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.

College floats three sites for the new heating plant

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First, the most important news: The college “will be decommissioning the current power plant, removing the stack and repurposing the building” (Planning Board Meeting Minutes 5 February 2019 pdf). That is reassuring. Naturally one would love to see the landmark 1958 stack retained as well and repurposed as a memorial column or a pedestal for public art, but we will take what we can get.

At a public meeting last month, the college revealed the three places that are in the running to become the site of the replacement heating plant (Valley News 22 May, Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth). The sites are:

1. The hill behind the Dewey parking lot, east of Rope Ferry Road and Occom Pond. This would not be the first power plant in the neighborhood, of course: the MHMH plant had a tall smokestack and stood in the parking lot behind 5 Rope Ferry Road (roughly behind the red BMW in this photo from Google Street View):

2. A site along Lyme Road by the Hanover Country Club’s maintenance facility garage at the south end of the golf course. This is the best we can do on Street View:

3. The third location is the former home of Trumbull-Nelson Construction Co., next to the Hanover Public Works Department, on Route 120.

The third option is the most distant and seems to be the only one that would not require trucks full of wood chips to drive through the center of town several times a day. That site would require a lengthy insulated underground pipeline to link up with the existing steam tunnel and pipe network, however. The pipeline can be no more than two miles long if it is to be efficient (Planning Board pdf). According to the map above, the route to the T-N site is about 1.6 miles, following roadways.

Because of its distance from campus and the possibility that it would keep some trucks out of town, the favorite site among the public seems to be the T-N site (Valley News 23 May).

A BASIC historical marker

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  • The Alumni Council minutes of May 17, 2019 describe an overview of the master plan provided by Director of Campus Planning Joanna Whitcomb. The master plan site welcomes comments; it sounds like the process is moving along, and the next steps include the development of draft principles. Dartmouth’s house system still awaits its Edward Harkness.
  • The DOC House, on Occom Pond, is being renovated to designs by Randall T. Mudge & Associates.
  • Concord Monitor columnist David Brooks has been proposing tech-related historical markers for New Hampshire highways, and now the state has taken him up on the idea, placing a marker near the college to recognize the creation of BASIC. This page at this site proposed a similar set of markers for the sites of Kiewit and Bradley-Gerry back in 1999; the state’s BASIC marker, which is required to stand alongside a state highway, lacks the clever gimmick of teaching the reader a little BASIC.
  • The Dartmouth Hall renovation is finally being started, with Boston architects designLAB signed up. It’s worth reiterating that the building was completed in 1906 and extensively renovated in the 1930s.
  • Big firm Einhorn Yaffee Prescott is designing a renovation of Reed Hall, and similar renovations are planned for Thornton in 2020-2021.
  • Trumbull-Nelson sold its headquarters on Route 120 to the college in 2008 and has now moved to a new site down the hill from the airport in West Lebanon (Valley News). The Route 120 site had served as a hog farm in some previous incarnation (Valley News).
  • A guide to the improvements coming to the Tuck campus mentions some projects that will connect the Tuck campus to the new Irving Institute building fronting Murdough.
  • The idea behind the manifestly fake quotation attributed to Lincoln (see this post) seems to be spreading. Now the statement that “A nation that forgets its past has no future” is attributed to Churchill, in this Virginia sign (by the Patrick Henry Tea Party). Online searches of Churchill’s writings and speeches have so far failed to turn up evidence that he ever said that.

New building projects and other topics

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  • The Valley News has an article on the 50th anniversary of the Parkhurst takeover.
  • The DOC House at the head of Occom Pond is going to be renovated when there are enough donations.
  • The Library is working with Russell Scott Steedle & Capone Architects, Inc., to design a new off-site storage facility:

     
    Dartmouth plans to build a 20,000 sq ft stand-alone, purpose-built storage facility to house the library’s low-use print collections and College records. This facility, to be located on Dartmouth’s 56 Etna Road property in Lebanon, will replace the existing Library offsite storage facility[,] which is full.

  • An article in The Dartmouth details progress on the Indoor Practice Facility (this is the controversial project in the Sunken Garden) and Campus Services has information on the progress of the Boathouse addition.
  • The year the bookstore died: Earlier this year, both the Dartmouth Bookstore (ca. 1872) and Wheelock Books (1993) closed up.
  • Now that the Dartmouth Bookstore is gone, the Gitsis Building is being heavily renovated, the Dartmouth reports:

     
    The building’s owner, Jay Campion, said that the renovations are already well underway and should be complete by July, which will allow the three tenants to start setting up their shops. According to Campion, the renovation process has involved a complete makeover.

    “We’ll be rebuilding the entire storefront and have basically gutted the building,” Campion said. “We’re re-insulating and replacing the heating and air conditioning systems for this and dividing the space for the three separate tenants on the first floor.”

  • This public domain collection of images from the National Archives has an interesting group of photos of campus during WWI. Most of them show the trenches that were dug behind the gym, presumably where Leverone stands today. This photo shows a group of cars and trucks parked inside the southeast (or possibly northwest) corner of the gymnasium itself.
  • Another new project: Renovations of the bluestone plaza in front of the Hopkins Center. The paving stones will be replaced with concrete pavers.
  • Wilson Architects have posted an updated flythrough of the Thayer/CS Building. Now it is clear that the retaining wall to the west is actually the entrance to the garage; in this rendering, it is just vegetated rather than topped by a parapet and walkway.
  • Not sure whether the new Planning, Design and Construction website has been mentioned here.
  • In this Street View the Google employee with his camera backpack is reflected in the windows of Berry Library — as he walks through campus tour group.
  • This post at Granite Geek solves the mystery of whether the NHDHR database called EMMIT is a reference to the derogatory student term “Emmit,” meaning a local person (or really, a New Hampshireman, not so much a townie). The answer is no.
  • Lawrence Biemiller has a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed called “Make Way for Trenches! A College Plans to Scrap Its Entire Heating System.” It has good information on the upcoming heat plant and steam-to-water transition projects.
  • When the new biomass plant is completed, the college will decommission the old heating plant behind New Hampshire Hall. Then it will have an empty building, historic and full of character and eminently reusable, right in the middle of the Arts District. The current feeling seems to be that the building will be demolished, along with its landmark smokestack. Here’s hoping that either or both can be saved, and if they are to be destroyed, at least they can be thoroughly documented first. The University of Virginia is doing the right thing by scanning University Hall, a 1965 domed concrete basketball arena.
  • The Anthropology Department is leading n archeological aexcavation of an 18th-century house site on campus. That’s fantastic. It’s a pity that no one was doing this in the 1930s (or even the late 1980s, before the construction of the steam tunnel disturbed the east side of the Green).
  • Unrelated: A week and a half ago, Union Pacific 4014, a 1940s steam locomotive with a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement, was brought back to life. Having seen a couple of Big Boys in impossibly derelict condition in Colorado and Wyoming in my youth, I never thought one of these locomotives would run again. Here’s a film of the colossus, double-headed with UP 844 (a 4-8-4): Film by Jaw Tooth. Here’s another clip by airrailimages. Astonishing.

Master planning picks up steam

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The master planning site is now seeking comments.

An article in The Dartmouth on the first master planning town hall meeting has this to say:

  • The Golf Course: “The Hanover Country Club could also be repurposed in the plan, as it is ‘losing a significant amount of money,’ Moore said. He added that the Hanover Country Club will continue to operate as a golf course through 2020. However, its fate after 2020 will be determined by the master plan. Other land that could be repurposed includes Lewiston Lot, an area on the Vermont side of Ledyard Bridge that currently operates as a parking lot.”
  • Rivercrest: “Graduate student housing was also mentioned several times during the town hall. The Rivercrest property, located north of the Hanover Country Club, is one of the areas being considered for future graduate student housing, Moore said.”

An article on the master plan in the Valley News has lots of interesting tidbits:

  • The history of master planning: “The development of a new master plan was started in 2012 but was never completed nor was a draft made available to the public following the departure of then-Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim.”
  • The possible (palatial?) Country Club: “One possibility for the future of the Hanover Country Club is the addition of a new clubhouse on Lyme Road. Keniston confirmed that a group of Tuck students are currently evaluating the financial viability of such a venue.”
  • Locations for third-party grad student housing: “According to Keniston, $500,000 has been approved for a private developer to build 250 beds either at 401 Mount Support Road or Sachem Village, which already houses graduate students.” See also the later Valley News story on the invitation for proposals.
  • The new heat plant: “As for the future location of a proposed Dartmouth biomass plant, Keniston said the technical analysis is almost complete to announce two to four potential sites. A community forum will be held mid-May to solicit feedback on the locations from local residents.”

Here’s a scoop from a recent piece by D. Maurice Kreis1D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019). about the new Hood:

Showing off the expansion and renovation designed by the world-renowned New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Stomberg casually mentioned that the Hood opted to stick with its existing location at the center of campus rather than move to a more distant spot that had been offered, which he characterized as being near the Connecticut River.

Instead, Stomberg said, that’s where Dartmouth will put the new central heating plant it recently announced plans to construct so as to stop burning oil and start burning sustainably harvested wood.

That’s interesting. A site by the River? Could it be Rivercrest? Now that we know that grad student housing will be built in Lebanon, could Rivercrest be on the list of sites for the heating plant? Rivercrest is the next development along the River after CRREL:

*

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References
↑1 D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019).

Various construction topics

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

    The road is about half a mile long. He stated they will be working within the existing asphalt and drainage swales in order to maintain the existing stone walls. Lighting along the road will be minimal. Fixtures will be spaced 80-120 feet apart. Better access to the loading dock at Murdough will be provided. From Wheelock Street, Old Tuck Drive will be a two way street and give access to the Ledyard Parking Lot. After the turn off to the parking lot, the drive becomes a one way access. There is a pedestrian crossing point marked by a raised speed table. Guardrails will be installed along Old Tuck Drive. There is a bike lane separated from vehicle traffic by a double yellow line. Close to Tuck Drive there will be sidewalks on both sides of the drive.

    […]

    Mr. Scherding stated the campus was open with busy streets and students were used to crossing streets and sharing roads. He stated the Director of Public Works suggested narrowing the road at pedestrian crossings to make it safer. Mr. Scherding said they talked about having a physical barrier between the vehicles and the bike lanes but currently it is not on the plans. ESMAY asked what the guardrail would look like. Mr. Scherding stated it would look like the existing granite bollards.

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

Speculative map of potential heating plant sites

Various history and design topics

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  • Rauner has an exhibit on the bicentennial of the Dartmouth College Case.
  • The winning design for the Sestercentennial Bookplate has been announced.
  • A Dartmouth News story from last fall stated that the Hovey Murals were to be moved from the grill room/rathskeller in the basement of Thayer Dining Hall (’53 Commons) to the Hood’s Remote Storage facility.
  • The Valley News reports that an alumna is planning to create a bookstore/café/bar in the former Dartmouth Bookstore space on Main Street.
  • The Office of Planning, Design and Construction reports on the work its official drone.
  • The Valley News reported last fall that Lyme had rescinded an anti-climbing ordinance once it learned that Holt’s Ledge was actually owned by the college.
  • The active Norwich Historical Society seems to be thriving.
  • An interesting Ben Zimmer history of the term “ratf*cking” in Politico Magazine locates the origin of the word in college pranking and includes as its earliest citation a ca. 1937 Dartmouth reference.
  • Dartmouth Law School hasn’t been much in the news lately, but Arrested Development S5E13 (“The Untethered Sole”) does mention a character who is a member of the crack legal team “The Guilty Guys” and attended Dartmouth Law. 1See also California Gov. Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz of Bojack Horseman, introduced in S4E1: “It happens that I’m an excellent skier who won numerous medals in the sport when I raced for Dartmouth but, again, I am shocked that fact is relevant in the matter of selecting our state’s governor.” In Episode 7, he emerges after tunneling to reach a group trapped underground: “Vox Clamantis in Deserto. It is I, Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz.”
  • Macworld has an article on longstanding independent Mac programs, and it features Fetch, the ftp program that was begun at Dartmouth in 1989 (I remember using it on System 6 in 1991).

 

References
↑1 See also California Gov. Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz of Bojack Horseman, introduced in S4E1: “It happens that I’m an excellent skier who won numerous medals in the sport when I raced for Dartmouth but, again, I am shocked that fact is relevant in the matter of selecting our state’s governor.” In Episode 7, he emerges after tunneling to reach a group trapped underground: “Vox Clamantis in Deserto. It is I, Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz.”

College to build large new dorm next to gym

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As a site for the new dormitory (see the site search project page), the college has picked the corner of Crosby and East Wheelock Streets (Valley News). That was the arguably the best location of the three in contention, and it was the only one that campus master plans had previously designated for residential use.

The architect for the site selection is Sasaki, and that firm also seems to be the one signed up to design the new dormitory. One might predict that folks will be upset when they see the designs for a massive five-story, flat-roofed Modernist building between Alumni Gymnasium and Topliff Hall. For background, Sasaki designed Maria Hall at Regis College in Weston, Mass., the Wolf Ridge Apartments at N.C. State, and of course the temporary “house center” social buildings at Dartmouth.

Pictorial history for 250th; other topics

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  • The project of picking the location for a 350-bed dorm now has a project page. The architect for the site search is Sasaki.

  • On the Dana renovation, Leers Weinzapfel Associates has some slightly different images — the glass is much smokier, answering the obvious concern about solar heat gain.

  • A new college history book will be coming out as part of the 250th anniversary:

    Told through an eclectic mix of text and images, the new history will be beautifully produced, heavily illustrated and designed to capture the spirit, character, diverse voices, and accomplishments of the College, while implicitly making the case that Dartmouth’s historic contributions to society will only become greater as Dartmouth moves forward in the 21st century.

    (Book Arts Workshop bookplate competition.)

  • The guidelines (pdf) for that bookplate competition refer to an “Official Dartmouth 250 logo.” Such a logo does not seem to have been released yet. The anniversary website has a 250 logo that is made up from elements of the recent OCD visual identity and is part of a larger image described as a “Photo of Baker Library with 250 logo graphic overlay,” but that cannot be it.

  • The Valley News reports that a new apartment building is being proposed near Jesse’s.

  • Lebanon is on the way to acquiring control of the B&M Roundhouse between Main and the river in West Leb (Valley News; editorial). It is not clear what buildings on the site might be saved. Here is a Street View:

  • The Hood addition is finished and the museum will open on January 26, 2019 (Here in Hanover). The landscape design is by Hargreaves.

  • A charming story in the Valley News about the opening of a time capsule in Royalton.

  • The Planning Board minutes (pdf) refer to the moving-water rowing tanks in the new addition to the boathouse: “When flushing the tanks, the College will file a discharge permit with the Town. This is expected to occur once a year.” More information on the project is available from Dartmouth News and the Valley News.

  • The Planning Board has been discussing the Wheelock House project, focusing on the driveway and the maximum of 27 beds that might go into the house. Apparently there is a preservation easement (placed by the college when it owned the building?) that limits changes to the front facade and the interior of the first floor of the original main block of the building. There is no mention of documenting or otherwise preserving any part of the addition before it is demolished (minutes pdf).

  • There is a newish farmhouse brewery called Polyculture about a half-hour from campus (Valley News). This is a reminder that nobody seems to have run with the fact that Eleazar Wheelock harvested grain and operated a malthouse alongside the college.

  • The 1964 College on the Hill is on line (pdf).

  • The River Park development in West Leb is going ahead. The flagship building at 100 River Park is by Elkus Manfredi of Boston. Images of the building show that it partially encloses a Pratt truss bridge: that’s an actual bridge, right, and not a gimmick?

  • There has been no word in many months on the Sargent Block project, phase II of the big downtown redevelopment project south of the Hop and east of Main Street. Slate had an article on how schools are becoming real estate titans.

  • More from the Valley News: an article on reusing old skis in furniture and other objects.

  • A recent article in the Times focused on church reuse in Montreal; a minor further example is St. Jean-Baptiste, whose basement has become the headquarters of the ad firm Upperkut.

    West End work beginning

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    The Thayer School expansion involves a lot of changes to an entire district of the campus. Campus Services has information on the overall project.

    The page describes the new Thayer School building:

    The proposed building, to be located south of the Maclean Engineering Sciences Center, will be constructed over a new three-level parking garage. The garage will replace Cummings lot, and will significantly increase the number of parking spaces in this area. This project will also change the flow of traffic along West Wheelock Street and throughout the West End. Thayer Drive will close, and a new access road will be constructed specifically to provide access to the parking garage, and Thayer loading docks and the Channing Cox parking lot. Old Tuck Drive will be reconstructed and reopened to support one-way traffic heading from west to east. Improvements to the intersection of West Wheelock, West Street, and the new access road will also be made to improve access and safety of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers.

    Dartmouth News has a story on the proposal for a new set of stoplights on West Wheelock Street at Thayer Drive (see also the Valley News).

    We learn from the college news story that the Thayer School building “will be connected at ground level to the MacLean Engineering Sciences Center and Cummings Hall.” Presumably “at ground level” means aboveground as opposed to belowground, where the garage is. Because renderings show only a second-level bridge connecting the new building to MacLean; pedestrians will go under the bridge to follow the “Green to Blue” route. See this rendering reproduced from the latest Dartmouth Life print publication (showing the existing brick wall of MacLean in white on the right):

    image of Thayer School addition from Dartmouth Life

    Incidentally, the college’s project manager for the Beyer Blinder Belle West End Master Plan was planner Douwe Wieberdink; he’s now with BBB. And the landscape architects for the West End work are Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: perhaps one can feel a bit better about the fate of historic Tuck Drive following its partial demolition.

    The college presents the three dorm sites

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    The college has been giving presentations (Valley News article) on the potential sites for a proposed 350-bed dorm. An initial list of four sites was reduced to three when College Park was dropped as a site for even this smaller version of the dorm. The three remaining sites are the former site of Gilman, the current site of Dragon on College Street, and the current site of the tennis courts and the Onion on Crosby Street at East Wheelock.

    The suggestion on this site that scattering a few smaller additions around campus would be preferable to erecting a single 350-bed dormitory was based on the assumption that such a large building could not comfortably be shoehorned into a site as small as that on Crosby Street. Considering the fact that the entire McLaughlin cluster only contains 341 beds and has a footprint that is much too large to fit next to Alumni Gym, this assumption does not seem unreasonable.

    The reason the college gives for the 350-bed number is the desire to use this swing space dorm to house an entire “house community” at a time. Fair enough — that is what Princeton did when it built Scully and Bloomberg Halls, initially planning the buildings to house a rotating cast of residents of other residential colleges as their own buildings were being renovated.

    Adhering to the 350-bed goal will require all of the proposed buildings at Dartmouth to stand four and five stories high, and the Crosby Street site will require a building that stands five-and-a-half stories high.

    At any rate, Sasaki (presumably) created a site plan and a massing study for each site and had Boston-area designer Dongik Lee draw up two perspective views of each potential building. These are nicely done and show the same style of building in each location. They are introduced with the caveat that they are not actual building proposals but are for illustration only.

    Gilman and to a lesser extent College Street make sense as sites for some future building, but they do seem the lesser of the three sites for a new dormitory. College Street in particular begs to be left as forest or to become a site for an addition to Burke, part of a unified science complex 120 years in the making. (And constructing a building on College Street would bump off the Dragon Hall for at least the third time).

    The Crosby Street proposal, called “the Question Mark” because of its shape, seems the most popular among audience members. It is nearer to dining areas and has a site that is not more suitable for some other use.

    The site has indeed long been reserved for residential use — the 1998 master plan (pdf p. 19) states that “[a]t five stories, two residences on this site could accommodate 200 beds. Social and study spaces could be added to serve Topliff and New Hampshire [H]alls, too.” Interestingly, the 2001 plan and its 2002 update (pdf p. 12) would allow only 160 beds here.

    Mills dorm site presentation slide 24 concept image Crosby site

    Concept image of Crosby Street dorm from EVP Rick Mills presentation 16 August 2018

    A dormitory on Crosby Street could make nice companion to Topliff, which was the giant dorm of its own era. One hopes, however, that the building could be given a footprint that is large enough — and that extends far enough to the south — to reduce its height somewhat. The driveway to Alumni Gym could be realigned to the south, and Davis Varsity House could be moved to face Lebanon Street as part of Larson Square, giving the new dorm more space in which to spread out. And this is completely unrealistic, at least until a Southern Bypass is built, but wouldn’t it be nice if Crosby Street could be partially or completely closed to traffic? That would be one way to make more space.

    New images of Thayer/CS building

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    • Rob Wolfe, “Other College Initiatives Under Examination,” Valley News (3 December 2017):

      Mills also said at the meeting that officials were looking into establishing a public-private partnership to build a new biomass power plant, “essentially funding (the plant) without using our capital.”
      Dartmouth’s 119-year-old power plant in the center of town currently burns No. 6 fuel oil, which is incompatible with college plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050.
      Officials have said that a new biomass plant would not fit in the footprint of the current fuel oil plant off East Wheelock Street, but where that facility would go — assuming it’s ever commissioned — is still up in the air.

    • From the same article:

      Public-private partnerships also may allow the school to build new graduate student housing, Mills said at the meeting. Graduate students living in college-owned apartments off North Park Street recently were displaced by an unusually large undergraduate first-year class, he noted, and this could help alleviate an existing space crunch.

    • Excellent photos and a thorough article on the new Ravine Lodge: Jim Collins, “Welcome to the Woods,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (January-February 2018).

    • A Valley News article on the College Park/Shattuck petition.

    • A college news release of November 5, 2017:

      The board heard an update from KPMB Architects, designers of the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society building. The College intends for the building to be a hub of collaboration for students and faculty as Dartmouth works to produce the next generation of human-centered energy experts. Board members approved funding $6.5 million to complete the design phase, with a specific focus on modifications to the building’s exterior. The funding comes from gifts and capital renewal reserves.
      Other capital projects were discussed, including ongoing renovations to Dana Hall and the Hood Museum of Art, site investigation work for additional undergraduate student housing, and preliminary design proposals for an enhanced rowing training facility.

    • New images of the Thayer School/Computer Science Building are out. These add detail to the images already released. It is hard to tell without a plan, but the Busytown sectional view seems to be looking west through a north-south slice?

    • The Valley News reports on a big new downtown addition to the rear of the Bridgman Building, designed by UK Architects.

    • A conceptual site plan of Kendal’s suburban 40-apartment expansion on the Rivercrest property.

    Sports Pav expanded; other news

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    A tree tour of campus

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    • Dartmouth News writes on the Gilman demolition and Dana renovation.

      Dana entrance

      Dana Library entrance

    • The bench at Lebanon and Crosby is a puzzling object; it was being examined by two people when the Bing StreetSide View car drove by.

    • The Valley News:

      Trustees also reviewed designs for a building to house the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society, a new interdisciplinary initiative launched with an $80 million gift from the family behind Irving Oil.

      Lawrence declined to share the designs publicly, saying they were “highly preliminary.”

      Administrators in regulatory filings earlier this year discussed building a $73 million structure at the end of Tuck Mall, on the west end of campus.1 Rob Wolfe, “Dartmouth Readies Fundraising Push,” Valley News (19 September 2017).

    • Dartmouth News has a neat film on the Campus Arborist with footage taken by a drone flying up into the canopies of some of the grand trees on campus. There is a link to an interactive map of notable campus trees.

    • The monthly Enterprise magazine, a Valley News publication, has articles on the Trumbull-Nelson centennial and the Hanover Improvement Society.

    • One thing that a reader might want to learn after reading Alan Burdick’s interesting New Yorker article on watermelon snow is how watermelon snow actually tastes. It tastes like watermelon.

    • The county court has upheld the town’s rejection of the college’s proposal for an indoor practice facility or fieldhouse in the Sunken Garden (Valley News).

    • The new Moosilauke Ravine Lodge is opening October 14.

    ——————

     

    References
    ↑1 Rob Wolfe, “Dartmouth Readies Fundraising Push,” Valley News (19 September 2017).

    Reading between the lines on Shattuck’s fate

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    The September 19 letter from John Scherding to North Park Street neighbors1 The letter is posted with the Valley News story. Dartmouth is treading lightly now that the Town has succeeded in stopping the Indoor Practice Facility. states that “if we decide to move forward, the Bema, Bartlett Tower, and the special character of the park would be preserved.” The same phrase appears in the FAQ. What’s missing? Shattuck Observatory.

    In an interview with the Valley News, Rick Mills said “When you triage the things up there, the things that rise to the absolute top are Bema and the Bartlett Tower.” There is no mention of the historic observatory, designed by Ammi Burnham Young and built in 1854.

    In the September 20 Dartmouth News story by Susan Boutwell, the Bema and Bartlett Tower are described in some detail, but Shattuck Observatory is not mentioned at all. The College Park project page has no mention of existing architectural resources — only “the distinct topography, ecology, and landscape” of the site. The map is described as showing “our residential neighbors and the natural spaces to be preserved.” Of course the map also shows Shattuck Observatory, but perhaps it is not to be preserved.

    One needn’t belong to the frozen-in-amber school to sense that Shattuck really should remain where it is. What if its telescopes are removed and it is surrounded by new dormitories? Fine — make Shattuck into the Professor’s House of this new House Community. Turn it into a secret society hall; put a couple of offices in there for grad students; but do not remove it.2 Green Templeton College at Oxford (Wikipedia), founded in the late 20th century, occupies a piece of land that includes an old observatory, the Radcliffe Observatory. The observatory is used as the college common room and serves as the architectural symbol of the college.

    Shattuck Observatory, Meacham photo

    Shattuck Observatory, Meacham photo

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    References
    ↑1 The letter is posted with the Valley News story. Dartmouth is treading lightly now that the Town has succeeded in stopping the Indoor Practice Facility.
    ↑2 Green Templeton College at Oxford (Wikipedia), founded in the late 20th century, occupies a piece of land that includes an old observatory, the Radcliffe Observatory. The observatory is used as the college common room and serves as the architectural symbol of the college.

    President for the time being

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    • A task force is exploring the possibility of expanding college enrollment from about 4,310 to as many as 5,387 (press release, Inside Higher Ed). Maybe that’s why the Golf Course land is so appealing.

    • Freeman French Freeman has a rendering and a plan of the expansion of the Sports Pavilion out at Burnham Field (FFF brochure). The building is still not named after anyone. The rendering shows some lettering on the side of the building: DONOR PAVILION.

    • Morton Hall, a building in the East Wheelock Cluster, has opened again after it was damaged in a fire (press release). The building was gutted and a new interior was designed by Harriman Associates of Portland, Maine (Harriman).

    • The timber-framed picnic pavilion has opened at the Organic Farm (Dartmouth News).

    • An old railroad station in West Lebanon has been moved (Valley News).

    • Dana, once on the chopping block, is being renovated by Leers Weinzapfel Architects of Boston,
      authors of some great chiller plants and the huge UPenn athletic field complex of Penn Park (with MVVA).
      Dana is expected to be ready in the fall of 2019. Gilman will be demolished by the end of this year (Campus Services).

    • The Class of 1967 Bunkhouse has opened at Moosilauke.1 Tricia McKeon, “New Class of 1967 Bunkhouse Supports Dartmouth’s Spirit of Adventure,” Alumni News (19 July 2017).

    • The Rauner Blog has an article on the demolition of “Dartmouth College,” one of the original buildings of the school.

    • The Irving Institute building page notes that the 50-55,000 gsf building will connect to the Murdough Center through an atrium and will attempt to meet LEED platinum requirements.

    • Enjoy Michael Hinsley’s local history corner at DailyUV, Tragedies and Disasters.

    • There is some good insight in Callie Budrick’s article “Victorian Foppishness & Making the McSweeney’s Generation,” Print (11 August 2017) (via Things Magazine)

    • Project VetCare, which was not an animal hospital but a military veterans’ organization with laudable aims, is being shut down after apparent embezzlement (Valley News). The group had a house in Hanover that it intended as a residence for Dartmouth vets.

    • There are some nice photos of the fireplace masonry at the construction updates page. Timberhomes LLC helped build the new Lodge.

    • Flude’s Medal (also called the Flude Jewel) is the badge of office of Dartmouth’s president. It is engraved on the reverse:

      The Gift of / John Flude, / Broker, / Gracechurch Street, / London, 5th April 1785 / to / the President of / Dartmouth College / for the time being / at Hanover, in / the State of / New Hampshire.2 Dick Hoefnagel, “John Flude’s Medal,” Dartmouth College Library Bulletin (November 1991).

      President Emeritus Wright picked up on the “time being” phrase in a speech in 2005, responding with the statement that “We’re still here.” The phrase was read to refer to “Dartmouth College, for the time being at Hanover.” Flude, however, might have intended to give the medal to “the President of Dartmouth College for the time being,” in other words, whoever was the president in April of 1785 (and, perhaps, all future presidents, which is the way it has been treated).

    • Hanover is building a park called School Street Park with Byrne Foundation funds. The Park will occupy a vacant lot (Street View) across from Panarchy, two doors north of Edgerton House. A Town pdf has a small landscape plan, and the Valley News has an article.

    • An interesting turn of events: Kendal, which purchased the old Chieftain Motor Inn, is not going to expand onto the neighboring property after all. Instead, it will buy part of Rivercrest to the south and expand in that direction (Valley News).

    • The May-June Alumni Magazine had an article by William Clark on the Thayer-Partridge rivalry.

    • The dining halls in the new colleges at Yale feature some cheeky inscriptions:

      Brian Meacham interior photo Yale new college

      Inscription, Murray College Hall, Yale. Brian Meacham photo.

      Brian Meacham interior photo Yale new college

      Fireplace, Franklin College Hall, Yale. Brian Meacham photo.

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    References
    ↑1 Tricia McKeon, “New Class of 1967 Bunkhouse Supports Dartmouth’s Spirit of Adventure,” Alumni News (19 July 2017).
    ↑2 Dick Hoefnagel, “John Flude’s Medal,” Dartmouth College Library Bulletin (November 1991).

    The college could close the Country Club

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    The college is considering whether to shutter its historic Hanover Country Club.

    Even if the college were to close the club, of course, it would never sell off the entire golf course. The golf course has been officially viewed as a “land bank” for future institutional development for at least 15 years (see the 2002 master plan pdf).

    This website has proposed that if the south end of the golf course is to be developed, it should be built up with some density using “town” forms rather than as an extension of the grassy campus, irrespective of ownership (see posts of 2008 and 2012).

    Whatever form it takes, the development of the south end of the golf course should not require the closure of the Country Club. The Club itself has planned since at least 2000 to move its clubhouse to Lyme Road, and one could imagine new holes being added to the east of the course, near the Rugby Clubhouse, or to the north, in the Fletcher Circle neighborhood, where residents have had concerns about groundwater contamination migrating from CRREL. If the college really needs the land near Dewey Field for more buildings, it should simply shift the golf course instead of destroying it.

    And if you want, they’ll bring it right up to your room

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    By now you’ll have heard the news that Everything But Anchovies has closed (Valley News). The restaurant opened on Allen Street in 1979.

    The October 2016 edition of the menu is still on line (pdf) and shows such familiar dishes as the Chicken Sandwich (on a Portuguese muffin, never my thing), the Pasta Alfredo, and the Tuscany Bread (did the delivery drivers really make the garlic bread while they were waiting to hop into an early-eighties Chevette with an armful of orders?). The Southwestern Burrito does not seem to be there any more; I went through a phase in 93X where I ordered one or two of those every week. Opening the white styrofoam clamshell would reveal a placid ocean of salsa, refried beans, and shredded lettuce. One had to fish around in the depths to pinpoint the location of the burrito.

    The EBAs building is historic, designed by Larson & Wells and built by W.H. Trumbull in 1921.1”Building and Construction News Section,” The American Contractor 42:14 (2 April 1921), 67. It was originally a garage, as these photos from Frank Barrett’s books show:




    The second story and the brick facing are obviously much later. The image above is from Google Street View.

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    References
    ↑1 ”Building and Construction News Section,” The American Contractor 42:14 (2 April 1921), 67.

    Image of new Ledyard; selecting Ravine Lodge timbers

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    Co-Op Food Store in Centerra

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    11.28.2016 update: DEN project page link added.