walls (pages 52-53).
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Quibbles are minor and basically the same as before: Thayer School didn’t go from the old Experiment Station directly to the West End in 1939, it spent several years in Bissell Gymnasium (page 9); the reference to “Dart Hall” is kind of irritating (page 38); and it’s “Bema” not BEMA (page 41).
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The map on pages 28 and 29 showing named landscape opportunities is an important document. Some offhand proposals for these spaces:
Name in Plan Proposed Replacement Riverfront Park Leydard Park West End Green A tough one; this was the Wigwam Circle postwar housing area. Tuck Green at the end of Tuck Mall Tuck Circle Dart Row Commons Fayer Green? “Commons” is not really appropriate for an open space. Maynard Yard Old Hospital Yard. This really is a better name. Life Sciences Lawn Another tough one; there is very little historic context here. North End Green in a strip of Dewey Field Dewey Field. Another one that really is a better name. Vox Lane NHCAMA; New Hampshire something; or State College something? “Vox Lane” has always been arbitrary, which is disappointing in this richly historic precinct. Park Street Gateway Piazza Nervi. This is tougher to justify now that grass rather than hardscape is proposed for this space.
More changes downtown
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Mayor + Kennedy Architects designed a large rear addition with some novel elements for 23 South Main Street.
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The Hanover Improvement Society (of Nugget fame) opened an ice cream shop in the former Morano Gelato on South Main Street last year (John Lippman, “Bottom Line: Nonprofit answers Hanover’s screams for ice cream,” Valley News (20 June 2020)).
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The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen closed the gallery it maintained in a notable Modernist building on Lebanon Street in the summer of 2020 (Valley News (30 June 2020)).
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In the summer of 2020, the college ended the lease of the Jewel of India Restaurant on its late Victorian frame house on Lebanon Street (see John Lippman, “Dartmouth College won’t renew lease for Jewel of India restaurant in June,” Valley News (24 January 2020); Emily Lu, “Jewel of India relocates and reopens for takeout on July 15,” The Dartmouth (10 July 2020)).
See also background information on Sargent Block at this site; the one-time college master plan for Sargent Block; and Lisa Prevost, “Colleges Invest So ‘What’s the Town Like?’ Gets an Upbeat Answer,” New York Times (25 February 2020).
Will South Main be bollarded?
Begun more than a year ago, the Town of Hanover’s process of re-envisioning South Main Street (noted in Here in Hanover) is meant to make cars feel like guests.
A very detailed design presentation video lays out the options. Possibilities include replacing angled parking with parallel parking and creating a curbless surface by raising the street grade to match that of the sidewalks, both great moves. There is also a discussion of why a pedestrian mall or a one-way street is unlikely.
The Dartmouth Archaeology Station
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
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.
| ↑1 | Jasmine Taudvin, “College dig reveals 19th century infection,” Valley News (6 June 2021). |
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| ↑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
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The experience design page at Arup has a small blurb about the Hopkins Center project with a conceptual illustration. It is difficult to tell what space the image depicts, but it could be a new room built within the Hop Courtyard.
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This has not been mentioned much, but the architect of record for the Snøhetta Hop project is EYP (see “Snøhetta to redesign Dartmouth College’s arts center,” The Construction Specifier (15 February 2021)). EYP is doing a lot in Hanover these days, including some of the Dartmouth Row remodelings. The firm also conducted studies that are leading up to the new power plant/green energy project.
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See Katie Angen, “Dartmouth’s 1960s-era Anonymous Hall makes a name for itself with 2030 overhaul,” The Architect’s Newspaper (31 March 2021); David Malone, “Dartmouth College’s new faculty and graduate student center completes,” Building Design + Construction (26 February 2021); Matthew Marani, “With an Array of Sustainability Measures, Dartmouth’s Newest Building Stands Above the Pack,” Metropolis (2 June 2021). Some articles about Anonymous Hall refer to the space to the north as “a north quad,” which is fine, but others refer to “North Quad,” which does not seem right.
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The current images for the Dartmouth Hall remodeling show the subtle front podium. At the moment, the project update page has an excellent photo of a shutterless building with scaffolding around the cupola. The renovation of the Charles Rich-designed building involves the insertion of new structural steel framing and concrete floors (Amar Scherzer, “Thornton Hall renovation to finish in summer, Irving Institute construction to complete in fall,” The Dartmouth (11 May 2021)).
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A nice flythrough video shows the CECS building; for some reason the markings on the glass bridge that will indicate where the extra ten-foot segment was added do not appear in the video. Oh well. Instead of “Kemeny Hardenberg,” as shown on the HGA page, the entrance to the building in the video now reads “Center for Engineering and Computer Science.” How is the abbreviation pronounced, by the way — is it Kex or Secs? The North to West Utility Extension page shows how very large the building is.
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There are several new photos of the Irving under construction and a new flythrough video available on the building’s project page. It is so good to see the facade of the old Murdough Center, its glass hoarding now white-framed instead of black, preserved within the new atrium.
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Old news: the college constructed a pair of 60 x 120 skating rinks on the Green in January, and a light installation was installed in the Bema in February.
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A fascinating study of early 19th-century parasitic infection has emerged from the summer 2019 archaeological work at the Choate House site on Wentworth Street (Amy Olson, “Studying 200-Year-Old Privy on Campus Hits Pay Dirt,” Dartmouth News (3 May 2021)). The recent growth in campus archaeology continues to thrill (and to revive a sense of regret over potential missed opportunities in the 1990s, including on the southeast corner of the Green).
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Something’s going on around here: The privy article refers to “Dartmouth Libraries’ Baker-Berry Library” and the recent iconography article refers to “Dartmouth Library’s Baker Library.” Surely a reader of the official Dartmouth News website is not going to mistake Baker for a constituent facility of the Town of Hanover’s Howe Library? On a somewhat-related note, the new Indoor Practice Facility displays the words DARTMOUTH INDOOR PRACTICE FACILITY. Why the “DARTMOUTH”? Could it be mistaken for a Hanover High facility? Perhaps the word is just standing in for the name of a donor.
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Influential planning historian John Reps died on November 12 (Edith Fikes and Patti Witten, “Urban planning historian John W. Reps dies at age 98,” Cornell Chronicle (25 November 2020)). He became interested in maps at Dartmouth, where he was a member of the Class of 1943. His history of his collecting is worth a read.
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The book Beneath the Green: The Map at Dartmouth is a 2019 collection of student projects from Mary Flanagan’s mapmaking class.
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See Merideth Barnett, “Honoring the Past, Shifting for the Future,” Currents Magazine (1 May 2021) for a look at campus traditions that includes Dartmouth among its examples. In this article, “advancement professionals and higher education researchers share why traditions endure, how they shift, and what role advancement today plays in celebrating and shaping them.”
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Here is an interesting college tradition: digging up a different buried bottle of seeds every 20 years (Cara Giaimo, “One of the World’s Oldest Science Experiments Comes Up From the Dirt,” New York Times (21 April 2021).
Various topics, including unbuilt buildings
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An article in The Dartmouth notes the completion of work on Reed and Baker and the start of work on Dartmouth Hall.
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The HGA [architects] page for the CECS building has an image showing main entrance with the name KEMENY HARDENBERG above the door.
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The Goody Clancy page on the Irving Institute is up.
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What might have been: The central and right-hand groups of images on Samer Afifi’s site show (1) a more traditionally-massed CECS on the site where it is now being built and (2) a very unfortunately sited Irving Institute way back on the River Cluster site — not only distant from any important campus axis but also blocking any further Tuck School expansion.
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This has been noted here before, but it is always fun to see: A Kliment/Halsband-designed addition to the Shower Towers to house Sudikoff. It looks perfectly pleasant, but it must have been overtaken by VSBA planning for Berry Row.
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Kellogg Auditorium, perhaps the only building at Dartmouth named for a room, has been renamed Kellogg Hall and renovated as a classroom building. It opened last fall (Susan Green, “Newly Renovated and Renamed Kellogg Hall Opens” (29 September 2020)).
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Dartmouth News has a piece on the importance of the DHMC parking lot as a social space in pandemic times.
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Many outlets, including the Concord Monitor, have written about the huge college-affiliated apartment complex that will be built on Route 120 at Mt. Support Road.
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The Davison Block, a prominent and historic commercial building at the top of Main Street in downtown Hanover, has been sold by the Davison family, reports the Valley News.
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The Valley News also had an article on a sort of Christkindlmarkt that was set up in Hanover over the holidays. Fantastic. So many nice touches could be added to downtown, especially on South Main Street above Lebanon Street, whether by raising the street level (happening?), adding bollards, or limiting traffic and parking. An inviting town square could be delineated in front of the Municipal Building.
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The Valley News reports on the college’s pullback from the idea of a new biomass heating plant. This is probably good news for the preservation of the old smokestack.
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There are some great photos in the annual roundup of shots by Dartmouth photographers. The aerial of Baker Lawn does look like a De Stijl painting, as noted. It might look even more like a work in batik, an impression created by the imperfections in the edges of the paths and the snow-covered roofs.
The master plan: further reactions
See the previous post on this topic.
The two locations of Geisel
The new-look Remsen/Vail at the north end of campus is an improvement and looks like the work of Leers Weinzapfel Architects, the designers of the reskinned Dana Library/Anonymous Hall adjacent (page 44 of the plan).
Remsen-Vail
If the Geisel School of Medicine were to relocate to new facilities, this opportunity for adaptive reuse can accommodate up to 550 undergraduate student beds and/or academic space, and could include new facade materials, enlarged windows, and a welcoming new entrance.
One might have no particular objection to the architecture but still recoil at the idea of placing undergrad beds or academic space this far away from the center. Undergraduate uses do not belong this far north. As a ten-year swing space allowing the rehabilitation of other dorms, perhaps, but it is just too far away.
The larger point here is that Geisel seems uncertain about its location. That the school is split between its traditional home here at the north end of campus (including its fancy admissions office in a renovated 19th century hospital ward) and its technical and efficient home alongside the suburban hospital south of town has always seemed strange. Students begin their education in Hanover and conclude it at the hospital in Lebanon.
Whether this split the result of intention or of nothing more than the lack of a replacement for Remsen/Vail at the DHMC campus, the plan suggests that Geisel could leave Hanover and make its DHMC site a true and complete med school campus. If that happens, it would be hard to argue that the vacated Geisel buildings in Hanover should not be used by Dartmouth (although a similar argument was successful in the past, when most of the hospital complex was demolished; VSBA had suggested that the Modernist main tower, at least, be renovated as a dormitory).
The proposals for a med school campus at the south end of the DHMC complex are so sensible as to raise the question of why they have not been built or at least planned already. A main building, some housing, and a modest green space for a medical school? Perhaps it is a measure of the committed suburbanity of the hospital complex that such a thing has not been accomplished thus far. The Geisel campus can grow as a grid of independent buildings flanking outdoor spaces rather than as the nucleus of a radiant sunburst of parking lots.
The Grand Limited-Access Road
New limited-access roadway for shuttles, emergency vehicles, and bicycles connecting Sachem Village and DHMC.
The transit link across the woods between Sachem Village and DHMC stands out as completely obvious and necessary, even to someone who knows the area only from maps.
Is the access limitation placed on the road because it goes through the residential neighborhood of Sachem Village? If there were some way to make it a proper road, it could take a lot of pressure off downtown Hanover. Yes, limited-access streets are pleasant and necessary — perhaps South Main Street above Lebanon Street? — but preventing this road from handling traffic seems cruel to Hanover.
The future has already arrived in the West End
Not much is novel here because there are two major buildings currently under construction. The rest of the area, while populated with buildings from the Sixties and Seventies, is still something of a blank slate. West End Green might be a bit vague (trees will do that) but it is an improvement.
Speaking of the Tuck School, it always seems to be threatening to leave:
In the future, the Tuck complex could be renovated and expanded to advance its competitive edge. Or, if relocated to new facilities, Woodbury and Chase, originally built as student housing, as well as Tuck Hall could be repurposed for undergraduate
housing, providing up to 230 beds.
Putting undergrad beds in the Tuck complex would be a neat trick, but moving Tuck out to some shiny, flimsy complex at an isolated forest site in Lebanon would be a blow to Dartmouth.
Does the college need to give a territorial guarantee to keep Tuck on campus, perhaps a promise of a portion of the future sites around West End Green and an access corridor or exclave on West Wheelock Street, a B-School Kaliningrad?
Minor points
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What is the unlabeled property to the northwest on the map on page 5? It is the college-owned woods in Corinth, VT (see page 60).
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The Covid-19 information in the master plan makes for a timely preface but already seems a bit dated in this 30-year plan.
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“Gibson” is spelled “Givson” on an image on page 36.
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“Hanover Campus” is inconsistently capitalized. The version with a lowercase “c” seems preferable.
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Calling it “the College Park BEMA” is odd. There is no other Bema to confuse it with, so “the Bema” or “the Bema in College Park” would suffice. And “BEMA” does not need to be in all capital letters — the word “BEMA” in caps is a backronym (a back-formed acronym) for Big Empty Meeting Area, and as such makes a cute campus legend, but the Greek-derived word after which this space is named is “Bema.”
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Is it strange to call it “Mount Moosilauke Ravine Lodge”? The mountain is Mt. Moosilauke and the lodge seems like it should be called the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.
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The map on page 9 showing new nodes hopping around campus is neat and insightful, but it could make its point even more strongly if it showed Thayer School’s time in Bissell Gym (on the Hop plaza, basically) from 1912 to 1939. And if the map substituted Geisel for MHMH, it could show three nodes instead of two: first the Medical School (on the Burke Lab site, from 1812 to the 1950s[?]), then MHMH, then the hospital complex in Lebanon.
The master plan: initial impressions
See the latest version of Planning for Possibilities on the Presentations and Outcomes page. So far, the October 2020 draft plan and a slide deck have been posted.
The new master plan is very impressive.
The scope of the plan is impressive. It is the first master plan for the college to at least account for all college properties (the map on page 5 is zoomed out so far that it shows part of Canada) and the first plan to frame the campus in a regional context. Especially where transit is concerned, the Organic Farm and DHMC really do need to appear on the same map.
The document is more readable and less technical than its predecessors. Its creators made the interesting decision to use oblique aerial views exclusively — meaning that none of the proposals for development appear as flat “plans.”
The potential projects on campus look excellent. Placing a building on the lawn of Shabazz Hall makes so much sense. The natural site for a new physical sciences building beyond Burke of course requires yet another demolition of Dragon. The proposals for Bartlett and Wheeler additions are fantastic, with the latter being particularly bold. The natural row behind Mass Row could incorporate an abutment of, or at least an entry plaza for, the Cemetery Bridge at its south end. The Bema pavilion makes sense (maybe the place will see more use if it has a proper covered stage?), though erecting a frame building would be unusual in that space.
One might wish the planners had considered building on the vacant lots in front of Sanborn and south of Blunt as well. And why not show a building site on Berry Row between Kemeny and Moore? It has always been planned that way, even going back to VSBA days after the purchase of the hospital property. Oh well. (The plan also does not clearly note the anticipated Ledyard Canoe Club replacement, but that is not important.)
Here’s hoping that the college preserves the old frame buildings that are now standing on the various development sites. There are two buildings on the site behind Mass Row, two on the Choate Road corner, two in front of Thompson, and two on College Street next to Sudikoff. There is also a certain amount of appeal to the idea of saving Sudikoff itself, the village-like assemblage of brick house-forms, and of saving Raven, but neither building is of a scale to stand up to Moore Hall next door. Clearing the Sudikoff corner is the breaking of eggs to make an omelet in this plan.
The big question: Hilton Field (the western portion of the golf course)
The plan proposes that the oldest portion of the shuttered golf course be turned into an arboretum. This is a clever choice, especially given the neighborhood and its sensitivities. An arboretum really is typologically and functionally similar to a golf course or, for that matter, a city park or a cemetery. In the end, this minor change in use might amount to nothing more than ceding the land to nature as at the adjacent (and intermingled!) Pine Park. And yet an arboretum will not take Hilton Field off the table for some distant future development if it is needed. Still, the college would probably be remiss not to put a half-dozen houses for sale to faculty along Hilton Field Road at the same time it lays out the arboretum. What an opportunity!
East and North of the Green
The Thel sculpture is not mentioned, but it might be endangered:
Fairchild Field
A new shared surface for cars, pedestrians, and bikes, in lieu of a vehicular access road, creates better pedestrian connections between the Physical Sciences Complex and the Historic Core.
Anything that replaces the access road would be an improvement.
The plan devotes a great deal of attention to Fairchild Tower. It proposes a new interior stair and a bridge (to Wilder, presumably). Fairchild has always seemed a chilly, hollow signpost, but the illustrations in the plan remind us of how stylish it is.
Moving south across Wheelock Street, the big Vox Lane redevelopment image shows McKenzie and the Store House as not only preserved but expanded vertically into a “wellness” building — fantastic. That will be one of the most architecturally interesting buildings on campus. (This proposal was not included in an August presentation image and thus seems to be a recent inspiration.)
South of the Store House is shown a parking garage on the FO&M corner. Fine, but one hopes that it will have retail uses on the ground level. It could make for a neat visitor entry to campus: you drive to town, park in the garage, follow the signs to the back door of Wilson Hall — the new admissions office, in this plan — and when you embark on your campus tour and pass through Wilson’s great arch you see the Green laid out before you.
It is good to see the athletics promenade alongside Leverone (page 52). And Piazza Nervi is on the map, described this way:
Park St Gateway
A gracious gateway to athletics and the campus visually connects the Leverone Fieldhouse and Thompson Arena, both historic modernist structures designed by Pier Luigi Nervi.
That “gateway” project would move the two houses currently blocking the view of Thompson Arena and, interestingly, would add a roadway in front of Thompson. Clever: lining a lawn with streets sets it off as a public space, a public green.
North Campus
The architects’ image of a Maynard Street Green on page 45 looks like a Currier and Ives print.
The plan mentions the possibility of moving all existing uses out of the Rope Ferry Road buildings and turning the buildings into graduate dorms. Interesting! But wait, do they mean vacating Dick’s House too? They do, apparently — which would be too bad. Would there be any infirmary on campus, or have student health services become a collection of vending machines? Presumably the infirmary would go to the “wellness” building at McKenzie. If that is what it takes to save McKenzie, then so be it.
And beyond: Land banks on Lyme Road
The new buildings north of the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center are a great start, and there could be many more here. Dewey Lot has so much space, as stated in the report, and so much potential. The depression here creates a fantastic opportunity for an extensive below-grade parking deck. As stated on this site in the past, however, the functions placed here should not be college-related. This is no more a part of the campus than is the CVS (Grand Union) building, and college ownership of this site does not change that fact.
Moving up along Lyme Road outside of town: The two alternative land bank locations labeled “Site 1” will inevitably be suburban and oriented to Lyme Road, notwithstanding the plan’s idealism about self-driving cars. They really will have parking lots, because they will become office parks and convenience stores. As far as the choice between near and far, the farther site, next to the fire station, seems preferable. There is less chance that it will contain anything that undergraduates would need to visit.
More on the two locations of Geisel, the Grand Limited-Access Road, and the rest of the plan in a future post.
The College Street sidewalk and other topics
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The college is replacing some of the glass curtain walls on the Black Family Visual Arts Center, including the large etched glass window that clad the upper levels of the building over the west (campus) entrance (former link). The replacement glass here and over the south entrance will be less distracting and provide better management of daylight. The etched design over the west entrance, however lovely up close, did always look from a distance like creeping frost or condensation inside a multipane window whose seal had failed.
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Very interesting: the college is putting a lot of effort into installing a sidewalk along College Street north of the site of the old DG House (see North College Street Sidewalk weekly update). Sidewalks are good, and this one must have been deemed necessary, but there was something romantic about the way College Park spilled wildly toward the shoulder of the road, untamed. Just look at this barely-trammeled wilderness, as seen in Google Street View during July 2019:
At any rate, the project involves what appears to be a hand-laid stone retaining wall intended as a counterpart to the existing wall to the south. (Does that existing wall incorporate foundation stones from the Victorian DG House?)
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Dartmouth News has a video on the wooden sculpture by Ursula von Rydingsvard called Wide Babelki Bowl that now stands northwest of Rollins Chapel. (It is not really a southern counterpart to Thel; that honor was held by Telemark Shortline, which has been removed.) As Jessica Hong notes in the video, the sculpture has a definite kinship with the cyclopean masonry of Rollins; it is also reminiscent of the multi-stone sculptures of Angkor Wat.
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The college is going ahead with the DOC House renovation (project page) with funding from the Class of 1969. Compare the project page image with the image at The Call to Lead to see the exterior changes on the Occom Pond facade.
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It is not clear if there is an earlier public mention than this April 20 article, but the trim Sports Pavilion by Burnham Field that was built in 2007 and expanded a decade later has finally been given a name: Reilly Pavilion.
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Housing developer Michaels Student Living will build an $84 million graduate student housing complex on Mt. Support Road, near the hospital, in coordination with the college (see renderings in Dartmouth News release, site plan in The Dartmouth). The designer is JSA Design of Portsmouth (Boston Real Estate Times).
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The Valley News reports that plans are afoot to save the Hanover Country Club as a nine-hole course. The northern two-thirds of the course, comprising holes seven through 15, would be used in the new course; the southern portion of the course, lying south of the bulk of Pine Park and including the clubhouse area and the bridge over Girl Brook, would be made available for possible college expansion.
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The Valley News has a story on a new cold chamber to be built at CRREL.
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The steel frame of the Irving Institute has been topped off (Dartmouth News).
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Most construction projects, including the construction of a large dormitory at the corner of Crosby and Wheelock Streets, are on hold, reported The Dartmouth in June.
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Vermonter Putnam Blodgett ’53 died on March 20 (Valley News). He led the Moosilauke advisory committee, and his woods were the source of the unique forked white pine called Slingshot that supports the second-level bridge as well as the roof of the new Ravine Lodge (see photos in Jim Collins, Welcome to the Woods, DAM (Jan-Feb 2018)). I recall him at the 1995 Senior Symposium talking about the 1949 Tug of War: apparently the regular tug of war between the freshmen and the seniors had come to be seen as too large and dangerous, so the college placed a huge log between the opposing teams and attached multiple ropes to each side. Unfortunately, one of the ropes came loose and the log went flying in the opposite direction, toward the side with more pulling force. He said it was a miracle that no one was badly injured.
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A ring bearing the letter “Z” featured prominently in a photo in the July 24 Washington Post story on the Pebble Mine project in Alaska. The photograph, by Alex Milan Tracy, showed the right hand of then-CEO Tom Collier, a U.Va. graduate. It’s a safe bet that the ring indicates membership in the Z Society (Wikipedia).
Roy W. Banwell, Jr.
Symbols, including weathervanes and flags
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:
Replacing the River stair, the one made of earth and wood, and other topics
- 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.