Category Archives: History

About general non-architectural aspects of Dartmouth College.

Wilson Hall could become the Hood’s main entrance

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LC AmMem Wilson Hall

Wilson Hall, from American Memory

This announcement did not get much publicity when it was published almost a year ago, but it is noteworthy: Centerbrook has completed its master plan for the Hood Museum, and the plan contains a proposal to convert the adjoining Wilson Hall into museum space.

Wilson Hall was built as the college library and picture gallery. Its attic level, with iron trusses supporting a steeply-pitched roof, was designed for the display of paintings.

Wilson historic interior

After the Butterfield Museum was demolished and Baker Library was built behind it, Wilson Hall became the home of the College Museum.

postcard showing deer in Wilson Hall

Charles Moore and the architects of Centerbrook placed their Hood Museum below Wilson Hall during the early 1980s, connecting the two buildings with a whimsically-busy enclosed staircase. The firm also renovated Wilson itself for the use of the Film and Television Studies Department.

photo of interior of Wilson Hall connector to Hood

Interior of Charles Moore’s Wilson connector, view to south, May 2006

The main entrance to the Hood, of course, was hidden from the view of passers-by. Visitors have to pass through the gate and walk up a broad ramp off to the side.

Now Centerbrook proposes to demolish (presumably) the Wilson connector and replace it with a new three-level addition. New galleries, offices, and classrooms could then go into Wilson and the addition, and Wilson’s presently shadowy entry arch could become the entrance to the whole museum complex:

With some improvements for access to the handicapped, Wilson Hall’s front door will become the Hood Museum’s new principal entry and be transformed by large glass windows to convey transparency and engage passersby on the busy campus green.

Although the large glass windows are a bit worrisome, the overall plan sounds like an excellent one. Will the Hood’s original ramp-entrance remain, or will it too be altered?

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[Update 04.05.2012: Wilson portrait gallery image added.]

More on the Inn addition

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

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

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

  • The west wing of the Inn (Larson & Wells, 1923), built with a donation from Randolph McNutt, is historic but undistinguished. It will contain the prefunction room and restrooms as shown in the plan.

  • The Lang Building (Larson, 1937) faces Main Street at the southwest corner of the site (the upper right of the plan). It is both historic and well done and is worth preserving. Its upper level will be given over to hotel rooms.

  • The Hopkins Center (Harrison & Abramowitz, 1959-1962) is a notable building by a world-class architect and must be modified carefully.

  • The main block of the Hanover Inn (William Benjamin Tabler, 1966-1967) is both unhistoric and undistinguished. While fairly effective at disguising the great bulk of the hotel, the Inn is only nominally Georgian in style.

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

Detail of plan of Inn addition by Cambridge Seven.

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

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

Detail of perspective view of Inn by Cambridge Seven.

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

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

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

More links of interest

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  • A nice reproduction of the famous photo of the burning of Dartmouth Hall is on line. This view to the southwest shows the rear of Dartmouth Hall, not the front. The photo seems to have been taken a moment after a large explosion — a smoke column is blasted horizontally from the northeast corner of the building at the second-floor level. Many of the students nearby are sprinting away, and some are turning to look back at the building.

  • The Band is getting rid of its old style of uniform, a green wool blazer over a white turtleneck, white pants, and white tennis shoes. That combination seems to have lasted about 45 years.

  • In August, the Planning Board talked in hypothetical terms of several potential development projects on Lyme Road, such as a tennis club north of the Chieftain (pdf), a golf course and country club around the junction of Lyme Road and Old Lyme Road (pdf), and others (pdf).

  • The official traditions page is irritating not just because of the punctuation, the capitalization of “the HOP,” or the use of sentences like “It’s far different than [sic] you’re imagining.” Nor is it because of the claim that Homecoming was established in 1884, when Dartmouth Night didn’t even exist with or without a bonfire until 1895. No, it’s the statement that the school’s chartered mission is “… education of Indian youth … and also to educate English and others.” The Charter contains the true mission, which is “the education & instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes … and also of English Youth and any others.”

  • An early-1960s photo of the Hop excavation looking southwest from around Wilson Hall.

  • Ask Dartmouth has put up some interesting posts lately, covering the Lone Pine, with a super photo of College Hill probably taken from the steeple of the College Church; the Hinman Mail Center (what it doesn’t say is that the student mailboxes are called Hinman Boxes, and until the mid-1990s the USPS tolerated the use of HB numbers in mailing addresses); the pendulum in Fairchild; and Sanborn Tea, still 10 cents a cup.

  • Rauner Library’s blog has too many interesting posts to keep up with. See, for example, the post on the color Dartmouth Green.

  • The Hanover Improvement Society has a smaller membership and larger ambition than one might expect.

  • The New Hampshire Good Roads Association of 1904 is a remarkable survivor from the pre-auto era, when bicyclists were the interest group demanding that the highways be smooth.

  • The bus stop study (pdf) recommends the removal of the curb cuts at Hanover Park (Google Street View). Bravo. That building would be so much more inviting if it did not pretend to have its own driveway.

  • Dartmouth and the Mac: The Valley News article about Apple products in Hanover doesn’t focus on Dartmouth’s long-time maintenance of a Mac-centric campus. The college turned its Mac expectation into a requirement for all entering students in 1991. That seems fairly early until one reads about Drexel selecting Apple in 1983 and requiring Macs as soon as they appeared in 1984 (Drexel’s Steve Jobs memorial events).

  • The unpaved paths on Whittemore Green should be applauded (Street View).

  • The lively Congregational Church building in Wilder (Olcott), Vermont was designed in 1889 by Edward Goss. Following a renovation, it has become the Charles T. Wilder Center (U.K. Architects, Trumbull-Nelson, Lyme Properties). Charles Wilder was a mill owner who also gave buildings to Wellesley and Dartmouth.

  • The Center for Cartoon Studies in WRJ is moving into a new headquarters (Valley News). The Center’s students occasionally create or display works at Dartmouth.

  • National Geographic Traveler ranks the Dartmouth Winter Carnival sixth among world carnivals. That is pretty good, considering. The number one carnival is Anchorage’s Fur Rendezvous. (My high school band was scheduled to play the Rondy parade but pulled out when cold weather was forecast. Why not just wear warm clothing? Because this was the one time in three years when we could wear our official uniforms. Why not just play out the windows of a bus? Because the last time the band had tried that, spectators had pelted the bus with snowballs all the way down Fourth Avenue: if they were going to stand around and watch a parade when it was 20 below, the least the band could do was actually march.)

  • Women’s Hockey won at Fenway (!) recently (Valley News). Fenway’s paint color was described as “Dartmouth Green” in 1934, and that color seems to have been used when the Green Monster was first painted in 1947. The shade used on the Green Monster does seem to have been lightened since.

  • Dartmouth Now has a piece on “cabinhopping.”

  • New notice of old projects: Centerbrook’s Wilder Lab addition; Lavallee/Brensinger’s Red Rolfe Field and DHMC Patient Training & Safety Center remodeling, and Red Rolfe Field; and Truex Cullins’s Buchanan Hall alterations.

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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken links to Buchanan and Red Rolfe pages replaced.]
[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Drexel replaced.]

MMXIX

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The website for the current strategic planning process uses the 2019 Quartomillenium as an endpoint, with its motto “Imagine the Next 250.”

The Bicentennial year of 1969-1970 gives an example of what the Quartomillenium could be. There were three big events according to Charles Widmeyer in John Sloan Dickey: A Chronicle of His Presidency of Dartmouth College (1991), 250, 271. Those events were:

  1. The Bicentennial Commencement in the summer of 1969.
  2. Dartmouth Day (i.e. Charter Day), December 13, 1969. This was the focal point of the year, and it involved a fireworks display, a parade around the Green, and a proclamation by the Governor in front of the Hop (the Bicentennial plaque is in the Zahm Garden).
  3. The Third Century Convocation in the Fall of 1970.

The notable commemorative objects produced for the Bicentennial included:

  1. A USPS stamp designed by John Scotford, technically in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Dartmouth College Case, since USPS does not recognize individual schools or their anniversaries.
  2. A new college flag with its stylized pine symbol designed by Scotford.
  3. A medal designed by Rudolph Ruzicka and struck by the U.S. Mint at Philadelphia, requiring an act of Congress:

dartmouth medal

dartmouth medal

The Quartomillenium could include these events:

  1. A commemoration of the Bicentennial of the Dartmouth College Case.
  2. A visit by the 10th Earl of Dartmouth.
  3. The receipt from the College of Arms of letters patent granting to Dartmouth an honorary coat of arms along these lines:

proposed arms

Street addresses on campus

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Yale has been described as having more buildings with street addresses than any other school.1I thought this factoid was in Scully, et al., Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism (Yale, 2004), but I cannot find it there. See Cooper, Robertson & Partners, Yale University: A Framework for Campus Planning (pdf), 9 (“City streets connect the blocks, giving most buildings at Yale clear street addresses.”); id, 36 (“Nearly every University building has a city street address.”). That might have been the case 15 years ago, but in the age of E911 address requirements, there should not be a campus building anywhere in the country without a street number.

This is interesting: Dartmouth’s Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center, which basically is part of the old Med School campus along College Street, had its street number changed from 76 College Street to 78 College Street.2Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (January/February 2012) (pdf), 14.

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[Update 11.04.2012: First sentence changed, citation to Yale plan added, and DAM citation placed in footnote.]
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References
↑1 I thought this factoid was in Scully, et al., Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism (Yale, 2004), but I cannot find it there. See Cooper, Robertson & Partners, Yale University: A Framework for Campus Planning (pdf), 9 (“City streets connect the blocks, giving most buildings at Yale clear street addresses.”); id, 36 (“Nearly every University building has a city street address.”).
↑2 Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (January/February 2012) (pdf), 14.

Interesting links with some connection to Dartmouth or the Granite State

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  • Inside Higher Ed has a review of Bryant Tolles’s new book, Academic Architecture in New England. The book, based on Tolles’s 1970 dissertation, provides the best coverage available anywhere of Dartmouth’s original buildings.

  • A new book about the work of alumni firm Rogers Marvel is available.

  • Dartbeat has a map of warmcuts around campus. What is a warmcut? It’s a shortcut that won’t save you time but will let you stay indoors as much as possible.

  • The college publicity office has an article on the 50th anniversary of the Hanover Conservancy, formerly the Hanover Conservation Council. The group manages the Mink Brook Nature Preserve and other areas.

  • The Four Aces Diner in West Lebanon has reopened (Valley News).

  • Eli Burak, whose work has been linked here, is the new official college photographer following the retirement of Joseph Mehling (The Dartmouth, Facebook video (via Dartmouth Now)).

  • The story of the Chicken Farmer I Still Love You graffito, in the Valley News.

  • Dartmouth’s investment in sustainability (The Dartmouth) is likely to create problems when it encounters the college’s interest in preserving the historic windows still found in many campus buildings.

  • A solar-powered blue emergency phone (Dartmouth Planning).

  • Historic photos of Main Street businesses. Note the Dartmouth Bank Building before the arches were added to the front and after the arches were added (but before the building was raised by one level). More of this building and others north of Lebanon Street appear in a slide show from the Hanover Bicentennial parade on July 4, 1961 (via the Planning blog). Also in the slide show is an interesting shot of the buildings that preceded the Nugget Arcade.

  • Is the Watershed Studio’s listing of a Ledyard Canoe Club project a reference to a replacement building, a renovation, or something else?

  • The Co-op Food Store at the roundabout on Lyme Road is the subject of some detailed information provided by ORW.

  • In Norwich, Vermont’s ex-village of Lewiston (see the Rauner post) is a street that was recently named Ledyard Lane (Google Maps). The street leads to the depot, which is still standing, and one presumes it was previously called Depot Street. How strange to see John Ledyard’s name migrating via the bridge across the river to a site he had nothing to do with.

  • An interesting granite monument is set in the ground at the northwest corner of Lebanon and Summer Streets (Google Street View). The “H” must stand for Hanover, but why here? Is it a former town line? Doubtful. Perhaps a former corner of a town-owned parcel.

Lebanon Street monument, Hanover

Monument at Lebanon and Summer.

  • The Rauner Library Blog has a post on the development of the Synclavier and the origins of the Bregman Electronic Music Studio.

  • The latest college map (pdf), released in August of 2010, is the first to show the LSC, ’53 Commons, the VAC, 4 Currier, and other novelties. The map also strangely misnames more than a dozen Greek houses in an apparent attempt to Romanize or transliterate the Greek characters of their names (via Jonathan). Visually, the map might be improved if the ground were shaded and the symbols indicating accessible entrances and restrooms were made less obtrusive. And one might hope that the mustard yellow of the buildings could be replaced with gray, brown, or green.

  • Dartmouth has been digging up the small lab animals that were buried in mass graves at the Rennie Farm during the 1960s and 1970s (Valley News).

  • Dartmouth Now writes about the last male descendant of Eleazar Wheelock.

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

The coach stop at the Inn Corner

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

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

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

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

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

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

Littig aerial litho

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

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

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

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

Just a thought.

Designers of the Inn expansion identified

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Contrary to the implication on this site last month, the renovation and expansion of the Hanover Inn are indeed the work of Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc. The firm designed a stylish renovation of the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, N.H.

Interior design for the Inn is being handled by New York firm Bill Rooney Studio, Inc. Some snippets of the firm’s renderings show an interesting use of inscribed lines and geometric patterns.

The ongoing work has shifted some students’ Hinman Boxes, The Dartmouth reports.

Although the main block of the Inn is not even fifty years old, the Inn has been listed with the National Trust’s Historic Hotels of America. The Web information includes this novel tidbit:

Before Dartmouth College became co-ed, the fourth floor of the Hanover Inn was a single women’s dormitory. The Inn provided chaperones for the single female guests. The Hanover Inn is the oldest continuous business in the state of New Hampshire.

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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Radisson replaced.]

Brand identity topics

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I. The Dartmouth Company

Curiously, there is a Boston-based real estate company called The Dartmouth Company. It makes good use of serifs and a dark green color on its website and seems to operate in New Hampshire. See also the more obvious reference to the college at the Dartmouth Education Foundation.

II. The Arms of Dartmouth’s Schools

The Dartmouth College website seems to be doing something new when it describes the institution as a collection of five apparently equal schools:

shields from webpage

Excerpt from college website.

The harmonization and use of the schools’ shields is commendable.

But this arrangement seems to contradict the rule that Dartmouth is the college. The “Associated Schools” — Tuck, Thayer, Medical, and lately the graduate programs — are associated with the college but are not coequals beneath a central university administration. Because “Dartmouth” is the undergraduate college, there is no need to put the letters “CA&S” before one’s class year, for example.

Tom Owen writes in The Dartmouth today:

In the discussion following Kim’s address, Provost Carol Folt said there is a “complicated set of reasons” for the gap between Dartmouth’s national and international rankings. Two of the major contributing factors are Dartmouth’s lack of a “university” title and Dartmouth’s focus on undergraduates, both of which have hurt Dartmouth’s international reputation.

[…]

Although large-scale changes may be necessary in the next decade, alumni must see new developments as part of an institutional history of adaptation rather than as a threat to tradition, Kim said.

The school’s Quartomillennium celebration in 2019 would be a good time to launch something new.

[01.25.2012 update: Education Foundation link added.]

Architectural and other notes

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

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

Fullington Farm making slow progress as a rowing venue

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

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

A brief history of DOC Trips

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The Rauner Library Blog has a nicely-illustrated set of posts on the first Freshman Trip in 1935, Trips during WWII, and Trips in the present. The program is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

Robin Meyers created a time-lapse video of scenes at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, focusing on a feed and square dance (via Dartmouth College Planning).

The DADA Show Catalog

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The catalog from the 2011 DADA Exhibition is now available (pdf) and provides some fascinating information about alumni in design.

For example, Domus, the Hanover firm that worked on the new Sigma Phi Epsilon house, includes Marty Davis ’69, Bruce R. Williamson ’74, and Bill Keegan ’75.

Canaan architectural blacksmith Dimitri Gerakaris ’69 (art-metal.com) created the copper pediment atop the Rockefeller Center porte-cochere, the Rugby Clubhouse interior bas-relief, and the railing outside Baker’s 1902 Room.

The poster was designed by Emily Yen ’10 of Hanover and Anchorage.


poster/

Thanks to author Sue Reed and to DADA for permission to post the catalog.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to catalog fixed.]
[Update 11.04.2012: Domus reference corrected: the firm worked on the Sigma Phi Epsilon house, but I believe a Vermont architect designed it.]

The Parkhurst Elm is felled

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

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

The Parkhurst Elm in 1995

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

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

Hurricane Irene strikes the Upper Valley

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New Hampshire was comparatively fortunate, although the Upper Valley Plaza, the shopping center with Shaw’s and Kohl’s at the corner of 89 and Route 12A in West Lebanon, was flooded, as the Valley News reports. Repairs there will cost nearly $8 million.

Vermont is still suffering. The Valley News has a photo gallery and After the Storm coverage. The railroad bridge over the White River was rendered unusable. Residents built a temporary exit from Interstate 89 in Royalton.

See also the Rauner blog report on the Hurricane of 1938, which toppled many elms on campus, and the student efforts to help clean up after the Flood of 1927.

Football and the Night Visitors

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Dartmouth’s and Memorial Field’s first night game under the new lights will begin at 6pm tonight against Penn.

The sports publicity office’s extraordinary promotional efforts, as chronicled by the Big Green Alert Blog, include a banner across Main Street, an advertising poster, and a drinks coaster distributed to local establishments.

The wide-ranging Ammi Burnham Young

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Local architect Ammi Burnham Young (1798-1871) began designing federal custom houses in 1837 and was appointed Supervising Architect of the Treasury in 1852. His office designed federal buildings all over the country, from San Francisco to Cleveland to Galveston to Maine. Dartmouth awarded him an honorary degree in 1841.

Reed Hall

Reed Hall (1840), a pre-1870 view.

dock construction

Charleston, South Carolina Custom House (1853).

dock construction

Richmond, Virginia Custom House and Post Office (1858).

Unbuilt Dartmouth, an exhibit and an article

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A graphical article based on research by Barbara Krieger in the July/August Alumni Magazine nicely covers a larger exhibit in the History Room in Baker. It is good to see the site for the amphitheater named as Murdough rather than the Bema, which is the site that that drawing is usually said to describe.

One or two quibbles: the 1931 courtyard Inn on page 53 was meant not not the Robinson Hall area but for the Spaulding Auditorium site, as is shown on the exhibit’s Dartmouth House Plot Plan. The gateway shown in the Larson drawing would have faced east, and Lebanon Street is depicted on the left of the drawing. (The main block of the current Inn was completed in 1967 rather than 1887.)

The focus on the Dartmouth Hall cupola is a bit of a wild goose chase. The plans depicted are by William Gamble and show a masonry building that was never built. Dartmouth Hall was built from some other plans, long since lost, that almost certainly showed a cupola. Those plans might or might not have been by Gamble and probably were not by Peter Harrison. (The cupola that Tucker admired was probably a somewhat different midcentury replacement for the original.)

Here is an image that did not make it into the article, a pre-Leverone proposal for a field house by Eggers & Higgins:

Eggers & Higgins Field House proposal

Wow. That is a view to the southeast from above the gym. South Park Street runs behind the field house, and the field in the upper right corner is the site of the later Leverone Field House.

The article quotes Eisenhower on “what a college ought to look like.” Conan O’Brien recently paraphrased this commentary while adding something of his own:

It’s absolutely beautiful here, though. It is the quintessential college cam-… American college campus. It does look like a movie set.

(Video, at 1:27.)