As mentioned in the Dartmouth Parents & Grandparents Fund newsletter (Winter 2009), the book project underway at the moment is a monograph on Lamb & Rich. This is the same project mentioned back in 2004 and will take a few more years to complete.
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[Update 05.11.2013: Broken link to parents newsletter removed.]
About 85 views have been added to Views of Dartmouth. The most interesting ones are the interior views of the Heating Plant (found in Views > East Side) and old photos of the west and south sides of the Green (in Views > West Side and > General Views).
The DOC Centennial gets a school press release and Vox mention as the subject of this year’s Carnival.
The MIrror is about Blitzmail this week.
Heraldry and the history of pong collide in a shirt available from On the Hill.
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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to On the Hill removed.]
A couple of articles (one in pdf) explain how Barnard College used one of the Getty Foundation’s grants to create a plan for the preservation of Charles Rich’s historic campus. It turns out that Getty has shut down its campus heritage grant program, as the Chronicle‘s campus blog laments; there was even a story in the Wall Street Journal on the program shutting down after funding plans at 86 institutions.
The physical campus section of President Wright’s ten-year report mentions all the work done at Dartmouth over the last decade.
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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Barnard articles removed.]
Rollins Chapel’s ca. 2004 renovation, the one that uncovered the windows, was designed by Theriault/Landmann Associates of Maine.
Architect Orliff Van Heik Chase of Shepley Rutan & Coolidge designed some work on the Delta Tau Delta house at Dartmouth according to William Collin Levere, Leading Greeks (1915). The basis for the work, perhaps an addition, appears to have been the fraternity’s 1874 house at 36 North Main (burned 1936). A 1915 view of the house hints at a “goat room” addition between the house and the barn. Another view appears in Barrett’s Hanover, N.H.. Chase was a 1908 Wesleyan graduate who designed houses for the fraternity at Wesleyan and Tufts as well.
A press release notes that Dartmouth received 700 acres of forested land in Corinth, Vermont, in the 1920s. The property, about 35 miles away, has been the source of timber used in College construction projects, including the McLane Family Lodge at the Skiway. The College recently conveyed to the Upper Valley Land Trust the right to develop the property extensively; some logging will continue.
Engineer Richard D. Kimball and his firm helped design Dartmouth’s Heating Plant and original network of steam pipes in the mid-1890s. It turns out that RDK Engineers is still around and claims that its project at Dartmouth was the first underground steam distribution system in the country.
The 2001 Arts Center Infrastructure Analysis (pdf) by Rogers Marvel with Ove Arup suggests that the heat plant eventually move to Dewey Field, north of the Medical School. That would allow the Hood Museum or other arts functions to take over the old plant building.
One learns from an abstract of a Quebec conference paper titled “Le Remplacement du Pont de Ledyard” that each of the four piers and abutments of the late-1990s Ledyard Bridge required a different type of foundation construction, since the riverbed and bedrock at that crossing are so irregular.
The Hill Winds Society is producing a book on school traditions with an organization called the Sphinx Foundation. The foundation is connected with the Sphinx Senior Society but not the College, as an editorial in The Dartmouth explains. It has Professor Emeritus Jere Daniell speak on different Dartmouth history topics now and then and sponsored his recent talk on the Wheelock Succession (article in The Dartmouth). The foundation apparently sends letters to incoming students.
The Dartmouth Outing Club Centennial is approaching at the beginning of 2009 and the club now has a page up with an ambitious schedule of activities.
Erik Anjou’s and Mark Bernstein’s documentary Eight: Ivy League Football and America has been released (The Dartmouth, Big Green Alert Blog). The official page suggests that the film shares with Bernstein’s book the shaky contention that the first intercollegiate football game was played in 1869. There was a “football” game played that year, but it was “football” in the English sense, what Americans now call soccer. The first college football game (ancestor of today’s American/gridiron football) was not played until 1874, when McGill’s rugby team played Harvard.
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[Update 05.11.2013: Broken link to Parents News article on Hill Winds removed.]
[Update 11.12.2012: Broken link to documentary replaced.]
A well-illustrated article on Hanover’s postwar Modernists, Edgar and Margaret Hunter, considers their work in the context of other North Carolina architects.
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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to Hunters article replaced.]
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.
The Moosilauke Advisory Committee recommends that Dartmouth demolish the historic Moosilauke Ravine Lodge (Richard Butterfield, 1938-39) near Warren, New Hampshire.
The article on the Committee’s recommendation in The Dartmouth does not suggest that the Committee has consulted with an accredited preservation architect, or an architect who is familiar with historic log buildings. The reasons given for demolishing Dartmouth’s most unusual and most sustainable building are not yet very convincing:
Reason :: Typical solution
logs cracking :: seal them
logs rotting :: replace them
current building codes :: upgrade/overlook – most old buildings fail
not large enough :: add on by extending the Great Hall
The idea that the building was “built to last 50 years” is especially insidious because every building has such a number. No one in 1938 planned for Moosilauke to be demolished in 1988 any more those who built Moore or Berry in 1998 planned to have it torn down in 2048. A “lifetime” number exists for every building and simply describes the period after which significant elements will need replacement. Swapping out logs or replacing a roof is nothing a competent construction crew cannot handle.
Dartmouth should not let the cost of proper maintenance justify destruction, even if an historic log building might cost a bit more to maintain than the cheap imitation that would replace it. The Lodge was built by volunteers and low-paid local loggers, during the Depression, which means that Dartmouth has been enjoying the savings of a low initial purchase price for 70 years. A little extra expense today would be well justified.
Destroying the Ravine Lodge would also waste all of the energy the building embodies, and by rights it should prevent any replacement from claiming to be “green.” The Lodge was constructed using sustainable local timber hauled by horses. All of its systems are indefinitely replaceable and will not tie up valuable metals or harmful chemicals in landfills when they are thrown away after failing suddenly at the end of their useful lives, as the parts of a new building will do.
The college that is gearing up to celebrate the centennial of its Outing Club, that is sincerely dedicated to meeting voluntary “green” regulations, and that produces graduates such as William McDonough should be embarrassed to consider destroying the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. Just as with any other National-Register eligible building, if parts of it are broken, they need to be fixed. Before any demolition takes place, I’d hope that Dartmouth justify such a decision by reporting no that federal and state historic preservation laws will be implicated; that a certified preservation architect with log building experience has written off the building; and that the replacement will not seek any kind of LEED certification.
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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to McDonough removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to McDonough and image fixed.]
Thanks to Big Green Alert Blog for pointing out this 1913 New York Times article (pdf) describing the decision of the Dartmouth team to put numbers on their uniforms. “Spectators Will Be Enabled to Distinguish Players.”
At the beginning of June, Princeton Architectural Press published Dartmouth College: The Campus Guide. At the moment it is available from Barnes & Noble and the press.
As is the case with any book, a few errors have crept in, and they are being collected in this pdf document. Readers are encouraged to email comments, error sightings, and updates to dartmo@gmail.com.
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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Press fixed.]
The Planning arm of the OPDC has expanded its Web content lately. Now there are historic maps and aerial photos available. The College Planner, Joanna Whitcomb, even has a blog.
Most interesting is the very extensive file of planning documents of the last decade. There are some remarkable items here:
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.
Dartmouth sold to the state the eight-acre part of the summit of Mount Washington it was given in 1962. The Dartmouth. Dartmouth sold or gave the summit of Mount Moosilauke to the state some time ago.
