Category Archives: History

About general non-architectural aspects of Dartmouth College.

Replacing the River stair, the one made of earth and wood, and other topics

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  • Dartmouth News reports that the college has dedicated Baker’s main interior hall “in honor of Richard Reiss Jr. ’66, who made a $10 million gift to pursue innovative means to explore, analyze, and create knowledge.” Good news, and the lettering (“REISS HALL”) below the lunette at the end of the old Catalogue Room looks great. This was going to be a comment about the confusion of “hall” (meaning “building”) for “hall” (meaning “room” or “corridor”) but it looks like the WPA Guide to New Hampshire (1938) calls the Catalog Room “the Delivery Hall,” so it might be that there is no harm done.
  • The college is demolishing the erratic old timber stair that runs from the boathouses up the hill to the River Cluster:
    In its place will be a metal slat stair that is raised off the ground (Planning Board minutes 2 April 2019 pdf). This project seems long overdue, but as usual one is compelled to praise the old stair, which was dark, irregular, organic, and integrated into the terrain, with an aesthetic more Moosilauke than Main Street. It provided a fitting transition between the slick campus buildings and the dangerous Connecticut River.
  • The college intends to build the Irving Institute “on top of an existing structure and renovate portions of that building” (Planning Board minutes 7 May 2019 pdf). That’s interesting. The old Cook Auditorium in Murdough will still exist, and the plaza on top of it (the characteristic brick-surface landscaping of Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty) will support the floor of the Irving atrium.
  • The Eleazar Wheelock Society has applied “to remove additions, renovate main block, and construct new ell, with associated site improvements” at the Wheelock Mansion House (Planning Board minutes 7 May 2019 pdf).
  • Creating a Port of Hanover as an entrepôt for produce coming downriver from the Organic Farm is unrealistic, but a College Barge would make a plausible addition to the waterfront. Not necessarily the Oxford type of barge (see St. John’s Barge), though that would be great for viewing boat races, but more akin to a broad houseboat, meant to provide temporary dormitory space when it is needed. In the Bronx, there is a permanent prison on a barge:
  • Abbott-Downing’s Concord Coaches at Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.
  • This is another post on Campus Galli, the project to build a monastery following the (idealized and possibly just metaphorical) Plan of St. Gall, a centuries-long undertaking. Hyper-long term projects are appealing in this modern age; see also Agnes Denes’ Tree Mountain in Finland, intended to be maintained for 400 years.
  • A fascinating history of the ska-man emoji.

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.

Special flags number

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The college flag, which is flown from the flagpole on the Green (see this July 2017 Street View image), has for decades been a simple Lone Pine in white upon a green field. The Co-Op still sells a version of it.

Last year, the Original Champions of Design created a new overall visual identity for Dartmouth that included a relatively subtle update of the Lone Pine. Instead of substituting the new pine for the old on the flag, however, the college has created a new flag featuring the “D-Pine” logo that OCD also created. The new flag is now flying on the Green and is visible in the photo published with this article in The Dartmouth of February 13 (thanks for the tip, Jon). OCD did a mockup of such a flag (it appears around page 11 of their site for this project) but the college appears to have taken the suggestion literally.

One needn’t dislike the D-Pine logo to question its appropriateness on a flag: the official college banner just seems a bit less purely symbolic and a bit more commercial now. The new logo definitely says “I am a logo,” and as a result the new flag speaks more to a brand, a glossy trademarked identity, than did the old flag. There is also a hint of the athletic about it — again, appropriate for many situations, but not necessarily right for the college flag.

This flag was spotted at an Interstate rest area:

Honor and Remember flag, Meacham photo
The Honor and Remember Flag (see Flags of the World), not to be confused with the yellow star on a red field of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
(Wikipedia).

The phrase “the Thin Red Line” calls to mind the Battle of Balaclava (to a dedicated 1980s MilMod reader, at least). Lately it’s been applied to firefighters, following the pattern of “the Thin Blue Line” of the police. With this flag, spotted at a Highland Games, you get two for the price of one, and there’s no scrimping on the width of the line either:

Flag with thick red and blue line, Meacham photo

At the same event, this Celtic collage (FOTW):

Pan-Celtic flag, Meacham photo
Wikipedia suggests that the flag of Galicia, excerpted in the upper left, does not belong.

There are beer taps affixed to this depiction of the flag of Virginia, which itself displays the obverse of the great seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia:

Beer taps in image of flag of Virginia, Meacham photo

Finally, here is an odd collection, including (l-r) the Virginia flag, a Pride version of the U.S. flag, the big flag of the River City Red Army, the flag of the City of Richmond, an ice cream flag, and an Australian flag defaced by a boxing kangaroo.

Flags, Meacham photo
The ice cream flag is a mystery.

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.”

Case Day Bicentennial

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There are some of us here who can remember the irrepressible enthusiasm, the cannon and the bonfires, which followed the announcement of the result in a letter from Mr. WEBSTER to the President of the College:

All is safe and certain. The Chief Justice delivered an opinion this morning [Feb. 2, 1819,] in our favor, on all the points. In this opinion WASHINGTON, LIVINGSTON, JOHNSON, and STORY, Justices, are understood to have concurred. DUVAL, Justice, it is said, dissents. Mr. Justice TODD, is not present. The opinion goes the whole length and leaves nothing to be decided. I give you my congratulations, on this1 Samuel G. Brown, “Historical Address,” in Centennial Celebration at Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.: J.B. Parker, 1870), 33. occasion; and assure you that I feel a load removed from my shoulders much heavier than they have been accustomed to bear.2Brown, 34.

—–

 

References
↑1 Samuel G. Brown, “Historical Address,” in Centennial Celebration at Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.: J.B. Parker, 1870), 33.
↑2 Brown, 34.

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.

    Hop expansion going ahead, and other news

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    • Nothing is left of Gilman but a hole in the ground (project update).

    • Well that was odd. The Valley News reports that the NewVistas Foundation plan for a 20,000-person new town in Vermont has been abandoned.

    • The Valley News reports on the decline of “WinCycle, the Windsor nonprofit that for 16 years has been taking discarded computers and electronic equipment from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth College, refurbishing it, and reselling the equipment[.]”

    • A lot of naming is going on. The Valley News reports on the DEN becoming the Magnuson Family Center, to be located in the new Thayer building; the Grad School has been named for Frank Guarini ’49 (Dartmouth News); and the college is offering a large donor the chance to rename the Norris Cotton Cancer Center (Valley News). It did always seem a little odd that the center was named for the legislator who wangled the federal funding to establish it.

    • The WRJ historic district is expanding to include an area that an architectural historian calls Little Italy (Valley News). The Polka Dot will be saved (Valley News).

    • The Hood staff are moving into the expanded museum, but the opening will not take place until 2019 (Dartmouth News).

    • Hey look! The Dartmouth 250 logo has gone from four fonts to one, and that one is Dartmouth Ruzicka: Dartmouth 250.

    • The Valley News reports that Nick Zwirblia has written a novel, The Bramford Chronicles, Book I: Johnny & Baby Jumbo. You might know Mr. Zwirblia better as the Happy Hop Guy.

    • Rauner had an exhibit on the history of the Ledyard Canoe Club.

    • The Valley News business magazine, Enterprise, has an article on the Grafton County Farm, a government operation that once might have been called a “poor farm.” Grafton County’s is still operating.

    • The capital campaign confirms in a general way some building projects:the Dartmouth Hall renovations; the Hood and Hop expansions and renovations, totaling $125m; and residence hall construction including 356 beds worth of dorms for $200m. There is no word on whether the Hop expansion will follow what seems to be a smart design from 2013 by Bora Architects. There is also talk of a request for a $50m endowment for the six house communities. One hopes that each house is endowed individually (starting at, say, $8m apiece) and is named by its benefactor.

    • The Dartmouth Hall renovation plan is based on an unusual pitch for funding by women (see Inside Higher Ed). More than a century ago, the college targeted the somewhat-arbitrary classification of Massachusetts alumni as a funding source for a new dormitory.

    • Several campus buildings are getting solar panels on their roofs (The Dartmouth).

    • There was a lot of news last April about the shuttering of UPNE, the University Press of New England (The Dartmouth, Inside Higher Ed, Valley News).

    • Students are working on a new historical accountability project that will focus on the role of slavery in Dartmouth’s founding and early history (Dartmouth News).

    • On Tuck Drive, “[c]onstruction also would add a sidewalk and bike lanes to the road, which is about 20-feet wide, Worden said” (Valley News). That is unfortunate. It’s hard to see how the historic granite curbing and guttering (not to mention the retaining walls) could be preserved if a sidewalk were added. Could the college use a row of poles to delineate a sidewalk on the existing asphalt surface? The fact that Italian immigrant labor gangs built that road by hand while living in huts nearby, probably on the site of the Boathouse parking lot, is still fascinating.

    • A corrected article on the Gilman and Dana work in the Valley News states that “Broemel said that plans for a north campus academic center during the 3-year tenure of then-Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim had spurred discussion about the best use of the buildings, although Kim’s specific idea never came to fruition.” That point deserves more attention: Gilman and Dana were left vacant and available for the current redevelopment because the large North Campus Academic Center by Kyu Sung Woo Architects of Cambridge was meant to be built in their place. (Mr. Woo, incidentally, has a remarkable weekend house in Putney, Vermont.)

    • The Class of 67 Bunkhouse at Moosilauke has been completed (TimberHomes LLC).

    Demolition of the old Howe stacks addition

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    The Eleazar Wheelock Society writes of the old Wheelock Mansion House on West Wheelock Street:

    In 2012, the directors of EWS saw a vision for the restoration of the house into a community of Christians committed to challenging each other to grow intellectually and spirituality, and to make the home a beacon of radical hospitality to the Dartmouth campus. In November of 2015, EWS finally purchased the house to begin to make this vision reality.

    The society is having Smith & Vansant Architects restore the Colonial Revival appearance of the building’s 1899-1900 Charles A. Rich front facade. The group has a video with a rendering of the proposed front facade:

    image of proposed Wheelock Mansion House alterations

    Compare to a recent Google Street View:


    The house looked quite different during Wheelock’s time, of course: it was located on a different site and had a gambrel roof. The bow windows on the sides also postdate the Colonial period.

    The handsome rear ell of brick hints at the building’s one-time function as the Howe Library. It served as the town library for about 74 years. The 1914–1915 stack addition is believed to have been designed by Boston architect Curtis William Bixby. The society plans to demolish the addition and replace it with an apartment addition (Planning Board minutes 6 March 2018 pdf).

    Howe stacks east facade at rear of Wheelock Mansion House, photo Scott Meacham

    Bicentennial stamp design credits, other topics

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    • The Dana project page shows the renovation and addition totally redoing the skin of the building: compare the Street View. The entrance is being moved from one end of the north façade to the center of the south facade, where it will occupy a full-height, south-facing, and very warm-looking glass addition (see the Planning Board minutes pdf).

      The project will include “a pedestrian bridge spanning the sunken lawn on the west side of Dana. Parking will also be added to support approximately 60 new spaces, and will connect to the Maynard parking lot” according to the project page. The Planning Board minutes also mention a green space in the interior of the block: that seems to be the corridor that passes beneath the bridge. The parking lot seems to occupy the Gilman site.

    • The rowing training facility project page shows that the facility should definitely read as an addition.

    • The first-day-of-issue ceremony program for the 1969 Dartmouth College Case stamp has some detailed information about the stamp’s design:

      The design of the stamp was selected from four sketches submitted by John R. Scotford, Jr., graphic designer for Dartmouth College and an alumnus. The drawing of Webster was done by P.J. Conkwright of Princeton in 1954 from a painting by John Pope (1821-1881) which now hangs in Parkhurst Hall in Hanover. The building in the background is Dartmouth Hall, built in 1784. During Webster’s undergraduate days and at the time the Dartmouth College case was being argued before the Supreme Court, Dartmouth Hall housed the whole College – dormitory, classrooms, library, and chapel.

      The stamp was engraved by Edward P. Archer, who did the vignette, and Kenneth C. Wiram, who did the lettering. Both are on the staff of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

      The type styles used are Craw Modern for the words “Daniel Webster” and “6¢ U. S. Postage,” and Torino Italic for the words “The Dartmouth College Case.”

    • A Dartmouth News article announces that Studio Nexus of WRJ, designers of the Co-Op Food Store expansion, won an award for their design of the DALI Lab in the basement of Sudikoff. The lab will be moving to the new Thayer/CS building in a few years.

    • The college is renovating the Blunt Alumni Center for academic use, with design by Studio Nexus and construction by North Branch. The brick house that forms the front of Blunt was built ca. 1810 for Professor Zephania Swift Moore ’93 and was owned by Medical School professor Dr. Dixi Crosby DMS ’24 and his family for decades beginning around 1838. The college bought the house and in 1896 had Lamb & Rich remodel it and add a large frame dormitory ell at the rear. The entrance portico with its giant-scale columns is a typical Rich device. The dormitory addition was replaced by the current Modernist brick office addition (1980, Benjamin Thompson Associates). The current project will create a new entrance on the north side of Blunt, giving easier access to Silsby Hall across Tuck Mall:

    • The Valley News has an article about the new programming initiative of the Hanover Historical Society. A presentation on the history of the golf course was on tap.

    • The Valley News also has an article about the plans of the Friends of Hanover Crew to demolish their 1770s farmhouse on Lyme Road, seen here in Google Street View:

    • This is unfortunate and disappointing. On the one hand, the group was saddled with this house when it acquired the property near the river. On the other hand, it is hard not to ask whether the group has taken on some obligation to the history and preservation of this place. If the house cannot become a headquarters or clubhouse for the high school rowing club, could it be renovated and rented out as an income generator? Would someone be willing to move it? Would the college be able to rescue it and move it a few hundred yards down the road to the Organic Farm?

    • The Smith & Vansant site features some recent renovation projects, including Triangle House and a number of historic buildings used as faculty housing.

    • The Hood has a video about the ongoing construction work and an article about the brick used on the addition’s exterior.

    • DHMC opened the Jack Byrne Center for Palliative and Hospice Care at the end of last year (Here in Hanover, DHMC, Health Facilities Management). Architects E4H — Environments for Health have photos.

    New visual identity guidelines, Dartmouth Ruzicka typeface

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    The college has revealed its new branding strategy (pdf), devised by Original Champions of Design (see news from the Office of Communications, Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth, and Brand New).

    The strategy is the largest part of a new identity push that is described in “Telling Our Story” (pdf).

    The new identity replaces the mild revamp described in the 2014 brand style guide (pdf). A September 2016 tweet by OCD at Rauner gave a hint that something was up and shows the depth of the firm’s interest in history. (And it’s possible that the image of the commemorative tile on page 50 came from this post; see also this 2013 post encouraging the mining of college history.)

    From Dartmouth News:

    The new graphic elements include four key items: a Dartmouth wordmark, which is the typographic treatment of the Dartmouth name; a custom-made typeface; a redesigned “lone pine”; and an icon that combines the lone pine with the letter D. Additionally, there is a new palette of colors to complement the traditional Dartmouth Green color, as well as new icons for use in social media, all of which will better communicate the Dartmouth identity, says Anderson.

    The typeface is by Jesse Ragan (creator of RudolphRuzicka.com) and is based on the type that Ruzicka designed for use on the Bicentennial plaque, in the Zahm Garden outside Paddock Music Library), and the later Dartmouth Medal. (It is not to be confused with Dartmouth’s other 1969 typeface, the one that was designed by Will Carter and Paul Hayden Duensing and was revived recently for the Inn’s own rebranding.)

    Like the typeface, the “D-Pine” mark is a nostalgic call to the early 1970s. It has a pleasing retro-kitsch character and makes one think of orange down vests, canned beer, and what are now called trucker hats. It would make an excellent athletics mark.

    The use of the Versailles-like map of the paths on the Green as one of the four suggested patterns picks up an idea from the Year of the Arts (style guide).

    And now we have an explanation of the origin of the seal-like House emblems (post, post): “The firm [OCD] also worked with the house communities last year to design a set of [insignia] with a unified design language, which debuted last fall, Anderson said.”

    —–

    [Update 02.18.2018:]

    It’s true that the D-Pine, as fine as it might be, does not make an adequate replacement for Dartmouth’s midcentury shield. Perhaps the chart should look something like this?

    Adopting a new coat of arms as a part of the 250th anniversary

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    This is an edited version of a post of seven years ago.

    Jonathan Good wrote a proposal for a heraldic coat of arms for Dartmouth College in 1995. As the proposal explains, the new symbol would be an adjunct to the existing coat of arms rather than a replacement for it.

    The celebration of Dartmouth’s 250th anniversary in 2019 would be a fine time to adopt the coat of arms. At the last big college celebration of this kind, the 1969 bicentennial, the school adopted the lone pine device that has since become widespread.

    A couple of Scott Meacham’s own cut-and-paste efforts to render the proposed arms:

    Proposed arms for Dartmouth as designed by Good and depicted by Meacham

    Proposed arms for Dartmouth as designed by Good and depicted by Meacham

    A petition to save College Park and Shattuck Observatory

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    The Friends of College Park and Shattuck Observatory have a petition you can sign to register your opposition to the removal of the observatory and the construction of a dormitory complex in the park. There is a fascinating history of the observatory as well.

    But signs are not good. Back in September, the project page listed an upcoming milestone:

    November: Review conceptual design results with Board of Trustees. If results are favorable, request Trustee approval to proceed with next phase of Schematic Design.

    The Trustees do not seem to have publicly announced their reaction. But the results are obviously favorable, since now the project page says:

    March 2018: Review conceptual design results with Board of Trustees. Subsequent project steps are TBD.

    This plan must be pretty fantastic if it can convince otherwise rational people that it is worth pursuing. But not apparently so great that it can withstand public scrutiny.

    One wishes the planners would at least say why they cannot build four or five well-sited new dorms in established clusters. Allowing that 750 beds are needed, why do they have to be all together? Are the economies of scale so great (or the school’s finances so poor) that the college cannot afford to separate the buildings? Or is it that the only proper building sites are reserved for other buildings whose planning the college does not yet want to acknowledge?

    The dorms in College Park could very well end up looking like Sasaki’s Wolf Ridge Apartments at N.C. State University in Raleigh, N.C.:

    That’s some perfectly adequate flat-roofed university housing, built on a ridge.

    Sports Pav expanded; other news

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    Insignia for house communities emerging

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    The first examples of house insignia are being released. They follow the graphical guidelines set out by the college (pdf).

    The “house community” on the Hitchcock Estate, known at the moment as West House, has offered its official symbol: an elm tree. The symbol is used in action a few times in a recent Westletter (pdf). The elm refers to but does not depict the wonderful elm in front of Butterfield Hall. (That tree might have been planted by professor/trustee Henry Fairbanks, who built his mansion where Russell Sage now stands in 1864.)

    Next we have East Wheelock House, a cluster that was still known as “the New Dorms” during the mid-nineties. One of its constituent buildings, Morton Hall, was damaged in a fire about a year ago and has been gutted and remodeled by the college. Thus the East Wheelock emblem is a phoenix. No relation is intended to the Phoenix Senior Society, a 35-year old Dartmouth women’s society. (The Phoenix Senior Society was also evidently the name given by the Sphinx when a photo of its building was published in 1907.)

    An article in The Dartmouth notes that an emblem for each house has been commissioned from the same professional designer. These designs look like seals, especially with the wording around the border (and perhaps in the future the phrase “West House,” whose repetition makes the design look like a coin, can be replaced with the house motto). Most importantly, the designs — so far, anyway — are authentically connected to the houses they represent.

    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.

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

    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).