Category Archives: Hanover/Leb./Nor’ch.

About buildings in Hanover and Lebanon Townships, N.H., and Norwich, Vt. as they relate to Dartmouth College, which owns land in each place.

Keystone for the Rivercrest Roundabout: The Co-Op Food Store

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Trumbull-Nelson has demolished the old Co-Op Food Store and gas station at the intersection of Lyme and Reservoir Roads. The Co-Op is building a replacement on the site (more info) designed by UK Architects of Hanover; the minutes of the Planning Board (pdf) indicate that the landscape architects are ORW Landscape Architects & Planners of Norwich.

The new store, which will not contain a gas station, will face the traffic circle at the intersection and will complement Dartmouth’s Rivercrest redevelopment across Lyme Road, forming a part of what is in essence a new town north of the golf course.

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[Update 07.06.2013: Broken link to more Co-Op info removed, broken link to replacement store replaced.]
[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to 16 October 2007 Planning Board minutes removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to demolition article removed.]

More changes for Hanover’s frame houses

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The Office of Residential Life plans to renovate the ca. 1812 James C. Brown House at 26 East Wheelock as a sorority, The Dartmouth reports. A second building slated to become a sorority house is the Parkside Apartments, a Jens Larson faculty housing block at 17 East Wheelock Street. The firm doing the work is Haynes & Garthwaite.

Meanwhile, the status page for the 4 Currier Street project notes that the three frame buildings on the site have been demolished: 4 Currier Place, 6 Sargent Place, and an outbuilding at 18 South Street.

[Update 09.07.2008: Haynes & Garthwaite information added and Parkside Apartments substituted for Ledyard Apartments, named incorrectly in original post.]

[Update 05.07.2009: Leftover reference to Jens Larson, correct when the post referred to Ledyard Apartments, removed.]

Wilson Hall elm removed

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Ask Dartmouth has an article on campus trees, a popular topic; this one mentions that the elm in front of Wilson Hall (the tall one on the small grass oval surrounded by the paved path?) had to be removed. The OPDC also had a notice about this:

6/30/08 – IMPORTANT NOTICE:

The elm tree in front of Wilson on East Wheelock Street was diagnosed with Dutch Elm Disease. In order to prevent the spread of the disease to other adjacent elms on campus and in the town, the tree will be removed today, Monday June 30th, by the Town of Hanover. In some cases,trees can be saved with treatment and removal of the affected areas, but in this case the disease was too widespread as determined by the College and Town staff working together.

Someone should document Clement Hall

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The former automobile dealership of Clement Hall, whose main block was built in 1914 using mill construction, will be demolished within days. The Dartmouth. Many governments require landowners seeking permission to demolish historic buildings to mitigate the effects of the destruction of history at least somewhat by documenting the building to HABS standards. While Dartmouth has announced its voluntary compliance with regulations designed to protect the natural environment, it seems to lag behind others, including state schools, when it comes to the cultural environment. One hopes that a basic set of large-format black and white photographs, at least, will survive after Clement Hall is torn down.

Arts Center — another view

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The article in The Dartmouth has a depiction of the Visual Arts Center from another angle:



visual arts center

image from The Dartmouth

The story in the Valley News, in which one person on a College committee of town advisors calls the building “hideous,” has been picked up by the Nashua Telegraph, the Boston Globe, Burlington’s WPTZ tv, the [Laconia?] Foster’s Daily Democrat, and others.

It is unfortunate that the materials presented to the committee are not available on line, and that readers have only the two images from which to judge the design. It is also unfortunate that some of the committee members quoted failed to give thoughtful reasons to object to the design. Dartmouth will probably ask for more than unsubstantiated, unsophisticated gut reactions before it considers redesigning this building.

For example, calling the design too “urban” is like calling the Green too “grassy.” The site is urban, as is all of downtown Hanover. This part of Hanover is not a traditional New England village, it’s an ex-automobile dealership located between an industrial heating plant and a faux-industrial auditorium. The site is presently occupied by a parking lot, some College lawns, an industrial building, and a prettified one-time workers’ housing unit. A portion of Lebanon Street might be a part of the campus in a technical sense, but it is not in an aesthetic sense. The arts center does not belong on the site of Parkhurst, and Parkhurst does not belong here.

Critics who term the design “Southwestern” might be reacting to the way the wall colorings are depicted in the renderings. The renderings available on line do not do justice to the complex natural coloration of the building’s large panels of slate cladding. These panels are probably black lace rust slate from Norway and can be seen in photographs at Vermont Structural Slate and in the Harvard architects’ design for a branch of the Boston Public Library (Flickr search; a particularly nice photo). People will walk up to this building just to touch it.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to Telegraph and WPTZ removed.]

4 Currier Place, Dartmouth’s latest downtown office building

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The Real Estate Office page has the best information on the new three-level commercial building about to go up across from the parking garage behind 7 Lebanon Street, sort of across from the Howe.

The Valley News reports that site prep begins today and will involve the demolition of two frame houses behind C&A’s Pizza.

Businessweek also has a short report that explains, as the others do, that the building’s first occupant will be the Studio Art Department once Clement Hall is demolished.

The one view of the building available on the Real Estate site unfortunately does not suggest that it will live up to the standard set by Childs Bertman Tseckares at 7 Lebanon.

New Hanover book

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The third Images of America book about Hanover by Frank J. Barrett, Jr. is now available: Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover. Its coverage of the old frame buildings that preceded today’s brick commercial blocks downtown is excellent. There are photos of obscure campus buildings, Rowley Hall and Allen Hall, and rare photos of relatively temporary or mundane buildings such as the Hanover Diner and the first Sachem Village, both on Lebanon Street. Hanover before 1900 or 1920 seems to have been characterized by jumbled small-scale clapboard-sided buildings — the level and density and great variety of materials and details visible at the level of the pedestrian was extremely high.

South Block redevelopment continues

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The Valley News recently noted that Dartmouth’s real estate office is planning to build a commercial building on Currier Place, which marks the eastern edge of the South Block project.

In an article on an unrelated topic, The Dartmouth published a photo of 68-72 South Main Street, which is the largest commercial building in South Block. The western (Main Street) facade occupies the right side of the photo.

The Dartmouth has reported and provided a brief on a three-level, 72-room hotel planned to open on South Street around 2010. It is not clear whether this is the Currier Street project above, but it does not seem to be. Olympia Development has a rendering of the hotel.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Olympia removed.]
[Update 07.16.2008: These are two different projects. The Dartmouth Real Estate Office is building a commercial building at 4 Currier Street, diagonally opposite the northeast corner of the South Block.]

Residential college topics

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Yale is preparing to build a new residential college, and the Yale Alumni Magazine has an article called “Your Dream College Here” (March/April 2008). Many students and alumni appear to oppose any new college as a threat to Yale’s sense of community (even though that community, for most, seems to derive from loyalty to one’s own residential college) or on the basis of the particular site chosen for this complex.

The University of Durham, rebranded in 2005 as Durham University, is probably the third-oldest university in England (1832) and has a multi-sport competition with the Oxbridge schools called the Doxbridge Tournament. The university comprises a federation of residential colleges in the center of the city, including one in the ancient castle itself, possibly the most fantastic site for a college anywhere in the world. The nominal head of the university is its Chancellor, Bill Bryson, a former Hanover-area resident.

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to article replaced.]

Walkability

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The College’s real estate arm has posted news of its large New-Urbanist housing redevelopment up by the Rugby Clubhouse and Pat & Tony’s. It will take the name of the prior housing tract of the early 1960s, Rivercrest.

According to a list by City-Data.com, the cities over 5,000 people with the highest percentage of people walking to work are (predictably) small places centered around a military base, a college, or some combination of the two:

1. West Point, N.Y. (pop. 7,138): 57.7%
2. Air Force Academy, Colo. (pop. 7,526): 56.3%
3. Fort Gordon, Ga. (pop. 7,754): 53.0%
4. Twentynine Palms Base, Cal. (housing, pop. 8,413): 48.0%
5. Lackland AFB, Tex. (pop. 7,123): 47.4%
6. Hanover, N.H. (pop. 8,162): 47.2%

The list lends support to the general sense that city planning conducted by a relatively authoritarian central body creates superior places.

In some ways it is surprising to see Hanover on the list, since the story of Dartmouth’s growth over the last 30 years is that of faculty moving out, the “Hanoverizing” of Lyme and Norwich, the creation of school-supported suburbs such as Centerra and Grasse Road, and so on.

(Other tidbits from the website’s lists: The towns in the four zip codes with the lowest crime are named Sleepy Hollow, Pleasantville, Economy, and Prospect. The city over 50,000 with the lowest average temperature is Anchorage, at 34.3 degrees F, which handily beats Duluth and Fargo and a surprising number of cities in Arizona. It is probably a quirk of the zip code divisions in Fairbanks that prevents that city from appearing on the list.)

Hanover projects of ORW Landscape Architects

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ORW Landscape Architects & Planners of Norwich provide, among their transportation design examples, information about a project for Hanover: a set of street standards that fits with the Brook McIlroy plan.

The site includes drawings of a reworked south entrance into town (note the commercial building in the parking lot of Grand Union/CVS, as Brook McIlroy suggested); an eastern welcome by Memorial Field focused on a proposed corner tower and building on the very important site where the FO&M buildings are now; and two proposed street sections, one for Lebanon street with Brook McIlroy’s wide sidewalks for cafe seating.

The firm has also done a riverfront park design study, a trail plan, and a suburban development proposal in Lebanon, a proposal for corridor enchancements in Norwich, and a proposal for new buildings in downtown White River.

College buys two Larson houses for campus groups

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Dartmouth’s design office updated its complete list of projects in December (pdf). Renovations of New Hampshire Hall and the Inn are in the works, along with the creation or upgrading of a multipurpose sports field.

Dartmouth has also bought and is renovating the neighboring houses at 25 and 27 South Park Street and plans to rent each one to a sorority. Alpha Xi Delta will move from Webster Avenue, where it has rented the Beta Theta Pi House, and Alpha Phi will occupy a house for the first time, The Dartmouth reports. Both have been identified as designs of Jens Larson.

25 South Park

This is the front (west) facade of number 25.

27 South Park

This is number 27. To the right at number 29 is Fire & Skoal, also a Larson design.

27 South Park

The houses screen Thompson Arena.

Hanover Country Club logo changes

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The Hanover Country Club no longer uses its ski jump logo, and it seems to have adopted the pine from Dartmouth’s Bicentennial flag, as the Club’s home page indicates.

The jump was demolished in 1993, and there is a plaque on its site.

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[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to flag replaced; broken link to plaque image removed.]