How “historic” is the Inn?

Posted on 07.05.2012 by Regisseur

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

How does a hotel get into the program?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To continue:

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

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

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

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

In 1968 a west wing was added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Heater Road building, a renovation at the hospital, and a new building for the Geisel School

Posted on 04.05.2012 by Regisseur

The Valley News reports on growth at the ever-expanding DHMC.

The kidney-shaped fraternal twins of suburban Hanover: DHMC and Centerra (from Google Maps).

(There is also a great low-angle aerial view of DHMC on Dartmouth’s Flickr stream.)

The Heater Road building (a prior post) is nearing completion. About 200 people will move there from the main DHMC complex.

Then DHMC can perform a $16.6m renovation on one of its existing buildings to add critical-care beds. (And “DHMC’s mail services are being moved off the Lebanon campus and into a former U.S. Postal Service building in Centerra Park.”)

Finally, during their March meeting the trustees voted to approve a capital budget that includes “design funding for the Williamson Translational Research Building on the medical school’s Lebanon, N.H. campus” (The Dartmouth). The press release states:

The building will house programs concerned with adapting laboratory discoveries to use in patient care, with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary problem solving in areas including neuroscience, cardiovascular science, and immunology/infectious diseases, among others.

————

[Update 08.12.2012: Construction on Williamson will begin during June of 2013 and finish by September of 2015. The existing $20 million pledge will cover part of the estimated cost of $115 million. Bond info pdf, A-10.]

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to bond report fixed.]

Hanover’s first purpose-built sorority house

Posted on 26.04.2012 by Regisseur

Although Dartmouth probably deserves criticism for what appears to be a failure to maintain Larson’s faculty apartment house at 2 North Park Street, the college might be working to redeem itself by building a quality replacement: a new sorority house designed by Haynes & Garthwaite of Norwich. The article in The Dartmouth has a photo of the house under construction.

The article notes that Alpha Phi was originally meant to occupy the historic house at 26 East Wheelock, next door to KKG (see Dartmouth Life, October 2008). Town zoning prohibited that change of use, and putting the sorority closer to the Green would seem to be better for the group and better for the campus.

Dartmouth sells its CRREL land to the Army after 50 years of subsidies

Posted on 24.04.2012 by Regisseur

The Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory on Lyme Road is not only the state’s largest industrial facility, it also represents the U.S. Army’s only presence in New Hampshire.

For the last half-century, Dartmouth has owned most of the land underlying the laboratory, and the Corps of Engineers has paid essentially nothing to use it. Now that the original $1 lease signed in 1962 has ended (The Dartmouth), the college has decided to sell the property to the Corps for $18.6m (Valley News).

A Google Maps view of the CRREL property, with the golf course at lower left and Dartmouth’s once-and-future Rivercrest housing development at top.

Finances aside, the loss of control over this property creates a danger that some unappealing future development could move in if CRREL were to leave: one presumes that Dartmouth has retained a right of first refusal for any future sale. At least this sale removes a potential site on which the Tuck School could (obviously unwisely) build a new campus.

Piazza Nervi

Posted on 27.02.2012 by Regisseur

I. Background

The site where Leverone Field House and Thompson Arena face each other across South Park Street, with a couple of houses in between, is an interesting one (Google Maps aerial, aerial, street view entering from the south). It is getting some attention these days.

Leverone Field House forecourt in June 2005

First, the transit report proposes a bus shelter here (pdf).

Second, Athletic Director Harry Sheehy commented in an interview in the Alumni Magazine that the school needs another field house. Chase Fields seems a likely site, and the building could even take over a part of the Thompson parking lot facing South Park Street.

Third, the owner of the private house just below the entrance to the parking lot, at 31 1/2 South Park Street, has demolished the building and is replacing it with a three-story building containing a dental office with apartments above (Planning Board minutes Sept. 13 (pdf); see also Planning Board minutes Sept. 6 (pdf)).

All of this activity gets one thinking about the two old houses in front of Thompson Arena at 25 and 27 South Park Street, both designed by Jens F. Larson.

Thompson Arena forecourt in June 2005 showing 25 and 27 South Park

On the one hand, the presence of the two houses preserves the historic appearance of the east side of the street and maintains the rhythm of solids and voids that stretches all the way up to Wheelock Street. Number 29, the Fire & Skoal house, is also a Larson product.

The view that the houses frame is interesting and surprising — it looks like there is some kind of hangar back there, and a walk along the beach-flat ground that reveals the ribs and upturned hulk of Thompson behind the brown shingled house can create a nautical impression. Removing the houses to create a plaza would be a bit arbitrary: very few people actually walk from the front door of Leverone to the front door of Thompson.

Site plan

On the other hand, the two Nervi buildings were meant to face each other, and the two houses have always been meant to come out. Master plans have long proposed that the houses be removed and a plaza be constructed to link the two concrete arenas. The 2007 Landscape Master Plan included such a proposal (pdf). The 2000 student life master plan (pdf) notes that the entry into Thompson Arena is obscured by existing houses along Park Street:

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

II. Proposal

The two Larson houses at 25 and 27 could be moved across the street, above Cobra, and a plaza could be built in their place.

Proposal

The plaza would be difficult to make uniform in footprint. The two Nervi buildings do not face each other directly. Each stands a different distance from the street and rises to a different height.

Piazza Nervi would become the student entrance to the whole Chase Fields complex. Pedestrians walking down Park Street would swing diagonally across the Thompson forecourt and then head eastward. The present route into the parking lot is relatively convoluted and disappointing.

As a bonus, the piazza could tie into a new path cut westward through the Crosby-Park block. The need for this path to Lebanon Street, the only cross-block route between Wheelock and Summer Streets, has been obvious for years, and the Ped/Bike Master Plan released in October (pdf) recommends it. A long brick wall built to shield the neighbors’ houses could serve as a venue for a horizontal climbing race put on by the DOC: speed-bouldering.

III. Conclusion

The new piazza would be the first work of architecture of any kind in Hanover — whether a plaque, monument, room, or building — dedicated to an architect.

It would make a nice gateway for drivers entering the campus from the southeast. That might be its most important function.

The danger is that Piazza Nervi would be a windswept Modernist wasteland: there is a fine line between minimalism and barrenness. But something good is possible.

Thompson Arena side entrance in June 2005

Leverone Field House front facade in June 2005

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to oblique image fixed.]

[Update 06.10.2012: Link to and quote from 2000 master plan added. Thanks to Big Green Alert: The Blog for the link here and ideas.]

More on the Inn addition

Posted on 25.02.2012 by Regisseur

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

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

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

The west wing of the Inn (Larson & Wells, 1923), built with a donation from Randolph McNutt, is historic but undistinguished. It will contain the prefunction room and restrooms as shown in the plan.
The Lang Building (Larson, 1937) faces Main Street at the southwest corner of the site (the upper right of the plan). It is both historic and well done and is worth preserving. Its upper level will be given over to hotel rooms.
The Hopkins Center (Harrison & Abramowitz, 1959-1962) is a notable building by a world-class architect and must be modified carefully.
The main block of the Hanover Inn (William Benjamin Tabler, 1966-1967) is both unhistoric and undistinguished. While fairly effective at disguising the great bulk of the hotel, the Inn is only nominally Georgian in style.

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

Detail of plan of Inn addition by Cambridge Seven.

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

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

Detail of perspective view of Inn by Cambridge Seven.

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

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

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

The “North Block,” or one way to expand onto the golf course

Posted on 14.02.2012 by Regisseur

I. Background.

The hope is that if or when Dartmouth builds a new heat plant in Dewey Field, the prominent field north of the Life Sciences Center, it erects a building of high quality.

More important than the architecture, however, is the siting: the building should be located in such a way that it does not impede the construction of other buildings in the future. This is the second time this idea has been flogged here.

Dartmouth needs to decide upon the potential building sites for the whole area between the LSC and the 6th hole of the golf course. It should know ahead of time whether this will be a district of brown metal sheds, academic buildings, office spaces, or even general-market apartment buildings, and how these new buildings will be organized, even if the first one is not built until 2050.

Google Street Views of the overall parking lot (up from the bottom, down from the Medical School) show the tremendous amount of space available to future builders with incomplete ideas. The sort-of road that lines the western edge of the site will form a crucial axis, as is made apparent in the set of excellent views to the north from under the Kellogg bridge and to the south (uphill).

II. Proposal.

The idea of placing academic buildings or dormitories north of the LSC should be dismissed out of hand. This site is simply too far away from the center of campus. The fact that the LSC forms a great rampart walling off the outside world suggests that the college agrees: what lies beyond the pale is not a part of the campus.

But there will be buildings built here, and there are some functions that would be appropriate for the college to develop here.

Present zoning aside, this could be a great place for commercial rental buildings with integrated parking garages. The Development Office could be here. Look to Centerra; look to the space the college is renting in downtown Hanover at the moment. This site is no farther from the Green than is Ledyard Bridge, and walking distance is obviously of little importance to non-student functions. Retail and residential uses would be essential to add life to the district when it is finally built out, but they might be too much to hope for.

Sketch of possible “North Block” development on Dewey Field and golf course.

What about the golf course? Add a couple of holes to the north or east; build a new clubhouse at the north end of this commercial project, or in the Reservoir Road area as a companion to the Rugby Club.

[02.25.2012 update: first paragraph reworded slightly.]

The Hospital Bridge and the Hanover Bypass

Posted on 12.02.2012 by Regisseur

An extremely expensive new bridge and highway could clear a route through the woods from Lahaye Drive (the hospital’s southern access road) over Colburn Hill, around Boston Lot Lake, over Route 10, and over the Connecticut River to an intersection with Vermont Route 5 at the Bugbee Street exit off Interstate 91.

Mockup of potential bridge location and two bypass routes. Ledyard Bridge is at the top.

On the New Hampshire side, a bypass would affect Boston Lot Lake and the trails around it (map). The lake, which has a great name, might be artificial and appears to be owned by Dartmouth, as is the surrounding property.

On the Vermont side, the land between Bugbee Street and the bridge’s western abutment includes some undeveloped parcels; some commercial properties, including Blood’s Catering; a couple of house lots; and St. Anthony’s Cemetery (map).

This idea is sketched so roughly here that the elevations of the underlying north-south routes have not even been accounted for. Would the bridge go from hillside to hillside, flying over both Route 10 and Route 5? Or would it be more like the Hartford bridges, picking up local streets and crossing the river a few yards above the surface?

(At the very least, one wonders whether Lahaye Drive or Gould Road — of Sachem Village — should be pushed through to connect Routes 10 and 120 at the latitude of the hospital.)

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[Update 06.11.2012: Page 14 of the 2002 Campus Master Plan (pdf) suggests that the general idea of a bypass has received some attention:

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

The map on page 15 of the plan appears to indicate that Dartmouth does not own the land around the lake, contrary to the presumption of this post.]

[Update 10.17.2012: Okay, the earlier idea posted here was too radical. The hospital folks don’t need a road that leads directly to Vermont: all they need is a route that is less slow than the Ledyard Bridge. Anyway, the Boston Lot Lake area is protected by a conservation easement. So why not extend Gould Road — it needs to be extended whether or not a bridge is built — and build a bridge somewhere to the south, wherever it could be done with the least cost? Then all Hanover would have to do is add enough traffic-calming devices to ensure that Wheelock Street never gets the reputation of being the faster of the two routes.]

Interesting links with some connection to Dartmouth or the Granite State

Posted on 02.02.2012 by Regisseur

Inside Higher Ed has a review of Bryant Tolles’s new book, Academic Architecture in New England. The book, based on Tolles’s 1970 dissertation, provides the best coverage available anywhere of Dartmouth’s original buildings.
A new book about the work of alumni firm Rogers Marvel is available.
Dartbeat has a map of warmcuts around campus. What is a warmcut? It’s a shortcut that won’t save you time but will let you stay indoors as much as possible.
The college publicity office has an article on the 50th anniversary of the Hanover Conservancy, formerly the Hanover Conservation Council. The group manages the Mink Brook Nature Preserve and other areas.
The Four Aces Diner in West Lebanon has reopened (Valley News).
Eli Burak, whose work has been linked here, is the new official college photographer following the retirement of Joseph Mehling (The Dartmouth, Facebook video (via Dartmouth Now)).
The story of the Chicken Farmer I Still Love You graffito, in the Valley News.
Dartmouth’s investment in sustainability (The Dartmouth) is likely to create problems when it encounters the college’s interest in preserving the historic windows still found in many campus buildings.
A solar-powered blue emergency phone (Dartmouth Planning).
Historic photos of Main Street businesses. Note the Dartmouth Bank Building before the arches were added to the front and after the arches were added (but before the building was raised by one level). More of this building and others north of Lebanon Street appear in a slide show from the Hanover Bicentennial parade on July 4, 1961 (via the Planning blog). Also in the slide show is an interesting shot of the buildings that preceded the Nugget Arcade.
Is the Watershed Studio’s listing of a Ledyard Canoe Club project a reference to a replacement building, a renovation, or something else?
The Co-op Food Store at the roundabout on Lyme Road is the subject of some detailed information provided by ORW.
In Norwich, Vermont’s ex-village of Lewiston (see the Rauner post) is a street that was recently named Ledyard Lane (Google Maps). The street leads to the depot, which is still standing, and one presumes it was previously called Depot Street. How strange to see John Ledyard’s name migrating via the bridge across the river to a site he had nothing to do with.
An interesting granite monument is set in the ground at the northwest corner of Lebanon and Summer Streets (Google Street View). The “H” must stand for Hanover, but why here? Is it a former town line? Doubtful. Perhaps a former corner of a town-owned parcel.

Monument at Lebanon and Summer.

The Rauner Library Blog has a post on the development of the Synclavier and the origins of the Bregman Electronic Music Studio.
The latest college map (pdf), released in August of 2010, is the first to show the LSC, ’53 Commons, the VAC, 4 Currier, and other novelties. The map also strangely misnames more than a dozen Greek houses in an apparent attempt to Romanize or transliterate the Greek characters of their names (via Jonathan). Visually, the map might be improved if the ground were shaded and the symbols indicating accessible entrances and restrooms were made less obtrusive. And one might hope that the mustard yellow of the buildings could be replaced with gray, brown, or green.
Dartmouth has been digging up the small lab animals that were buried in mass graves at the Rennie Farm during the 1960s and 1970s (Valley News).
Dartmouth Now writes about the last male descendant of Eleazar Wheelock.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links Rogers Marvel and warm cuts fixed.]

Fullington Farm yet closer to becoming a rowing venue

Posted on 29.01.2012 by Regisseur

Discussions and controversies continue to slow the plan of the friends of Hanover High rowing to turn a part of Fullington Farm into a boating headquarters (Valley News article, Planning Board minutes Sept. 6 (pdf), Valley News article 1, article 2, Friends).

The Valley News noted on December 16 that the crew was allowed to move in but was denied permission to hold early-morning practices.

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[Update 06.03.2013: Broken link to Friends site replaced.]
[Update 05.12.2013: Broken link to Friends article replaced.]
[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Friends article replaced.]

Renovating the Buskey Building (7 Allen Street)

Posted on 23.01.2012 by Regisseur

UK Architects of Hanover have designed a renovation of the ground floor of the Buskey Building, a 1978 commercial block at 7 Allen Street, just past EBAs. The building’s second level is connected to the rear of the bookstore by a bridge: this is where the bookstore had its music department during the early 1990s.

The Buskey Building in June 2005

Google’s Street View images, taken in the past few years, show the space as Omer & Bob’s Sport Shop, empty at the time of the photo and with a leasing sign in the window.

The client for this project is new health clinic for college employees called Dartmouth Health Connect (Dartmouth Now, The Dartmouth, Valley News; see also Forbes).

A rendering of the new interior is available at Dartmouth Now.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to DHC fixed.]

The coach stop at the Inn Corner

Posted on 21.01.2012 by Regisseur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a thought.

The Main Street pedestrian mall idea

Posted on 07.01.2012 by Regisseur

The Planning Board minutes of September 20 (pdf) mention that pedestrianizing Main Street, presumably between Lebanon and Wheelock, was considered several years ago and did not receive the support of the Chamber of Commerce.

The malls in Boulder and Charlottesville are fantastic places that appear to be successful, but each also seems to require a population that is much larger than Hanover’s. The extreme fluctuation of the college population would drain the life out of a Hanover mall far too often. The questionable closure of South College Street in the 1960s leaves no alternative route for the traffic that would be shunted away from the upper end of South Main Street: creating a pedestrian mall would be a radical and risky venture.

A better move might be to turn the diagonal parking on South Main Street into parallel parking, widen the sidewalks, raise the street surface, and define the edges of the street with bollards. Restaurants could claim spaces for outdoor seating, and the existing trees and benches would become less of an impediment to foot traffic. Northbound and eastbound traffic would be encouraged to use Lebanon Street and Park Street.

Recent images of the campus

Posted on 21.11.2011 by Regisseur

I. Aerial films

Dartmouth Now has posted a video of a campus flyover taken from a helicopter. While most aerial photos look from south to north, this video skirts the northern and eastern edges of the campus. Things look different from this new perspective:

Still image from aerial film.

See also the helmet cam video of a parachutist landing at Memorial Field to start the Columbia game on October 22 (via the Big Green Alert blog).

II. Street View: Paths and Passages

Google has added the results of a sortie by one of its human-powered tricycles to its visual representation of Dartmouth’s campus. At least one trike visited about a year ago. Here is the view from the center of the Green.

The tricyclist took a curious detour to the rear of the NAD House and traversed the bridge to McCulloch Hall. He managed to ride under the Bildner Hall portico, onto the running track at Memorial Field, through the Hood Museum gateways, and along Mass Row.

Who knew that this little village lane meandered around the back side of College Park?

Excerpt from Street View footage of Hanover.

The rider’s reflection appears in the windows of the Berry Sports Center and the MacLean ESC. When he stands up to pedal up the hill north of the McLaughlin Cluster, you can see his helmet, and the camera has a brush with some tree branches along Maynard Street.

[02.25.2012 update: See also the articles by Susan J. Boutwell, “Dartmouth Among First Schools Showcased in Google Maps Feature,” Dartmouth Now (January 11, 2012) and in The Graduate Forum (January 17, 2012).]

Architectural and other notes

Posted on 19.10.2011 by Regisseur

The Real Estate Office’s new office building at 4 Currier, designed by Truex Cullins, was awarded a LEED Silver rating.
College Photographer Joseph Mehling ’69 is retiring (The Dartmouth). Among hundreds of college-related projects, Mehling provided the photos for the Campus Guide.
The Rauner Library Blog notes that the Freshman Book — the Shmenu — was last printed on paper in 2009.
CRREL, the Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory north of campus, was giving tours recently (Valley News).
Old fire insurance maps of American cities and towns produced by the Sanborn Map Company are invaluable to historians. A post at Bibliodyssey features the elaborate designs displayed on the title pages of Sanborn maps.
According to hikers interviewed for an article in The Dartmouth, all of Hanover’s mile markers for the Appalachian Trail are inaccurate. Experience with the Milepost on a couple of drives up the Alcan suggests that the inaccuracies result from the practice of rerouting the trail.
The watering trough that once occupied the southwest corner of the Green is featured in a post at the Review.
The ongoing basketball office renovations in the Berry Sports Center are planned to include a “display of Dartmouth basketball history and tradition” (Valley News).
The Dartmouth had an article back in May about how Rauner librarians hope that the players of new metadata games will help them attach information to untagged photos.
Randall T. Mudge & Associates Architect has exterior and interior photos of the Dragon Senior Society hall. The interior paneling, taken from Dragon’s 1931 hall behind Baker, really does look like a Larson & Wells product.
The site What Was There brings rephotography into the digital era by superimposing historic photos on Google Street View images.
Yale’s new residential colleges site has a nice site map (pdf) showing existing colleges and site of the two new colleges designed by architecture school dean Robert A.M. Stern. The Grove Street Cemetery really is in the way…
An article explains the move from the old hospital north of Maynard Street to the new DHMC complex in Lebanon 10 years ago.

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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to trough article replaced.]
[Update 05.12.2013: Broken link to Dragon photos removed.]
[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to new residential colleges replaced, broken link to site map removed.]

Fullington Farm making slow progress as a rowing venue

Posted on 15.10.2011 by Regisseur

The Friends of Hanover Crew project outline includes a site plan and textual overview with photos (pdf). The old dairy barn will be renovated for boat storage, placing this project in a long tradition of transforming agricultural buildings for boating purposes.

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[Update 08.03.2013: Broken link to Friends replaced.]
[Update 03.31.2013: Broken links to outline and pdf removed, link to Friends inserted.]

The Parkhurst Elm is felled

Posted on 05.10.2011 by Regisseur

In a preemptive move, the Town Arborist cut down the Parkhurst Elm on August 19
(Dartbeat blog post, Valley News blurb, Alumni Relations note).

The old tree (photo, info from College Arborist, article in Parents News) was notable not only for its magnificence and prominence but for its siting, since its roots and trunk encroached on North Main Street:

The Parkhurst Elm in 1995

The Rauner Blog has a post on the practice of saving pieces from an old tree.

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[Update 05.11.2013: Broken link to Parents News article removed.]
[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Dartbeat removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Rauner Blog fixed.]

Dartmo.

The Buildings of Dartmouth College

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