Category Archives: Lamb and Rich

About the late-nineteenth-century architectural firm of Lamb & Rich and related firms.

Advanced Surgery Center addition to open in summer

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  • The Advanced Surgery Center addition to the north end of the DHMC complex will open this summer (Thayer School News). A presentation about the ASC reveals that it will have a distinct circulation route for animals.
  • Thayer School’s $300 House Project from a while back has been written up in The Guardian:

    After the contest, a workshop was held at Dartmouth University where selected designers and architects further sharpened their ideas. Jack Wilson, team leader at Dartmouth, is now preparing to build two pilot projects in Haiti, one rural and the second urban.

  • Not related to anything on campus, but an interesting idea encountered while perusing aerial views of Berlin, Germany: K.F. Schinkel’s pioneering 1830s Bauakademie building (Wikipedia), demolished by the East Germans, was recreated as a cloth-covered scaffolding in 2005. It appears in current Bing low-angle aerial views.
  • Charlottesville architect William McDonough ’73 (Wikipedia) shares an anecdote about attending a Dartmouth talk by Buckminster Fuller in a blog post at the Times.
  • Phase I of the Collis renovation, focused on the café, is finished (The Dartmouth).
  • The Dartmouth Club of New York (at the 1915 J.G. Rogers clubhouse of the Yale Club) had a pong tournament last month (more).
  • New information about the 2005 SBRA master plan for DHMC is coming to light:

    An analysis revealed that the original DHMC organizational structure is reached its limits, necessitating a new way of organizing the campus. To provide an effective way to unify a larger assemblage of buildings, the master plan proposes a new circulation paradigm, employing a perimeter loop road that provides a sense of orientation and hierarchy to the dispersed building sites on land owned by DHMC and Dartmouth College.

Site updates:

  • The fifteen-year backlog of linkrot has been tackled. All 270 or so broken links have been fixed or eliminated since November. Mobile formatting has been added and the old “Links” page was removed 11.17.2012. The html version of the “Notes toward a Catalog…” was deleted today.
  • Sorry about the login screen popping up for comments. It is not supposed to appear.
  • If this site proves too exciting, head over to the Lamb & Rich, Architects site. Small improvements and sometimes a few discoveries have been creeping into each iteration of the catalog of the firm’s buildings.
  • Please do click on the new advertisements on the right-hand side of this page.
  • Thanks to Bruce at Big Green Alert for linking to the book at Google Books and this site in a post last month about “Dartmouth University.”

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[Update 06.09.2013: Broken link to presentation removed.]

Collis renovations wrapping up

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The Dartmouth reported on March 4:

At this month’s meeting, the Board of Trustees also voted to allocate $38 million to ongoing projects to improve existing facilities, including the Collis Center and Baker-Berry Library.

The Planner’s Blog has a post with photos of the servery nearing completion in the renovation of the Collis Center.

While you weren’t looking, they changed the name of the Collis Center to “the Collis Student Center,” and then they changed that to “the Collis Center for Student Involvement.”

Minor updates on building renovations, other items

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  • Rauner’s blog has a nicely-illustrated post on Upper-Valley photographer George Fellows, who died in 1916.
  • The Dartmouth on the Collis renovation:

    The new cafe will have an expanded serving area and new cooking equipment, including eight burners at the hot-food station instead of the previous six. The space will feature a larger salad bar, and a Freestyle Machine with over 100 different sodas. The sandwich station will be larger and may feature more filling options.

  • While the ground-level space in the Grange building (Rosey Jekes) is unoccupied, a tapas place called Candela is moving into the coffee shop space in the basement (The Dartmouth).
  • Page 7 of the Winter issue of the Hood Quarterly (pdf) has a guide to public art at Dartmouth: a map with a dozen works listed.
  • Hanover has received the findings of a parking consultant (The Dartmouth).
  • Student slang: The adjective grim makes an appearance in this year’s Carnival theme, “The Grimmest Carnival of Them All” (Mirror cover). On a related note, did anyone else wonder whether the word “joe” in this Sports Illustrated piece on Adam Nelson ’97 was meant to be written with a lower-case j?

    A few days after that win, I met with him at his training base at Stanford, where he explained the mechanics of shot putting with the memorable description: “Little Joe makes the ball go,” while patting his round belly.

  • The New York Times has an interesting travel article on skiing the old CCC trails in New England. It mentions Dick Durrance.
  • A post about Ross Ashton’s Five Windows projection at Dartmouth gives new details on the effort that was required for the show. Each of the windows on the front facade of the Hop was covered with a custom-made Spandex shade attached to the steel window frame by magnetic strips.
  • On the expansion of the Hood Museum:

    We have received a tremendous response to the last issue of the Hood Quarterly, in which we began coverage of our ambitious plans for the museum’s future by interviewing Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the architects chosen by Dartmouth College to renovate and expand the museum’s current facility, as well as the adjacent historic Wilson Hall. Planning for this project, which will see the museum double its gallery space and triple the number of its classrooms through the addition of a new Museum Learning Center, is well underway. I look forward to sharing Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s breathtaking and highly innovative designs for the expansion with you in an upcoming issue of the Hood Quarterly.

    Michael Taylor, “Letter from the Director,” Hood Museum of Art Quarterly (Winter 2013), 2 (pdf).

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Ashton post removed.]

Wilder’s unfortunate plaque

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Dartmouth has marred the generally-well preserved front facade of the historic Wilder Laboratory by gluing (?) a plaque to it (APS News). It is hard to blame the American Physical Society for overlooking Dartmouth’s historic preservation goals or for drafting the text of the plaque with less care than one might hope for,* but Dartmouth should be embarrassed by this oversight.

When Wilder undergoes a restoration in the future, the plaque will probably be moved to an appropriate location. It is not clear whether the removal will leave permanent damage.

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*The plaque reads:


At this site, the Wilder Physical Laboratory, Dartmouth College, from 1900 to 1903 E.F.
Nichols and G.F. Hull performed the first precise measurement of the radiation pressure
of light on a macroscopic body, as predicted by J.C. Maxwell in 1873. The Nichols-Hull
experiment provided convincing evidence for the pressure of light, and the transfer of
momentum between light and matter, a phenomenon which has enabled critical
developments in a wide range of fields from atomic physics to biology to astrophysics.


HISTORIC PHYSICS SITE, REGISTER OF HISTORIC SITES
AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY


Quibbles with the wording:

  • The plaque has enough space to inform the reader that he is at Dartmouth College but too little space to provide the first names of the two researchers? They are Ernest and Gordon.
  • Why say “At this site” when the event really did not take place at the front of the building? (I would argue that “At this site” usually indicates either a precise location or the site of a non-existent building, neither of which is the case here.)
  • The experiments actually took place in some laboratory, probably upstairs: wouldn’t it be great if the plaque could tell us this by its text or its placement?
  • Why omit the comma after 1903, especially if you are not going to end the first line after 1903? This mistake makes “E.F.” look like a new form of “A.D.”
  • Are the pressure of light and the transfer of momentum between light and matter really one phenomenon, or are they two phenomena, as indicated by the commas around the momentum phrase?
  • Is it traditional to include three items in the “from x to y” formulation, or would it be better to say “a wide range of fields including x, y, and z”?
  • Does the redundant phrase “REGISTER OF HISTORIC SITES” imply some undeserved connection with the National Register of Historic Places? Wouldn’t that phrase be more accurate and explanatory if it occurred after the phrase “AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY”?

A view of the Collis project

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Not described in the June post on this project is the wonderful aerial view of the Collis Center cutaway model created by Oudens Ello.

With its decapitated columns and especially its full trees, which encroach on the building and Romantically cast shadows on the floors of nearby rooms, it really does look like A View of the Ruins of the Collis Center. If the walls were crumbling instead of sliced cleanly, the image would be a complete homage to Giovanni Battista Piranesi or Joseph Gandy (Wikipedia; his unfortunately prescient painting of John Soane’s Bank of England as a ruin is in the Wikimedia Commons).

The project is bringing the serving area of the cafe right out to the front of the building, into the original reading room space. The existing mid-1990s dining room, originally built as the Club Room, will remain where it is.

The Collis renovation is starting

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The Dartmouth:

Renovations will also allow Collis joint usage of the air handler that currently supplies the Class of 1953 Commons with air conditioning and heating. The Collis Center is frequented by students year-round, but the lack of air conditioning minimizes usage during the warmer months, according to Ramsey.

The Oudens Ello project will expand the cafe and reorganize other interior spaces. It is interesting how the same pattern has recurred two or three times over the last 25 years: (1) The food is popular, and the food-service area becomes way too crowded; (2) when the cafe is finally expanded, it is time to take an off term.

Wilder to be plaqued

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Dartmouth Now reports that Wilder Laboratory has been added to the American Physical Society’s list of historic sites. More than 110 years ago, Ernest Fox Nichols and Gordon Ferrie Hull conducted experiments in the building to measure the pressure of light. Their work will be the subject of a symposium during October.

The building’s history certainly deserves recognition. One hopes, however, that Dartmouth isn’t actually planning to alter Wilder’s historic and “largely unchanged” front facade by bolting a commemorative plaque to it, as is suggested by the Dartmouth Now article. Perhaps a freestanding granite monument or an interior wall would be the most respectful place for the plaque.

A renovation of Collis

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Oudens Ello Architecture of Boston has created a nice computer model of the Collis Center as part of its $5m renovation of the building.

Prior to founding their practice in 2007, Mr. Oudens and Mr. Ello held senior leadership positions at Machado and Silvetti Associates[.]

The work will improve the air conditioning and expand the food-service area eastward to the front wall of the building, taking over the narrow eating area and corridor that occupied that space (The Dartmouth).

Aerial view of Collis (Bing).

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[Update 07.07.2012: Details on reconfiguration of spaces and link to The Dartmouth added.]

Recent citations

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Thanks to DADA for including the book in the inaugural exhibition. Thanks for citations by Bryant Tolles, in Architecture & Academe: College Buildings in New England before 1860 (UPNE, 2011), and the Rauner Library Blog, in a post on Dartmouth Hall.

Thanks also to T. Barton Thurber for the citation to the Rich thesis in European art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art (UPNE, 2008).

Parker Apartments to be demolished

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Contrary to what was reported here in March, it looks as if Dartmouth is going to demolish the 1921 Parker Apartments at 2 North Park Street:

Parker Apartments

Rear (west) facade of Parker

The July 6 minutes of the Zoning Board of Adjustment (pdf) state that the board granted an exemption “to allow for the demolition of an existing apartment building and construction of a new building to be used as a student residence.” Curiously, the minutes list no applicant; it was presumably Dartmouth.

The building appears to be serviceable, and one wonders why the college did not decide to renovate it. The faculty apartment next door is older and smaller, but its renovation worked out well:

Parkside Apartments, 17 East Wheelock

Rear (north) facade of Parkside

The coat of arms on a pair of shoes, and other items

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  • New Balance has put Dartmouth’s current midcentury coat of arms on the tongue of a pair of shoes in its Ivy League Collection (via the Big Green Alert Blog; there’s a post on The Dartmouth‘s blog).
  • Rauner’s blog has notable items on Cane Rush, Foley House, “the Glutton’s Spoon,” and the practice of “horning.”
  • The Valley News has an article on the renovation of the 1890 Wilder Church. The church had a lot of Dartmouth associations early on and is another benefaction of Charles T. Wilder, donor of Dartmouth’s physics lab.
  • Plan N.H. is the state’s “smart growth” group, and it gave a 2009 Merit Award to the South Block project.
  • There is a photo of the Zantop Memorial Garden in Dartmouth’s Flickr photostream (story in The Dartmouth, dedication program). It looks like the garden finally resolves the former awkwardness of the slope in front of Richardson Hall: never a proper stone-walled terrace, but too extreme to plant with grass and try to ignore.
  • The last remnant of Campion’s various long-lived stores on Main Street closed last fall (The Dartmouth, Valley News).
  • The Dartmouth reports that the [flower-] painted panels in the ceiling of Thayer’s main dining room contained asbestos and are being removed.

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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken links to PlanNH pages replaced.]
[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to The Dartmouth repaired, broken link to The Dartmouth‘s blog removed.]
[Update 01.22.2011: Links to shoe and horning articles added.]

Buildings – construction, some demolition

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Rauner Library has provided a remarkable photo of the Butterfield Museum embraced in a death-hug by Baker Library. This is a view of the south and east facades of the east wing of Baker, looking to the northwest. The problem of Butterfield appears to have had a significant influence on the design of Baker.

See also the photos of the bells and the steel frame of the tower under construction.

With historic Clement Hall demolished (film and photos), the Visual Arts Center construction has been put out for bid.

Phi Delt reconstruction continues, The Dartmouth reports.

Engleberth Construction provides photos of the Tuck Living-Learning Center (Achtmeyer, Raether, and Pineau-Valencienne Halls).

It is not new, but Forever New: A 10-Year Report provides a comprehensive photo of the interior-block facades of Kemeny-Haldeman not available elsewhere.

Site updates

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Thanks to Alex Hanson for the mention in “In Hanover, Architects Note A 19th-Century Sensibility,” Valley News (22 November 2008).

The Lamb & Rich monograph page has become a separate blog. Posts related to that project will no longer appear here.

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to article removed.]

Researching the architectural history of New York

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While the Office for Metropolitan History has — fabulously — made Manhattan new building application information available through a database covering the years from 1900 to 1986, the nineteenth century permits represent a larger project that is yet to be undertaken.

It turns out that the Internet Archive is hosting scanned and searchable copies of the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide from 1879 to 1922, each reporting new buildings, alterations, purchases, mortgages, and other transactions in detail. Searching for this journal returns a list of volumes available in pdf and other formats. The one unnumbered volume is 73 (1904), and volumes 26, 28, 30, 38, and 46 appear to be unavailable. Of those, volume 28 (second half of 1881) is available from Google Books.

Google Books also has volumes 5-6 (1870), 7-8 (1871), and 9-10 (1872).

A new list of about 675 Lamb & Rich projects should be available here in the next few weeks.

[Update 12.07.2009: It is more like 600 projects, and it is available at Lamb & Rich.]

[Update 02.14.2010: Reference to volumes 5-10 added.]

[Update 04.12.2010: Another good way to search the Record & Guide is to put this into Google:
site:www.columbia.edu “firm name”.]

A footnote

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Posts have become even less frequent here because of a research trip to Manhattan and New Jersey…

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Reid Buckley (of those Buckleys) tries to describe* Lamb & Rich’s clock tower in Sharon, Connecticut:

[T]he clock is referred to always as a structure in “Gothic” style, with its granite blocks quarried nearby in Sharon, its red stones imported from Potsdam, New York. But it is properly called “Richardsonian Romanesque,” I am informed by Liz Shapiro of the Sharon Historical Society, after a New York architect by the name of Charles Alonzo Rich, who is described as “renowned,” would he had not.

Reid would that Rich had not done what? The anti-Victorian sentiment seems to have been tripped up by sloppy editing.

One doubts that the tower is referred to “always” as being in the Gothic style, especially among the Buckleys, who are familiar with the Gothic architecture of Yale. It also seems obvious that “Richardsonian Romanesque” must be named for someone named Richardson — in this case, Henry Hobson Richardson, not a particularly obscure architect.

*Reid Buckley, An American Family: The Buckleys (Threshold Editions, 2008), 225-226 n3.

Society house renovations

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Theta Delta Chi finished its Marc Fragge Wing and was scheduled to dedicate the addition on May 1.

Roc Caivano Architects of Bar Harbor, Maine, is designing the Beta Theta Pi stair addition (Planning Board approval July 1, 2008 (pdf)).

Dartmouth is adding significantly to Parkside (17 East Wheelock) to make it into a sorority house. Construction photos are now available, along with drawings by Haynes & Garthwaite.

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[Update 06.03.2013: Broken link to Caivano Architects removed.]
[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to TDX article on completion of addition removed.]
[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to Planning Board minutes removed.]