Category Archives: History

About general non-architectural aspects of Dartmouth College.

Houses update, parking garage discussion

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Detail of House Center B rendering from OPDC video

Detail of rendering of House Center B shown in OPDC video

  • Dartmouth Now has a post on “Founders’ Day,” the day when “students gathered at Baker-Berry Library to receive personalized letters indicating their membership in one of the six new house communities” (see also photos). Each House gets a different color: probably arbitrary, but not much more arbitrary than most of the House names.

  • The Valley News has an article by Tris Wykes on Thompson Arena’s 40 years.

  • The Thayer School construction project of the future sounds like an expansion rather than a new building, which would fit with the Thayer tradition. (See the Planning Board minutes 2 February 2016 pdf.)

  • There is lots of talk about the Thayer School parking structure proposed for the intersection of Thayer Drive and West Wheelock Street (Valley News).

  • “A pathway is also proposed from a proposed parking facility to the Green, to enhance connectivity of the west campus to the main campus, and to provide easy off-highway access from the proposed parking facility to the Green” (Planning Board minutes 2 February 2016 pdf).

  • “The College has no plans to undertake construction for the School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, though administrators are exploring options for establishing a designated community space for graduate students” Dartmouth Now).

  • The college’s Flickr photostream has a picture of the temporary fence recently erected on North Main Street.

  • The Valley News ran a photo that it described this way:

    Garrett Hubert, of Newport, is the first to carry the torch during the 30-mile run, roller-ski and ski relay to Newport from Hanover on Friday. A relay team re-enacted the solo trip John McCrillis took in 1916 when he skied to Newport from Dartmouth College to attend the town’s first Winter Carnival. David McCrillis, left, is McCrillis’ grandson.

A Thayer garage on Wheelock Street?

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  • Planning for the Sestercentennial is starting in earnest (Dartmouth Now).

  • Check out the West Wheelock massing study by UK Architects, part of the gateway district process.

  • The locker rooms in the Sports Pavilion, one of the only buildings on campus that is not named for anyone, are slated for enlargement (Valley News interview with Harry Sheehy).

  • The school has considered expanding Thompson Arena by excavating under the stands (Valley News interview with Harry Sheehy).

  • The Rauner Blog has a post on the centenary of the death of Richard N. Hall.

  • Don’t forget about the 1966 Webcam on the roof of the Inn.

  • The Dartmouth song “Son of a Gun for Beer” would seem to share a history with this song about the Hebron YMCA recorded on a wax cylinder and described as a Harvard song. “A Son of a Gun” with its current arrangement by Crane appeared in the 1898 Dartmouth songbook attributed to an anonymous author1Edwin Osgood Grover and Addison Fletcher Andrews, Dartmouth songs: a new collection of college songs (1898), 60. Historian Patricia Averill connects the song’s origin to the “Itsy Bitsy Spider”! That song originated in 1817 as “The Rambling Soldier” and was published in 1870 referencing a “son of a gambolier.”2Patricia Averill, Camp Songs, Folk Songs (author, 2014), 232 There is an 1891 reference to “A son of a gambolier, / A son of a gun for beer.”3Henry Collins, “Notes from an Engineers’ Camp,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine (September 1891), 374, available at Google Books. Georgia Tech’s “Rambling Wreck” version was printed in 1908.4Averill.

  • Thayer School is thinking of putting a parking garage on West Wheelock Street in place (presumably) of the college-owned apartment buildings there (Planning Board minutes 17 November 2015 pdf). Interesting!

  • Neat topics that are covered in Wikipedia: moonlight towers, low-background steel, Manhattanhenge, ghost stations, trap streets and other fictitious entries (copyright traps), and freedom of the city.

  • In the discussions of Dartmouth’s Lone Pine let’s not forget another piece of stylized vegetation from the Sixties: the flag of Canada.

  • Details on the Baker Tower renovation (Planning Board minutes 3 November 2015 pdf):

    The project includes: replacing the roof, restoring windows, replacing clock
    controls/hands/glass, replacing lighting and addressing issues with lighting, installing electronic controls for the bells, replacing the spire, stopping water infiltration, and cleaning masonry grout.

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References
↑1 Edwin Osgood Grover and Addison Fletcher Andrews, Dartmouth songs: a new collection of college songs (1898), 60.
↑2 Patricia Averill, Camp Songs, Folk Songs (author, 2014), 232
↑3 Henry Collins, “Notes from an Engineers’ Camp,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine (September 1891), 374, available at Google Books.
↑4 Averill.

The Sestercentennial and the College Mace

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Introduction

It is common for an academic institution to possess among its “crown jewels” a big ceremonial mace (Wikipedia) that is carried at the head of the Commencement procession and might rest in a special spot during the times when the board of trustees is in session. Dartmouth does not have a mace per se, but the College Usher leads the Commencement procession with Lord Dartmouth’s Cup (visible at the right side of this college Flickr photo), a tall 1848 silver vessel that certainly serves the purpose of a mace.

The mace in the U.S.

The college received the cup until 1969 and did not start using it in processions until 1983. Dartmouth does not seem to have had a mace before that time. Why not? It is not clear. It might be that the academic mace is mostly a recent phenomenon in this country. Here is a list of some notable North American college maces:

A future mace

It would not be surprising if some alumnus or organization were to come up with the idea of presenting the college with a mace on the occasion of its 250th anniversary in 2019. (That time is not too far off: the 250th anniversary class is already in college.) The mace would not only commemorate the granting of the charter but also would symbolize the independence of the institution from the state, with 2019 being the bicentennial of the Dartmouth College Case.

At best, this old-style mace would be fashioned by New England craftspeople,1In addition, the Medallic Art Company has available a selection of maces, mostly with wooden staffs, and Thomas Fattorini Ltd. of England (pdf) makes metal maces. but it need not follow the traditional mace form. Why not have it refer to a Cabin & Trail splitting maul; a woodsman’s cant hook or peavey; a Mountaineering Club ice axe; or an Organic Farm timber-framer’s mallet?

Perhaps the mace could encapsulate within it some historic implement, such as a cane or cane-head that belonged to Daniel Webster; a nineteenth-century axe used in the Second College Grant; a Boston Post Cane from a defunct New Hampshire town with some connection to the college; an ice axe used on a Himalayan expedition during the 1960s; a broom handle used by John Kemeny to prop open the cabinet of an overheating computer; or a hatchet that Robert Frost used in his woodlot. What about a nineteenth-century canoe paddle?

Any of these venerable tools would be sheathed in a protective silver capsule before being gilded, covered in worked sheets of precious metals, engraved, and decorated with jewels. The encrusting might include polished fragments of the Old Pine, the granite front step of Dartmouth Hall,2That step is located at the entrance to Dick’s House. or a piece of wood or stone from the original building of Moor’s Charity School in Connecticut. Parts of the weathered head and handle of the enclosed cane or axe might be left uncovered, and other parts, perhaps the sharp ones, might be made visible through small crystal windows.

So that a person would be available to carry this new ceremonial mace, the board might have to create the office of Quartomillenial Beadle or Semiquincentennial Macebearer.3The charter office of College Usher, currently conferred upon the Treasurer, now imposes upon its occupant the task of carrying Lord Dartmouth’s Cup in processions. The charter office of College Steward might be available, although one might expect its occupant to be the head of DDS and to carry, say, a giant silver repoussé ladle engraved with the word “COMMONS.”

[Update 12.06.2015: Three broken links fixed.]

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References
↑1 In addition, the Medallic Art Company has available a selection of maces, mostly with wooden staffs, and Thomas Fattorini Ltd. of England (pdf) makes metal maces.
↑2 That step is located at the entrance to Dick’s House.
↑3 The charter office of College Usher, currently conferred upon the Treasurer, now imposes upon its occupant the task of carrying Lord Dartmouth’s Cup in processions. The charter office of College Steward might be available, although one might expect its occupant to be the head of DDS and to carry, say, a giant silver repoussé ladle engraved with the word “COMMONS.”

Moosilauke Ravine Lodge items, other links

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  • Microsoft’s Bing, which has always had much better oblique aerial photography than Google, now has a Google Street View competitor called Streetside. The car came through Hanover last summer (around July 10?). Here are Memorial Field’s West Stands under construction, the upper reaches of Tuck Drive as service road, and the new sorority on Occom Ridge.

  • The Art of Ping Pong raises money for BBC Children in Need with painted ping pong paddles.

  • One of the mascots in the running to replace the Lord Jeff at Amherst College is the moose, The New York Times reports. A mascot does not have to be local, but if you are wondering whether they really have moose in Massachusetts, the paper reports that they do.

  • The Rauner Library Blog looks at a book of photos of Ike at the Grant, the construction of the Hopkins Center, Arthur H. Chivers 1902 and his study of the Cemetery, and a 19th-century dance card (featuring the arms of the Earl of Dartmouth).

  • There is an interesting photo of the demolition of the rear addition to Crosby Hall in the Photographic Files. The Blunt addition was built in its place.

  • The Valley News has an article on boosting activity in downtown Lebanon. Ahhh, the Shoetorium.

  • The Rauner Library Blog has been getting into foodways, looking at recipes for Mountain sticky Stew and Green Machine, the latter being a lemon-lime punch mixed in a wastebasket.

  • The college has a video on the construction of the Class of 1966 Bunkhouse at Moosilauke. Construction is going on now. The Battle Family has donated a challenge gift to spur fundraising for the replacement of the Ravine Lodge (Dartmouth Now).

  • Kiki Smith’s Refuge (earlier called Hoarfrost with Rabbit?) now occupies the plaza outside the VAC.

  • The Washington Post has an article on tontines. It states:

    These arrangements were so widespread in the 18th century that the young United States almost ran a tontine itself: Alexander Hamilton proposed a tontine to pay down national debt after the Revolutionary War. Though his idea was rejected, local communities often set up tontines in Colonial times to raise money for large projects. Scattered in cities all along the East Coast, including in the nation’s capital, there have been buildings that were financed through a tontine. Some roads continue to bear the name Tontine, a sign of how they were paid for.

    Hanover’s Tontine Building, which stood basically where J. Crew is from 1813 to 1887, was presumably funded by a tontine. (An alternative theory is that the building was named for a well-known building in Boston that actually was funded by a tontine.) The library has some great old photos.

    In response to the Post, Paul Krugman properly reminds us of The Wrong Box, the 1966 Michael Caine picture whose plot is based on the operation of a tontine.

  • Dartmouth is enlarging the size of the lot at 6 Rope Ferry Road (expanding it rearward toward the pond?) in order to make the lot large enough to subdivide. The college has no plans at the moment for the new, empty lot (2 June 2015 Planning Board minutes pdf).

  • Jon Roll ’67 of Roll Barresi & Associates did the campus signage for the professional schools (2001 Master Plan pdf, 15). The signs share a look with those the firm designed for Smith College. The Master Plan contains this intriguing comment: “[T]he college continues to debate the wisdom of a sign on Wheelock Street reading ‘Dartmouth College.'” The design of a sign-like monument at the corner of Main and Wheelock was a project assigned to Architecture I classes around 1992. A sign really does not seem necessary here.

Wheelock’s Mansion House sold

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The Valley News reports that the college is selling Eleazar Wheelock’s house to the Eleazar Wheelock Society, a “pan-denominational resource promoting a constructive role for faith in learning environments like Dartmouth,” as well as at Dartmouth itself. The group will remodel the building to house 24 students. The college only acquired the house a few years ago, and it seems to be imposing a private historic preservation covenant in this sale. The renovation that turned the house into the Howe Library around 1900 was designed by Charles A. Rich, while the ominous/cute brick stacks addition is later.

The “Mansion House” for the college president was built with funds from London evangelical John Thornton, so its acquisition by this group seems particularly appropriate. The group was founded by alumni in 2008 and aims to establish “a reproducible model that can be duplicated on college and university campuses elsewhere.” It admires Wheelock “because of his commitment to the biblical worldview.”

In thanking Joseph Asch for his kind mention of this site on Dartblog, I am compelled to note Princeton’s preservation of an early president’s house1The house is not that of Princeton’s founding president, if the school had such a person: the College of New Jersey was established in Elizabeth and moved to Newark before it settled in Princeton. that is both older than Dartmouth’s and still in its original location. A 1764 engraving by Dawkins (reproduced in a Princeton news article) shows the Maclean House in front and to the right of Nassau Hall. The two buildings are still standing and appear in this recent Bing aerial.

Putting the president’s house alongside the lawn that lay between the street and the college proper was a standard practice. This image shows Dartmouth’s president’s house in its original location at the righthand end of Dartmouth Row.2Although Wheelock died before Dartmouth Hall was built, he anticipated the construction of a college on the hill and likely had the site in mind when he built his own house.

1830s Currier engraving of Dartmouth

Detail of ca. 1834 Currier engraving of Dartmouth Row showing President’s House at far right. Image reversed from erroneous original disposition.

The relation of the president’s house to the college building made early Dartmouth look very much like early Princeton.3 Early views of the two schools are so similar, in fact, that Dartmouth once used the Dawkins engraving of Nassau Hall as the cover of its annual report in error; confirmation will be posted as it is found.

[Update 11.13.2015: Final three paragraphs added.]

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References
↑1 The house is not that of Princeton’s founding president, if the school had such a person: the College of New Jersey was established in Elizabeth and moved to Newark before it settled in Princeton.
↑2 Although Wheelock died before Dartmouth Hall was built, he anticipated the construction of a college on the hill and likely had the site in mind when he built his own house.
↑3 Early views of the two schools are so similar, in fact, that Dartmouth once used the Dawkins engraving of Nassau Hall as the cover of its annual report in error; confirmation will be posted as it is found.

The plaques are back at Memorial Field

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The rededication of the memorial plaques that had been returned or relocated to Memorial Field took place last weekend (Alumni Relations press release, Events notice).

The green wall on which the various plaques are mounted faces westward from behind the brick arches of the West Stands. A new circular logo-like relief sculpture by Dimitri Gerakaris ’69 bearing the motto “THE HILL WIND KNOWS THEIR NAME”1The phrase is a reference to a line in the “Alma Mater,” which is a version of the poem “Men of Dartmouth” (“The still North remembers them, / The hill-winds know their name, / And the granite of New Hampshire / Keeps the record of their fame.”). Richard Hovey, “Men of Dartmouth,” in H.J. Hapgood and Craven Laycock, eds., Echoes from Dartmouth (Hanover, N.H., 1895), 12. is an organizing feature; it was donated by the Sphinx Foundation.2The Foundation, of whose board Gerakaris has been a member, maintains the Sphinx Tomb. Its other purposes include being a “reservoir” of college history and preserving the educational ceremonies of the Sphinx (it conducts a “formal annual course on Dartmouth and Sphinx history and tradition” for members). Getting good Internet access through the poured-concrete walls of the tomb must be tough, and indeed one of the group’s accomplishments is the maintenance of “the building’s wireless and high speed conductivity to ensure the Sphinx Building provides the strongest support for undergraduate academic activities.” Those activities include using the library and study stations and engaging in “extensive peer driven learning experiences” (2013 Form 990 PDF). Gerakaris, of Canaan, is the sculptor of the rugby relief on the chimney breast in the Rugby Clubhouse.

The Big Green Alert Blog has a photo of each plaque. The post-1920s plaques were moved here from elsewhere. For pre-1920s plaques, visit Webster Hall, where an Alumni Association plaque lists the 73 Civil War dead and a Class of 1863 plaque lists the 56 class members who served in the Civil War. The two plaques were installed in 1914, about six years after Webster Hall was finished.

Dartmouth does not seem to have a war memorial for any earlier war, and Charles T. Wood’s The Hill Winds Know Their Name (pdf) does not list any. Dartmouth certainly could have a monument to past and future college students and officers who fought in the Revolution; students of Moor’s Charity School are actually more prominent in that war than are Dartmouth students, and at least one (Joseph Brant) took part in both the French & Indian War and the Revolutionary War.

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References
↑1 The phrase is a reference to a line in the “Alma Mater,” which is a version of the poem “Men of Dartmouth” (“The still North remembers them, / The hill-winds know their name, / And the granite of New Hampshire / Keeps the record of their fame.”). Richard Hovey, “Men of Dartmouth,” in H.J. Hapgood and Craven Laycock, eds., Echoes from Dartmouth (Hanover, N.H., 1895), 12.
↑2 The Foundation, of whose board Gerakaris has been a member, maintains the Sphinx Tomb. Its other purposes include being a “reservoir” of college history and preserving the educational ceremonies of the Sphinx (it conducts a “formal annual course on Dartmouth and Sphinx history and tradition” for members). Getting good Internet access through the poured-concrete walls of the tomb must be tough, and indeed one of the group’s accomplishments is the maintenance of “the building’s wireless and high speed conductivity to ensure the Sphinx Building provides the strongest support for undergraduate academic activities.” Those activities include using the library and study stations and engaging in “extensive peer driven learning experiences” (2013 Form 990 PDF).

Changes continue at Memorial Field, even after completion

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Dartmouth Sports has a press release for the completion of the West Stands, and the Big Green Alert Blog has been publishing photos all along, including on July 1, August 19, and September 24 (completion, and the first interior views).

The Valley News article on the Lone Pine logo contained this intriguing note:

Searching for a concept to provide a sort of mental home-field advantage for his troops, Teevens came up with the idea of “The Woods” a few years back. He once coached at the University of Florida, where the football field is known as “The Swamp” and decided something similar should grace Memorial Field. The nickname is used in promotional materials and videos, and plans are in the works for the phrase and the Lone Pine logo to be painted on the facade of the refurbished west stands.

One hopes that the school’s architectural office, the Office of Design, gives the football team some design assistance here.

It is difficult to tell from photos alone whether the designers had a part in relocating the constellation of plaques that has moved from the War Memorial Garden at the Hop to Memorial Field (see the photo at Big Green Alert).

The stands were built as a First World War memorial, of course, and the memorial heart of the building was the high-vaulted, open entrance chamber of limestone and brick. That memorial room has been demolished; it is understandable that Dartmouth could not afford to preserve the building’s entry, or that the openings were too narrow for the new stairs. The college did salvage the small number of First World War plaques from the walls and has put them up again in circumstances that seem somewhat less reverential than before.

As a generic all-wars memorial, the stands feature a green wall — is it painted concrete, or painted wood? — with some plaques1One does miss the old tradition of putting the date of dedication on a plaque. Attention to wording also seems to be declining: One noble plaque, generously given by surviving classmates, honors the “men who served in WWII and those who gave their lives for their country,” implying that those who gave their lives did not serve, and omitting an indication of the category to which the 24 names belong. attached — including the Class of 1945 Weather Post plaque, apparently separated now from its temperature and pressure dials. This building does seem to be a good place to relocate the plaques if the upcoming Hop expansion requires the use of the garden space. One hopes that the plaques were not moved here for thematic reasons alone.

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References
↑1 One does miss the old tradition of putting the date of dedication on a plaque. Attention to wording also seems to be declining: One noble plaque, generously given by surviving classmates, honors the “men who served in WWII and those who gave their lives for their country,” implying that those who gave their lives did not serve, and omitting an indication of the category to which the 24 names belong.

More on the Lone Pine logo

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The Valley News has a piece by Tris Wykes on the growing use of the Lone Pine in athletic branding. See also the article “Stand Tall Lone Pine” (Peak (Winter 2015) pdf).

John Scotford [one letter t in his name] designed the pine for the 1969 Bicentennial. The school actually released several different versions or iterations of the logo, and several different representations of a pine tree, most if not all apparently by Scotford:

Bicentennial dual logo

Bicentennial dual logo from a program(?)

Bicentennial medal obverse

Bicentennial medal, obverse

Bicentennial tile

Bicentennial commemorative tile

Bicentennial logo

Third Century logo from frontispiece of R.N. Hill, College on the Hill

Of course the actual Lone Pine — earlier known as the Old Pine, although it was not extremely old, certainly not as old as the school — did not look like any of these, but that is beside the point. (Scotford also designed the 1969 Dartmouth College Case stamp, a realistic image that does not depict any pines.)

With the rise of the pine, apparently the athletic logotype commissioned from SME, Inc. in 2005 (pdf) is going away.1This is good news. I could never figure out that logo. Is the triangular background form meant to represent the gable of Dartmouth Hall? Then why make its essential peak tiny and hide it inside the letter D, where it gets lost on banners and uniforms and Web graphics? But then the upper part of the shape cannot be Dartmouth Hall, because the lower part of the shape is an upward-broadening trapezoid. There is no building at Dartmouth like that.

Logo by SME, Inc.


Athletics logo by SME, Inc.

That logo is completely skipped over by the VN article, which goes from the Big Green nickname (dating to the early 1900s,2The Dartmouth 31:__ (___, 1909), 206 (Google Books). Football games between Dartmouth and the “Indians” of the Carlisle Indian School of the 1910s were called Dartmouth-Indian games — a clear indication that Dartmouth teams were not the Indians. not a replacement for the later Indians nickname) right to the Lone Pine. Neither the Athletic Department’s improving website nor the Football Team’s website uses it.

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References
↑1 This is good news. I could never figure out that logo. Is the triangular background form meant to represent the gable of Dartmouth Hall? Then why make its essential peak tiny and hide it inside the letter D, where it gets lost on banners and uniforms and Web graphics? But then the upper part of the shape cannot be Dartmouth Hall, because the lower part of the shape is an upward-broadening trapezoid. There is no building at Dartmouth like that.
↑2 The Dartmouth 31:__ (___, 1909), 206 (Google Books). Football games between Dartmouth and the “Indians” of the Carlisle Indian School of the 1910s were called Dartmouth-Indian games — a clear indication that Dartmouth teams were not the Indians.

History, buildings, etc.

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  • The Rauner blog has posts on Memorial Field, dorm room plans, fraternity meeting minutes, the WWI trenches around Leverone’s site, and class day clay pipes.

  • A Review interview with Thayer School’s Senior Associate Dean Ian Baker says:

    In addition to serving as the Associate Dean, Baker also chaired a community board overseeing and discussing the construction of a new building for the engineering school. The new building will be located next to MacLean where the parking lot is. “We have yet to figure out where the car park goes,” Baker mentioned, wryly suggesting that it was the only problem in the plan. Baker also serves on several academic boards for the school.

    The trustees approved a Thayer School parking garage on the Cummings Lot site back in February of 2002 (post).

  • An actual historic preservation campaign has sprung up at Dartmouth: Save Moosilauke.

  • The 65 Bunkhouse is finished, photos of the decication.

  • Nice black-and-white photos of Hanover architecture by Trevor Labarge are on line. The post office pediment looks quite grand, almost Londonesque.

  • The Hanover Conservancy is thinking about Kendal’s expansion onto the Chieftain property

  • The Valley News is covering the ongoing negotiations over construction of a palliative care center near DHMC and Boston Lot Lake.

  • The Williamson seems to be wrapping up (2014 press release, Turner Construction page).

  • ORW Landscape Architects and Planners of WRJ has been acquired by Greenman – Pedersen, Inc. of New York (pdf). ORW designed the recent improvements to the sidewalk and porte-cochere of the Inn (pdf).

  • The Norwich ad firm called Flannel created Dartmouth’s polished Strategic Plan website and others.

  • The story of how Glasgow football club Partick Thistle F.C. (Wiki) got its new mascot is almost as odd as the mascot itself.

  • Old Division Football (“the Usual Game”) seems a bit like the Florentine calcio storico (New York Times).

Heraldica

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1. The Lone Pine really is taking over from the 1940s-1950s shield as an emblem of official college-related things other than the board of trustees.

The pine is everywhere. For example, the Campus Police were represented by this patch but now Safety & Security are using this one. A van from Computing Services (now called ITS?) features a pine dissolving into pixels. Each of the new shields of Thayer School and Grad Studies has a pine. The new-ish DDS logo presents the Lone Pine as a giant piece of broccoli. Peak magazine (Winter 2015) even has an article on the phenomenon.

2. If the residential colleges adopt coats of arms, the collection of all six will look neat together. Here’s a collaged image of the carved and painted arms of the city of Dresden, flanked by those of the city’s districts, created to honor the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the DDR in 1979:

Dresden, Germany arms. Meacham photo

3. This is not directly related, but it’s worth remembering that a portion of the money that Wheelock used to establish Dartmouth came from Merton College, Oxford (Wiki; arms shown on 1264 Society page). The college is listed as having donated £2.2s.- to Moor’s Charity School during Occom’s and Whitaker’s 1766-1767 fundraising tour of England and Scotland (appendix to Wheelock’s 1769 Narrative in Google Books).

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Update 08.25.2015: Take a look at the Flag Project at the Florianopolis Design Biennale — a whole series of flags, each one representing the architectural features of a particular building.

Investiture and other topics

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  • The report of the 210th Alumni Council meeting updates us on plans underway to create a freestanding School of Graduate Studies that will coordinate the 17 Ph.D. programs and 12 Masters’ programs that exist alongside the professional degrees of the three professional schools. Grad Studies is now holding its first investiture ceremony (Dartmouth Now). The coat of arms was just the first step…

  • The Council meeting summary states that “[t]he College has also received sufficient donations to support the initial year of the new residential model of house communities.” That’s an interesting funding method; presumably in the long term the school will seek a naming gift for each Community. The funding element is not mentioned in the full report, although the need for heraldry (again) is foreshadowed:

    House programming budgets will support a wide range of activities including “feeds,” intramurals, concerts, field trips, new annual traditions, alumni events, house swag, experiential learning, and leadership development activities.

    Happy to see the term “feed” surviving.

  • It was a surprise to find last year that the famous Concord Coach that regularly carried the football team to the railroad station more than a century ago still existed (post). Now, courtesy of Time Well Kept: Selections from the Wells Fargo Corporate Archives, we learn that the coach of famous Hanover liveryman Ira Allen survives as well! From the book:

    J.S. and E.A. Abbot and Company built coach #746 in the spring of 1864 for New Hampshire stage operator Ira B. Allen, who ordered his coach made two inches narrower and lighter than other typical nine-passenger coaches. Coach builders painted #746 dark green, a standard but seldom-chosen color requested by Allen, whose staging business in Hanover carried many students and visitors to Dartmouth College.

    The coach, which is no longer painted green, is on display in Miami.

  • The Alumni Magazine in its May-June issue featured a number of historic photos of life at the college, carefully colored by Sanna Dullaway. The photo of the Golden Corner and watering trough, the tenth or so image, looks like it gets the color right.

  • The Big Green Alert continues to cover progress at Memorial Field, with photos on May 14, 20, and 22, and June 4.

  • Really intriguing things are going on with the proposal for a natural gas pipeline from Lebanon to the Heating Plant via DHMC (Valley News).

  • Received the latest campus map through email ahead of the reunion next weekend. It looks nice. It labels all of the sports fields and, possibly for the first time, labels the Softball Park and Burnham Pavilion (I thought that one was also unnamed as the Sports Pavilion?). It depicts the Lewiston buildings. It calls attention to the fact that the parking lot behind Thayer/53 Commons is still called “DDA Lot,” even though DDA became DDS a quarter-century ago. One does wish that the mapmakers would abbreviate the “Saint” in the names of the churches. And is the official name of the cemetery really the “Town of Hanover Cemetery,” when it was built on college-owned land and run by the Dartmouth Cemetery Association? Finally, one hopes that the roadway labeled “Old Tuck Drive” is not called that in practice. There is no “new” Tuck Drive to distinguish it from, and it’s the same as it ever was: Tuck Drive.

  • The Dartmouth reports on Tri-Delt’s decision to go local.

  • The website of Gamma Delta Chi documents the changes that the organization is making to its house, including an extensive set of alterations to the Pit.

  • The Valley News, reporting on the AD derecognition, quotes college spokeswoman Diana Lawrence:

    “Students are free to join any organization that’s not recognized by the college,” she said, so as far as Dartmouth is concerned, “they can become Freemasons.”

    In case you were wondering in 1799, “the Board of Trust declared itself in a decree that any student becoming a mason should thereby cease to be a member of College.”1John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College, 1815-1909 (Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1913 ), 520.

  • The Rauner blog has an interesting post on the ownership of the Green.

  • The voters of the Town defeated the West Wheelock Gateway District proposal (Valley News).

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References
↑1 John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College, 1815-1909 (Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1913 ), 520.

Moosilauke demo official; other items

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  • Dartmouth Now reports in “House Professors Named to Residential Communities“:

    The house professors will each serve a four-year term beginning July 1, 2015, and will move into on-campus residences near their respective house communities the following summer.

    In fact, other than the current East Wheelock professor, who will continue, none of the professors has been publicly named to a particular residential community. See also The Dartmouth.

  • A new sport to try: the primitive biathlon (a href=”http://www.vnews.com/home/16288958-95/a-snowback-throwback-biathlons-receive-a-retro-makeover”>Valley News).

  • The Food Co-Op has posted a video of the renovation and addition project as it stood in March.

  • The Rauner Library Blog has a post on the remarkable collections of digital photos that are coming on line. Among the topical Photo Files:

    As of this post, approximately 34,000 images representing topics through “Lacrosse, Womens” are available.

  • Charles Gibson Design did print design and logo and stationery for the Lebanon landscape architecture firm of Saucier & Flynn.

  • The Dartmouth reports that the trustees have finally decided to replace both the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge and the Ledyard Canoe Club clubhouse. Although the article uses the word “rebuild” several times, the buildings are not going to be carefully dismantled and put back together like the Ise Jingu grand shrine (Smithsonian mag), and they will not be replaced with replicas as Dartmouth Hall was. Each one will be demolished and have a novel building designed by Maclay Architects put up in its place. Given the past work of that firm and collaborator TimberHomes LLC, the timber-framing company co-founded by D.O.C. historian David Hooke, the results should be excellent. Built of posts and beams instead of stacked logs, a new Ravine Lodge could really be “an unlikely cathedral,” as the film calls it.

  • Dartmouth Now reports that the William Jewett Tucker Foundation is splitting into the Dartmouth Center for Service, so named for the time being, and the William Jewett Tucker Center. The endowment funds whose donors are no longer living will be split evenly between the two new foundations.

  • The football team has unveiled its new black uniforms; Big Green Alert has photos.

  • With the 250th anniversary of the charter grant approaching on December 13, 2019, the newly-admitted Class of 2019 is being called the Anniversary Class (see The Dartmouth).

    Here’s to the Polka Dot; other topics

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    • The Valley News has an article with some superb photographs on the Polka Dot Restaurant by the tracks in White River Junction. The 1925 building seems to have hosted a diner from the beginning; owner Mary Shatney started working there in 1959 and had to close the place last year. It’s up for sale — let’s hope it remains a restaurant.

    • The Dartmouth Energy Program site is very impressive. In the history section, the excellent photo of the coal assistant seems to have been taken from the east end of the hall looking west. The narrow-gauge rails lead toward the coal hopper in the end of the building, now the site of the Hood Museum’s Bernstein Study-Storage Center. A couple of quibbles: first, “the good old days” actually began in 1770, not 1769; second, the timeline could mention the major addition of a second level to the building in 1922, apparently when the plant switched from coal to oil; and third, there’s something off about the wording of this sentence on the main page, however technically correct it might be: “While Dartmouth may be the smallest Ivy League university, we’re doing big things with energy efficiency.”

    • Excellent photo documentation of the construction of the West Stands continues at the Big Green Alert: April 24, April 23, April 22, April 19, April 18 (notable photos), April 8, April 7 (seating chart), March 23, and March 16.

    • The photo in the Valley News story on spring practice makes Memorial Field look as if it occupies an industrial wasteland. The runway at which Memorial Field’s concrete risers were stored for about six years, incidentally, was known as Miller Airport (Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields).

    • Victor Mair ’65 at Language Log takes on the word “schlump,” of “schlump season,” i.e. “mud season” (“breakup” in Alaska).

    • The Rauner Library Blog has interesting posts on the petition of Ledyard and others to be allowed to learn to dance and use the sword and a mysterious photo album called Along the Connecticut 1912.

    • The Watershed Studio website features several notable projects, including the Friends of Hanover Crew boathouse, the Organic Farm greenhouse, and a design for the replacement Ledyard Canoe Club.

    • Maybe the real test for the Residential Communities (a post here) will be the Commencement ceremony. Will the Communities be represented in the procession? The graduates will still have to march in alphabetical order, but will the House Professors carry the house emblems?

    • The West Wheelock Gateway District proposal is up for a vote and has been getting some press (Valley News, The Dartmouth). The VN story has this neat tidbit:

      Around the corner from Anderson, William Smalley owns a small white house sandwiched between rental buildings mostly filled with Dartmouth students.

      In an interview Monday at his home, where he has lived since 1938, Smalley said he welcomed the creation of the district and didn’t mind the parties the students occasionally threw.

      “Somebody said to me, ‘How can you stand them?'” he said of the students, but “I’ve never had a problem with them — never.”

    • The college’s Flickr account has a neat and unusual view of Dartmouth Row, Ascutney, Richardson, and the Wilder addition. See the photo of the graffiti inside the Bartlett Tower roof. The structure does not look particularly original (1895) but there are graffiti from 1910 and 1915, so perhaps it is.

    • The Hanover Master Plan (pdf) contains a number of interesting tidbits, including this one: “The Town’s boundary stones and monuments are also historic landmarks. Most have the first letters of the adjacent towns incised in them.”

    • “In devising the plan of the library building, you have contemplated its indefinite extension to meet the growth of the collections,” said Mellen Chamberlain at the dedication of Wilson Hall as the school library (Google Books).

    • “Areas of potential historic interest include theoriginal center of Town; the well field of the old Aqueduct Company south of the Greensboro Road; the Granite Quarry south of Greensboro Road; the Tilton Quarry east of Moose Mountain Road and one of the earliest slate quarries on the old Tisdale property” (Hanover Master Plan pdf).

    • Finding churches that have been put to interesting new uses is just too easy, so further examples will not be added to the post here that arguing that Rollins should be turned into a library. There is a pub in a former church in Nottingham, England, and a brewery and pub in a former church in Pittsburgh, where a Romanesque nave makes an impressive beer hall.

    • The Hanover Master Plan (pdf) also recommends National Register listing for various districts including the campus.

    • This has probably been posted here before, but Yale has construction photos and a slick video of the two new residential colleges it is building.

    • The Dartmouth has an article on near-future construction projects.

    • Not much is coming out about Thayer School’s master plan. “Because the college owns Tuck Drive, any attempt to better align it with West Street will have to wait until Dartmouth’s own building plans in the area are finalized, she said” (referring to Vicki Smith, Hanover’s senior planner) (Valley News).

    Prefab sprout space?

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    Many of the six Residence Communities (a post here) need dwellings for their resident House Professors and spaces that will host social gatherings. The school has a master plan by Sasaki Associates, $11.75m to work with, and a deadline of Fall Term 2016.

    Thus it makes sense that representatives of the college and Sasaki would pay a visit to MIT to view modular buildings constructed by Triumph Modular. The handout from the visit on April 20 contains a proposed timeline: if design work ends by August 15, occupancy could begin on December 31.

    Dartmouth has a long history with modular buildings. The most notable ones were the leftover WWII shipyard workers’ housing units that became Wigwam Circle, where the River Cluster and Whittemore Green are now. (If memory serves, those buildings became the basis for Rivercrest, up past CRREL.) On a portion of the same site, Dartmouth placed the five Tree Houses in 2001. Every institution that uses “temporary” buildings becomes dependent on the space they provide and finds it hard to remove the buildings at the allotted time.

    The buildings in Triumph’s broad lineup, while modular, are not necessarily temporary.

    Names that change, or don’t change; various topics

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    • The Food Co-Op is in the second phase of its renovation.

    • The Rauner Library Blog has two posts (one, two) on a big scrapbook created by Francis Gilman Blake of the Class of 1908.

    • The Mirror (of The D) is doing a series of photos and descriptions of campus buildings, with some info drawn from the book.

    • A neat database gives information on all the memorials in London.

    • Old news: DCHCDS is being folded into DIHPCP (Valley News). The number of logotypes in the row (post) is reduced by one.

    • The Valley News reported that the Town is considering the creation of an affordable housing development.

    • The Trumbull-Nelson Newsletter (pdf) has an interesting history of the company, basically the Builders to the College, by Frank Barrett.

    • Brian Schott wrote a neat essay in the DAM about a wall painting in one of the East South Street houses demolished for South Block (pdf).

    • Long-time Valley News sports editor Don Mahler wrote that the one sports-related letter to the editor that made him laugh was a 1983 letter

      from a Dartmouth alum taking “newcomers to the Dartmouth scene” to task over the use of the term “homecoming.”

      According to the writer, “some clod started using the word just a few years ago.”

      “(A) large percentage of the Dartmouth alumni body, certainly prior to 1970 or thereabouts, never heard the word and when they do they associate it with cow colleges.”

      “Cow colleges”? I guess he meant those colleges with alphabet monikers like A&T, A&M and A&I — you know, institutions of lower learning, never to be confused with the Ivy League.

      He declared Dartmouth Night to be a great tradition that was being undermined by the increasing use of the word “homecoming.” And he also lamented that “fall houseparties” were gradually slipping from usage.

      Our correspondent revealed his true blue-blood colors in the last paragraph: “I may go down swinging on this, but I’m going to keep standing at the plate. … I’d rather work hard at teaching a clod a touch of class than let a drift to a common denominator prevail.”

      Thirty-one years later, we know that the old boy did go down, not just swinging but presumably with a stiff upper lip. These days, the Dartmouth alumni relations office puts out an annual calendar of events that includes a celebration of homecoming. I can’t recall anybody objecting to the bovine vulgarity of the event in recent years.

      Of course that alum was hyper-obnoxious, especially since he was directing his complaint at the VN, which can describe Dartmouth events using any terms it wants. But buried in the pointless snobbishness is an historical observation: the event known as “Homecoming” was not always called that. The college called it Dartmouth Night Weekend until recently. (It must be acknowledged that both Alumni Relations and the Registrar now call it Homecoming.)

    • The Rauner Blog has a post on some Wheelock documents.

    • The Valley News did a story and graphic on the history of the Dartmouth football uniform.

    • Beyer Blinder Belle has posted a new, larger depiction of the firm’s master plan for the college campus. Wow.

    • The Geisel magazine has an article on the Williamson.

    • Sometimes King’s College London is pointed to as evidence in the argument that Dartmouth need not drop the word “college” from its name. Recently, however, KCL took up a rebranding plan (Inside Higher Ed, Roar News story on proposed logo). The reason to change the name to King’s London, as quoted in the Times Higher Education, echoed concerns heard at Dartmouth:

      “However, our research conducted over the last 18 months with potential students, parents, staff, students and alumni, revealed that our current name was causing considerable confusion: is King’s a residential college, is it an academic college akin to the colleges of Oxbridge, or is it an educational institution of some other type such as a further education college?

      “Internationally, there was further misunderstanding because ‘college’ is not a widely understood term in many countries,” he added.

      The article in THE doesn’t actually say which of those three types of institutions KCL is, and the institution seems not to be any of them. Although it is one of two original colleges in the University of London, making it like an Oxbridge college, it is now a research university divided among nine schools of its own.

      In any case, the plan was controversial and was scrapped not very long after it was proposed (THE).

    The inevitable demolition news

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    First, the Brown game takes place today. It will be the last game played before Jens Larson’s 1923 West Stands at Memorial Field. The steel-framed concrete seating terraces will be demolished and removed from behind the brick facade, which will remain, beginning this week.

    Second, The Dartmouth reports that:

    The College also plans to rebuild the Ledyard Clubhouse. The clubhouse, which used to house a few students, was vacated last fall following water intrusion and mold buildup. Hogarty said the College will eliminate the residential component when Ledyard is rebuilt.

    “Rebuilt” means “replaced,” of course. This news has also been a long time coming. Students have been designing replacements for years — the original 1930 building was designed by a student, in fact — and the Milone & Macbroom Riverfront Master Plan showed a replacement building in the long term. It is worth mentioning that the Ledyard Monument is not in its original location and so probably needn’t be kept where it is.


    Ledyard Canoe Club interior photo by Meacham

    Interior of Ledyard looking north in 2005

    Third, the focus of the article in The Dartmouth is the news that the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge feasibility study recommends demolishing and replacing the Lodge. Maclay Architects, which conducted the study, includes a drawing of the main (west) facade of a possible Ravine Lodge replacement:

    detail of Maclay drawing of MRL facade

    Detail of Maclay drawing of west facade of new Ravine Lodge

    The drawing shows a building that seems both grander and more rustic, or more self-consciously rustic, than the 1938 Lodge. It lacks the extremely broad gable of the old lodge, but it has a signature form of its own. Maclay has extensive timber-framing experience, and with big logs scarce these days, this lodge appears to be a timber-framed building clad in shingles.

    The Board of Trustees could decide whether to demolish the old building in the spring.

    Graphic design, history, Friendly’s

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  • Take a look at this fascinating 19th-century photograph of the rear of Dartmouth Row. It is dated to the pre-1904 period, but judging from the tents, one might guess that it was taken in 1869, at the time of the centennial celebration. Younger alumni, many of them Civil War vets, were housed here in tents borrowed from the Army. And take a look at the small building on the left — is that a Temple of Cloacina, an ephemeral outhouse? Middle Fayerweather Hall stands in that area now.

  • The push to apply the nickname “The Woods” to Memorial Field continues (see the Big Green Alert Blog). What about fashioning some of the walls of the replacement stands from board-formed concrete (ConcreteNetwork.com)? What about incorporating a couple of precast concrete columns in the shape of trees?

  • The Rauner Blog has an interesting post on John Smith, a 1773 graduate, Preceptor of Moor’s Charity School, early Tutor at Dartmouth, and Trustee.

  • Campus Planning & Facilities has a collection of articles on the Grant.

  • It turns out the football team last spring ran a uniform design contest through the same website that Graduate Studies used to design their coat of arms, 99designs. The winning football uniform design includes lots of Lone Pines, including on the shoulders and the back of the helmet; most interesting is the Pine on the palm of each glove. The design brief says “We would also like to see some designs that incorporate the ‘Lone Pine’ (pictured below) on the shoulders or in any creative way, similarly to Oregon’s ‘feathers’ on the shoulders of their jerseys.” The brief mentions the state motto but not the school motto, strangely.

  • Back in August The Dartmouth had an article on Bruce Wood, maestro of the Big Green Alert site and its blog companion Big Green Alert Daily.

  • The Rauner Blog also has posts on General Thayer’s gift of his library; the catalogs of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth University; and an 1829 letter from Joseph Dow describing the college.

  • The Valley News announces that Friendly’s in West Leb is closing. I’ll never forget the disappointment on the face of a logician friend when he learned that the “ham and turkey pot pies” that our server mentioned among the dinner specials were actually nothing more than ham pot pies and turkey pot pies.

  • Cognitive Marketing designed the Thayer School shield.

  • Check out the May 1957 issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. The issue features Harrison’s initial design for the Hopkins Center. The plan is all there, but the details are changed. The view on pages 22 and 23 shows the long north-south corridor in a different form. The Barrows Rotunda, the cylindrical exhibition space in the front facade? It looks like it was descended from an unroofed two-level glass-walled shaft that features in this 1957 design — it was meant to go right through the middle of the Top of the Hop.

  • For Larson’s prior design for the Hop, see the December 1946 Alumni Magazine, beginning on page 11.

  • Tuck’s 2008 visual identity guide is available as a pdf. It’s cute that it calls the green color “Tuck green.” The book specifies the Sabon and Frutiger typefaces.

  • The athletics Graphic Standards Manual of 2005 is also available as a pdf. Now we know whom to blame for the gigantic TM connected with the green D logo (page 3). It is interesting that in addition to Dartmouth Green (PMS 349 C), this book also defines Dartmouth Black (Pro Black C) (page 11). The primary, “athletic” typeface is not named, but the secondary typeface is specified as Gill Sans Bold.

    The authors of the manual are SME Inc., the firm that created a shield for Manhattan College and the MLS logo with the boot striking the ball. (As an aside, that MLS logo recently was replaced by a shield designed by Athletics and Berliner Benson. A post at Brand New shows the shield partitioned by an almost typographical line that hangs over the border like the tail of a letter Q.)

    • Photography at the 1904 visit of the Earl of Dartmouth

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    Icon1647-0645-0000020A Icon1647-0645-0000023A

    These two photos from the Archives show the arrival of the Earl of Dartmouth in 1904:

    Combination of two photos of Earl of Dartmouth 1904

    The photos were taken from the steps of Casque & Gauntlet looking east toward the Inn. The righthand photo is the earlier of the two, and the Earl’s carriage appears in both photos. The student with the white collar striding down the walkway in the righthand photo is also visible at the edge of the left photo.

    In the left photo a professional photographer is visible, standing on a stepladder behind a large camera. He might have a cigar in his mouth.

    What kind of image did he capture? Here is a photo he took a few seconds after the two photos above; the Earl’s carriage has already rounded the corner:

    panorama of Earl of Dartmouth at Inn Corner, American Memory

    This photo is from the Library of Congress, which lists the copyright holder as E. Chickering & Co. A slightly cropped version of this photo is available in the Dartmouth Archives.