Beyer Blinder Belle’s Strategic Campus Framework (pdf), including the subsidiary West End Master Plan, was declared by the firm to be complete in July (BlueMedium, Strategic Campus Framework project page, West End Master Plan project page). The firm put together a short video on the planning process.
The 638-bed apartment complex in Lebanon known as Summit on Juniper began accepting residents in August (Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth). The complex is a joint project of the college and Michaels Student Living.
After a pause in the face of town and gown opposition, the project to design and construct an off-campus undergraduate apartment complex at the intersection of Reservoir Road and Lyme Road is well underway. The college moved the building site from the east side of Lyme Road to the west side and unveiled a complete-looking design by Ayers Saint Gross (project page).
(Calling this site a part of “the North End” is not accurate. The north end of the campus ends at the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center. This site is practically in Lyme Township.)
The Valley News quotes alumnus and retired track and field coach Barry Harwick as he hits the nail on the head:
Although Harwick contends there are other approaches to addressing the student housing shortage, some of them at sites in town the college has identified in the past, he believes Dartmouth’s plan is being driven by expedience over other considerations.
“I think that the reason they’re building this out there is that they want a flat piece of land that they already own that can be built on quickly,” he said.
John Lippman, “Dartmouth College tweaks agenda for Lyme Road housing meetings,” Valley News (23 July 2022).
Other articles on the project include: John Lippman, “Dartmouth calls time out on plan to build dorm complex in field along Lyme Road,” Valley News (22 February 2022); John Lippman, “Dartmouth College revises housing plan with student apartments crossing Lyme Road,” Valley News (23 June 2022); “Plan for Student Housing Moved to West Side of Lyme Road,” Dartmouth News (23 June 2022); “Community Session on North End Housing Draws 150 People,” Dartmouth News (12 July 2022); “Community Meeting Discusses Green Space in North End,” Dartmouth News (27 July 2022); “Third North End Meeting Focuses on Transportation,” Dartmouth News (2 August 2022); “North End Meeting: Building the Student Experience,” Dartmouth News (9 August 2022); “North End Meeting Discusses Design and Performance,” Dartmouth News (16 August 2022).
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Update 10.24.2022: The latest news was left off the post. The apartment project will go before the Hanover Planning Board on November 1 (“North End Housing Project Goes to Hanover Planning Board,” Dartmouth News (19 October 2022)).
The board has voted to go ahead with the ill-sited commuter apartment complex on Reservoir Road (article from Dartmouth). The proposal was paused after faculty objected (Dartmouth, Valley News, The Dartmouth) but those objections seem to have been insufficient to put the project in the bad-ideas bin with the College Park dormitory proposal.
Campus Services has a good explanation of the project (pdf), and the planners have done a thorough job of explaining to neighbors what their goals are (presentation video). There is an emphasis on smart growth and so on — which is exactly right for the neighborhood. That area does need a building at the corner of Lyme and Reservoir Roads. But the idea of busing undergrads out there — of filling the apartments exclusively with people who should be living with their peers on the walkable campus that is centered more than a mile to the southwest — is completely contrary to the new-urbanist principles behind the village centers idea. Bizarre.
And this means that the entire College Park dormitory siting process was for naught. The result of that process was the rejection of College Park in favor of a great site near the heart of the campus, on Crosby Street. That is where this new student housing was meant to be built, and where it should be built.
The megastructure of the Hopkins Center for the Arts forms the largest part of a zone that an essay on this site called Hopland or possibly SoWhee; lately the college has been calling this area the Arts District.
A project to renovate and expand the Hop has been the works for years. After a thorough arts master plan by Rogers Marvell and a thoughtful Hop expansion design by Bora Architecture, the college recently invited 15 firms submit designs; among the respondents it selected three finalists1Hop Project FAQ. and eventually chose the New York office of Snøhetta. That firm finished schematics in the fall of 2021,2Pierce Wilson, “Construction update: West End may encounter additional delays, East Wheelock cluster to begin renovations next summer,” The Dartmouth (12 October 2021). and in January of 2022 the trustees approved funds to complete the designs.3Dartmouth News.
The college unveiled the new designs on Thursday (see the college announcement, which includes a page devoted to the renderings, a page on some of the new spaces, and a FAQ page; the Snøhetta press release; the Valley News article;4 Alex Hanson, “Dartmouth details Hopkins Center for the Arts renovation plans,” Valley News (7 April 2022). and the Archpaper article5Matt Hickman, “Snøhetta shares first look of a reimagined Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College,” The Architect’s Newspaper (8 April 2022).).
The announcement features five images of the Snøhetta design by the Argentine firm Methanoia:
An oblique aerial view to the south, which gives the best idea of how the front additions relate to the existing complex;
A view to the south, which shows the north facade additions. This image from Google Street View is an equivalent view of current conditions;
An interior view to the south, which shows the new main entrance lobby with its stair leading up to the recital hall and the Top of the Hop. The site of this stair is currently a small courtyard. What seems to be a vestige of the existing Strauss Gallery is visible off to the right;
An interior view of the recital hall facing north; and
A somewhat generic interior view of the performance lab, which shows the renovated and raised Alumni Hall.
The projecting front addition
The Snøhetta design, while focusing on some of the same inflection points as Bora’s design, takes the more radical step of setting up a new projecting addition off the front of the Hopkins Center complex. Although the basic idea of a projecting addition is not new (this post here showed such an addition in a master plan about 15 years ago), the adoption of an arbitrary non-axial orientation for this box is novel and important.
The new recital hall comes off Alumni Hall to the northwest at an angle that looks to be somewhat steeper than the angle by which Wilson projects off the complex to the northeast. The adoption of an angled alignment for the recital hall does a lot to break up rectilinear monotony of the block.
Although the recital hall will occupy the Zahm Garden site, “[a] fountain and war memorial now located in Zahm will be moved to other campus locations”6”Dartmouth Releases Hopkins Center for the Arts Renderings.” The recital hall does not disturb the Minary addition to the Inn, although the rendering cruelly obscures Minary almost entirely behind a tree.
The recital hall is sheathed in glass at its front and rear and apparently is blind-walled wood elsewhere; the entire building is is decorated by a triangular-arched giant-scale tracery, also apparently made of wood.7The recital hall and potentially the large rear addition to the Hop seem to present a great marketing opportunity for the New Hampire forest products industry. These somewhat-Gothic triangular arches form a counterpart to the Moore Theatre’s round arches and its half-groin vaults and become the signature motif of Snøhetta’s set of interventions in the complex.
The creation of this western projecting counterpoint to the existing, iconic Moore Theatre on the east naturally implies a recessed joint between the two.
The main entrance
In Snøhetta’s design, the recessed joint between the new recital hall and the existing theater forms a new central entrance for the Hop. This makes a great deal of sense and, again, was advocated for in an essay here years ago. Even if students keep on using their shortcuts (or snowcuts) by entering the complex through Moore or Minary, this new entrance will provide clarity for the visitor and will allow the Moore Theatre finally to take on its own identity.
The images do not show any signage, but it would make sense to place the words HOPKINS CENTER in large letters above this new central entrance. We do know that at the Moore Theatre, “[t]he outdoor marquee sign will be reimagined as planners consider new opportunities to share programing information through multimedia signage.”8Hop Project FAQ.
Alumni Hall
Alumni Hall will be retained but its roof will be “raised” — demolished and replaced, surely — to allow the space to become a performance laboratory. “Alumni Award winners recognized on plaques in Alumni Hall will be recognized in Blunt Alumni Center.”9Hop Project FAQ.
The large unremarked rear addition
Bora proposed a new theater addition for the Hop’s existing Hood-side courtyard (of Courtyard Café fame), but Snøhetta does not: “The Courtyard Café will remain in the redesigned Hop[.]”10Hop Project FAQ. Instead, Snøhetta appears to site a large rear addition, described as containing “space for students,”11Renderings page. in the vast parking lot that lies behind the Inn and along the buildings of South Main Street. This is a place that has been crying out for construction many decades, but the addition will also take with it a part of the existing Hop, the small east-west block containing the HBs. The college does seem to have devoted some attention to this:
Hinman boxes are no longer used by students, who have been raised on digital communications and often receive packages far too large to fit in a Hinman box. Because the boxes hold a special place in the hearts of generations of Dartmouth alumni, sections of the boxes will be kept and memorialized in the new building.12Renderings page.
Conclusion
Judging from just the five renderings, the impressive design strives for a high-minded timelessness rather than subsuming itself entirely to Wallace Harrison’s vision or being content with tinkering at the margins. Now what we crave are floorplans.
| ↑1, ↑8, ↑9, ↑10 | Hop Project FAQ. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Pierce Wilson, “Construction update: West End may encounter additional delays, East Wheelock cluster to begin renovations next summer,” The Dartmouth (12 October 2021). |
| ↑3 | Dartmouth News. |
| ↑4 | Alex Hanson, “Dartmouth details Hopkins Center for the Arts renovation plans,” Valley News (7 April 2022). |
| ↑5 | Matt Hickman, “Snøhetta shares first look of a reimagined Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College,” The Architect’s Newspaper (8 April 2022). |
| ↑6 | ”Dartmouth Releases Hopkins Center for the Arts Renderings.” |
| ↑7 | The recital hall and potentially the large rear addition to the Hop seem to present a great marketing opportunity for the New Hampire forest products industry. |
| ↑11, ↑12 | Renderings page. |
The college has released some images of the upcoming Snøhetta expansion and renovation of the Hopkins Center. There are some intriguing ideas here, apparently including the creation of a new central entrance, something the Hop has always needed.
Sunday’s post asked what happened to the “swing space” dorm proposed for Crosby Street. Professor Nyhan, quoted in an article in The Dartmouth,1Parker O’Hara, “New undergraduate housing on Lyme Road to break ground by end of year,” The Dartmouth (25 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-undergraduate-housing-on-lyme-road-to-break-ground-by-end-of-year. pointed out the availability of the Crosby Street site. Now Ben Korkowski of The D has an explanation, quoting V.P. for institutional projects Josh Keniston:
“It is a tough site to build on: There is a steam line that runs through it, the Onion and tennis courts are there and it is a relatively tight space,” Keniston explained.2Ben Korkowski, “New residence hall set to replace the Onion placed on indefinite suspension,” The Dartmouth (27 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-residence-hall-set-to-replace-the-onion-placed-on-indefinite-suspension.
The housing crunch of the moment does seem to have a lot to do with the long-term decision to throw up a hasty plastic dorm off campus.
Let’s say the Crosby Street swing space takes two years longer to build than the school-bus dorm on Garipay Fields will take. Wouldn’t it be better to put up some Tree Houses in Maynard Yard and on the Gilman site for a few years while building on Crosby Street and then end up with a real, permanent brick dormitory at the center of campus?
| ↑1 | Parker O’Hara, “New undergraduate housing on Lyme Road to break ground by end of year,” The Dartmouth (25 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-undergraduate-housing-on-lyme-road-to-break-ground-by-end-of-year. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Ben Korkowski, “New residence hall set to replace the Onion placed on indefinite suspension,” The Dartmouth (27 Jan. 2022), available at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/01/new-residence-hall-set-to-replace-the-onion-placed-on-indefinite-suspension. |
The planning effort for the Lyme Road South precinct now has its own project page and has a serious team behind it:
Project Manager: Joanna Whitcomb
Planner/Architect: Beyer Blinder Belle
Landscape Architect: Michael Van Volkenburgh Associates
Environmental Design Consultant: Atelier Ten
The planners have sent out a Dear Neighbors newsletter (pdf) letting the neighbors know that a dormitory cluster — a group of “apartment-style” residences for 300 students, presumably seniors — is planned for their area.
Included in the college’s report of last Thursday’s community meeting is a map showing the site of the proposed cluster. The site is south of or upon Garipay Fields, southwest of the Rugby Club and presumably encompassing the driving range of the old HCC Practice Area:
That site is much further away from campus than, say, the Dewey Field Parking Lot, itself a barely acceptable site for a remote new dorm.
Google Maps says it takes 20 minutes to walk from Baker Library to the driving range south of Garipay Fields.
The proposed dorms will be used as swing space during a period of at least 10 years as existing dormitories on campus are renovated. After those renovations are complete, one hopes that the college will turn over the apartments to graduate students rather than expanding undergraduate enrollment to fit the available housing. Perhaps that ability (and commitment?) to abandon the dorm after its use by undergrads is the only thing that could make the plan acceptable.
Taking a piecemeal approach to the expansion of existing dorms (mentioned in this post) would certainly be better for the campus than erecting a distant, school-bus dependent cluster on Lyme Road. Even building a single 300-bed swing space cluster at the corner of Maynard and Rope Ferry would seem far superior to the Lyme Road idea. Once the 10-year renovation project is completed, that swing space can become a combination of offices and graduate student housing — just as Chase and Woodbury Halls at Tuck and 37 Dewey Field Road were all converted from housing to offices. (And whatever happened to the “swing space” dorm proposed for Crosby Street? Wouldn’t it obviate the need for the Lyme Road project?)
It seems that folks are in a hurry, and a grassy, vacant site allows for hastier construction.
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Update 01.24.2022: The Valley News has an article on neighborhood opposition.
Dartmouth News and the Valley News report on the college’s interest in developing the land north of the Life Sciences Building, including parts of the golf course. The possibility of such development was spelled out in the master plan some time ago, but the noteworthy new detail is that the college is considering building dormitories on some part of the site.
First reaction to the dorm idea: This is an unserious proposal, a negotiating tactic, like the College Park dorm idea. It is a silly idea. The ten-minute walking radius from Baker is not just a guideline, it is a crucial rule of campus composition. Plans for transit do not eliminate the ten-minute walking radius, and it just does not seem appropriate to have students riding the school bus to class in a place as small as Hanover.
After a closer look: From Baker Library to the Dewey Field parking lot site might be a half-mile and take nine minutes to reach on foot, making it technically acceptable. It is about as far away as the River Cluster was — not an admirable standard, but a Dartmouth precedent. One hopes that the Dewey Field site is the only one they are talking about for a dorm, because any site beyond it would be unacceptable.
(What about the college-related buildings that are not part of the everyday life of students or faculty? Storage libraries and development offices and various back-office functions would be perfect for the golf course sites. They would be much better sited here than in the sprawl of Centerra or in towns around the region.)
If not on Lyme Road, where could the increasing number of students be housed? (The proposed Crosby Street dorm will be ignored, because it will be used as swing space to house students from existing clusters as they are renovated.) Here are some available sites, some of them identified in the current master plan:
Might it be the case that the number of additional students to be housed, say 350 students, would be too large to fit on one of those sites? Yes. That is a good thing, both for Hanover’s urbanism and for the students who end up living in the new hall. Instead of building a giant barracks, the school should add additional beds to the existing campus at a combination of smaller sites within the ten-minute walking radius, including:
Obviously these new additions will have to join existing house communities; there is nothing wrong with that. Creating a subtle and sensitive series of additions to historic buildings will be more expensive than dropping a single giant complex on a distant lot, but it will be worth it. It seems that the desire to add beds to the campus exclusively in the form of one entirely new house community at a time is driving the push to build dorms outside of town, and it is harmful.
The college released the final (November 2020) version of the master plan (pdf) in July of 2021 (Anna Merriman, “Dartmouth master plan calls for growth along Lyme Road,” Valley News (2 July 2021)). The plan is not getting enough press or enough praise, so here are some observations:
As noted earlier, the possibilities for growth in the central campus look great (page 38).
The north end opportunity sites are all super. Old Hospital Quad will be an incredible space 130 years in the making (pages 42-43). Fairchild Tower always did seem more than necessary for its purpose; it is really a signpost building (pages 44-45).
Putting student housing in Remsen-Vail might be touchy. If you wanted to reuse a dull Sixties building as housing, you should have done it with the DHMC tower. Remsen-Vail could be appropriately used for academic purposes, however (page 44).
Lyme Road development is inevitable, but it is not clear how realistic it is to show such development without parking lots (pages 46-47).
When it comes to the West End, the novelty in this plan is the meander of the Cemetery Bridge (Thayer Viaduct). It is more like a boardwalk on a nature trail and does not appear to be a suspension bridge at all — but won’t it be extremely difficult to put bridge footings in a cemetery? (Pages 48-49).
More on the West End: Again, the original Tuck School building here could make an amazing undergraduate dormitory, but one would hate to see Tuck School vanish into the suburbs (pages 48-49).
South End and Downtown: The athletics promenade between Lebanon St. and Thompson Arena is excellent and long overdue. It could be a fine linear work of landscape architecture. Annexing Davis Varsity House as a part of the “house community” for the Crosby Street swing space dorm could be a superb move. The reasoning behind the focus on wellness for an expanded McKenzie is not clear — couldn’t it be used for anything, including arts uses? — but it makes no difference as long as the building is saved. McKenzie might present a real opportunity to create a new building within the historic brick walls (pages 52-53).
Quibbles are minor and basically the same as before: Thayer School didn’t go from the old Experiment Station directly to the West End in 1939, it spent several years in Bissell Gymnasium (page 9); the reference to “Dart Hall” is kind of irritating (page 38); and it’s “Bema” not BEMA (page 41).
The map on pages 28 and 29 showing named landscape opportunities is an important document. Some offhand proposals for these spaces:
| Name in Plan | Proposed Replacement |
| Riverfront Park | Leydard Park |
| West End Green | A tough one; this was the Wigwam Circle postwar housing area. |
| Tuck Green at the end of Tuck Mall | Tuck Circle |
| Dart Row Commons | Fayer Green? “Commons” is not really appropriate for an open space. |
| Maynard Yard | Old Hospital Yard. This really is a better name. |
| Life Sciences Lawn | Another tough one; there is very little historic context here. |
| North End Green in a strip of Dewey Field | Dewey Field. Another one that really is a better name. |
| Vox Lane | NHCAMA; New Hampshire something; or State College something? “Vox Lane” has always been arbitrary, which is disappointing in this richly historic precinct. |
| Park Street Gateway | Piazza Nervi. This is tougher to justify now that grass rather than hardscape is proposed for this space. |
The smart brick rear ell of Wheelock House, a century-old two-story-above-basement book stacks addition built for the Howe Library, was demolished last month by the Eleazar Wheelock Society.
Commencement this year took place at Memorial Field for the first time since 1995. The stage was at the opposite end of the field this year. It would be interesting to learn whether the Commencement canopy is the same one that was first acquired for that 1995 ceremony and has been used every year since. Perhaps there have been different ones.
Frank J. Barrett’s new book is called Lost Hanover, New Hampshire (Amazon.com). Julia Robitaille has a Q and A with the author in The Dartmouth (2 July 2021).
The Dartmouth Indoor Practice Facility is now the Graham Indoor Practice Facility.
Photos of the CECS show it really taking shape. The Irving is also coming along. The Call to Lead has a page on new projects on campus that includes a West End video showing interior models of the two buildings (as well as close-ups of the globe finial following the removal of Baker’s weathervane).
DHMC Patient Tower, an appealingly midcentury hospital building by HDR (designers of The Williamson), is slated to stand at the north end of the hospital and join the main building between the bastions of the existing patient towers (Vermont Digger). The site is visible at the right of this iconic aerial.
At the trustees’ meeting in June, “[t]he board approved the expenditure of $2.89 million to advance designs for energy infrastructure projects and $1.65 million to support campus housing renewal design development. Board members also voted to allocate $6.9 million for information technology infrastructure work.”
The college website is being redesigned (Dartmouth News).
The IEEE has put up a plaque on the exterior of Collis (College Hall) to commemorate its importance as the site where BASIC was developed in the 1960s (Dartmouth News). The plaque would be better if it were actually written as a BASIC program, thus proving the simplicity of the language, but this is still good to see. (The BASIC highway marker, because of the limitations of the state’s marker program, is distant from the site where the event actually took place.)
Harvard Law School has replaced its old heraldic shield with a new shield in the form of a logo.
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[Update 09.13.2021: A reference to a “new” globe finial replacing the Baker weathervane has been corrected. The globe previously underpinned the weathervane and was left in place when the weathervane was removed.]
Mayor + Kennedy Architects designed a large rear addition with some novel elements for 23 South Main Street.
The Hanover Improvement Society (of Nugget fame) opened an ice cream shop in the former Morano Gelato on South Main Street last year (John Lippman, “Bottom Line: Nonprofit answers Hanover’s screams for ice cream,” Valley News (20 June 2020)).
The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen closed the gallery it maintained in a notable Modernist building on Lebanon Street in the summer of 2020 (Valley News (30 June 2020)).
In the summer of 2020, the college ended the lease of the Jewel of India Restaurant on its late Victorian frame house on Lebanon Street (see John Lippman, “Dartmouth College won’t renew lease for Jewel of India restaurant in June,” Valley News (24 January 2020); Emily Lu, “Jewel of India relocates and reopens for takeout on July 15,” The Dartmouth (10 July 2020)).
See also background information on Sargent Block at this site; the one-time college master plan for Sargent Block; and Lisa Prevost, “Colleges Invest So ‘What’s the Town Like?’ Gets an Upbeat Answer,” New York Times (25 February 2020).
Begun more than a year ago, the Town of Hanover’s process of re-envisioning South Main Street (noted in Here in Hanover) is meant to make cars feel like guests.
A very detailed design presentation video lays out the options. Possibilities include replacing angled parking with parallel parking and creating a curbless surface by raising the street grade to match that of the sidewalks, both great moves. There is also a discussion of why a pedestrian mall or a one-way street is unlikely.
It will be many months before Snøhetta completes its designs for the Hop, but a look at a few of the firm’s past projects might give some insight:
Dartmouth News announced that the Strategic Master Plan (pdf) is available on line.
Some potential projects are fleshed out in new detail, including the Cemetery Bridge on pages 48 and 49.
The experience design page at Arup has a small blurb about the Hopkins Center project with a conceptual illustration. It is difficult to tell what space the image depicts, but it could be a new room built within the Hop Courtyard.
This has not been mentioned much, but the architect of record for the Snøhetta Hop project is EYP (see “Snøhetta to redesign Dartmouth College’s arts center,” The Construction Specifier (15 February 2021)). EYP is doing a lot in Hanover these days, including some of the Dartmouth Row remodelings. The firm also conducted studies that are leading up to the new power plant/green energy project.
See Katie Angen, “Dartmouth’s 1960s-era Anonymous Hall makes a name for itself with 2030 overhaul,” The Architect’s Newspaper (31 March 2021); David Malone, “Dartmouth College’s new faculty and graduate student center completes,” Building Design + Construction (26 February 2021); Matthew Marani, “With an Array of Sustainability Measures, Dartmouth’s Newest Building Stands Above the Pack,” Metropolis (2 June 2021). Some articles about Anonymous Hall refer to the space to the north as “a north quad,” which is fine, but others refer to “North Quad,” which does not seem right.
The current images for the Dartmouth Hall remodeling show the subtle front podium. At the moment, the project update page has an excellent photo of a shutterless building with scaffolding around the cupola. The renovation of the Charles Rich-designed building involves the insertion of new structural steel framing and concrete floors (Amar Scherzer, “Thornton Hall renovation to finish in summer, Irving Institute construction to complete in fall,” The Dartmouth (11 May 2021)).
A nice flythrough video shows the CECS building; for some reason the markings on the glass bridge that will indicate where the extra ten-foot segment was added do not appear in the video. Oh well. Instead of “Kemeny Hardenberg,” as shown on the HGA page, the entrance to the building in the video now reads “Center for Engineering and Computer Science.” How is the abbreviation pronounced, by the way — is it Kex or Secs? The North to West Utility Extension page shows how very large the building is.
There are several new photos of the Irving under construction and a new flythrough video available on the building’s project page. It is so good to see the facade of the old Murdough Center, its glass hoarding now white-framed instead of black, preserved within the new atrium.
Old news: the college constructed a pair of 60 x 120 skating rinks on the Green in January, and a light installation was installed in the Bema in February.
A fascinating study of early 19th-century parasitic infection has emerged from the summer 2019 archaeological work at the Choate House site on Wentworth Street (Amy Olson, “Studying 200-Year-Old Privy on Campus Hits Pay Dirt,” Dartmouth News (3 May 2021)). The recent growth in campus archaeology continues to thrill (and to revive a sense of regret over potential missed opportunities in the 1990s, including on the southeast corner of the Green).
Something’s going on around here: The privy article refers to “Dartmouth Libraries’ Baker-Berry Library” and the recent iconography article refers to “Dartmouth Library’s Baker Library.” Surely a reader of the official Dartmouth News website is not going to mistake Baker for a constituent facility of the Town of Hanover’s Howe Library? On a somewhat-related note, the new Indoor Practice Facility displays the words DARTMOUTH INDOOR PRACTICE FACILITY. Why the “DARTMOUTH”? Could it be mistaken for a Hanover High facility? Perhaps the word is just standing in for the name of a donor.
Influential planning historian John Reps died on November 12 (Edith Fikes and Patti Witten, “Urban planning historian John W. Reps dies at age 98,” Cornell Chronicle (25 November 2020)). He became interested in maps at Dartmouth, where he was a member of the Class of 1943. His history of his collecting is worth a read.
The book Beneath the Green: The Map at Dartmouth is a 2019 collection of student projects from Mary Flanagan’s mapmaking class.
See Merideth Barnett, “Honoring the Past, Shifting for the Future,” Currents Magazine (1 May 2021) for a look at campus traditions that includes Dartmouth among its examples. In this article, “advancement professionals and higher education researchers share why traditions endure, how they shift, and what role advancement today plays in celebrating and shaping them.”
Here is an interesting college tradition: digging up a different buried bottle of seeds every 20 years (Cara Giaimo, “One of the World’s Oldest Science Experiments Comes Up From the Dirt,” New York Times (21 April 2021).
An article in The Dartmouth notes the completion of work on Reed and Baker and the start of work on Dartmouth Hall.
The HGA [architects] page for the CECS building has an image showing main entrance with the name KEMENY HARDENBERG above the door.
The Goody Clancy page on the Irving Institute is up.
What might have been: The central and right-hand groups of images on Samer Afifi’s site show (1) a more traditionally-massed CECS on the site where it is now being built and (2) a very unfortunately sited Irving Institute way back on the River Cluster site — not only distant from any important campus axis but also blocking any further Tuck School expansion.
This has been noted here before, but it is always fun to see: A Kliment/Halsband-designed addition to the Shower Towers to house Sudikoff. It looks perfectly pleasant, but it must have been overtaken by VSBA planning for Berry Row.
Kellogg Auditorium, perhaps the only building at Dartmouth named for a room, has been renamed Kellogg Hall and renovated as a classroom building. It opened last fall (Susan Green, “Newly Renovated and Renamed Kellogg Hall Opens” (29 September 2020)).
Dartmouth News has a piece on the importance of the DHMC parking lot as a social space in pandemic times.
Many outlets, including the Concord Monitor, have written about the huge college-affiliated apartment complex that will be built on Route 120 at Mt. Support Road.
The Davison Block, a prominent and historic commercial building at the top of Main Street in downtown Hanover, has been sold by the Davison family, reports the Valley News.
The Valley News also had an article on a sort of Christkindlmarkt that was set up in Hanover over the holidays. Fantastic. So many nice touches could be added to downtown, especially on South Main Street above Lebanon Street, whether by raising the street level (happening?), adding bollards, or limiting traffic and parking. An inviting town square could be delineated in front of the Municipal Building.
The Valley News reports on the college’s pullback from the idea of a new biomass heating plant. This is probably good news for the preservation of the old smokestack.
There are some great photos in the annual roundup of shots by Dartmouth photographers. The aerial of Baker Lawn does look like a De Stijl painting, as noted. It might look even more like a work in batik, an impression created by the imperfections in the edges of the paths and the snow-covered roofs.
Here is a thought: What if, instead of calling for an arboretum on the former golf course, the master plan (see the post here) proposed to construct a large sculpture park? A sculpture park on Hilton Field, the part of the golf course that lies north of Occom Pond, would have little more impact on the neighbors than would an arboretum. It would be managed by the Hood Museum as a site for major new works, and it could provide a home for any refugee works that the college thought appropriate to move from the campus, such as Thel (see the article here; the master plan at least hints at the possible removal of Thel).
Speaking of Thel, here is William Blake’s new gravestone in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground in London. It was created by the Blake Society under the leadership of Philip Pullman, of His Dark Materials fame.
The Anonymous Hall bridge (see photos at the Windover Construction site) deserves praise for adding to the walkability of the northern part of the campus. It seems like the sort of amenity that could easily be cut from a construction budget.
Let’s hope the proposed cemetery bridge (see the final image at the BBB master plan project page for a conceptual view) eventually is built, and when it does cross the burial ground, let’s hope it receives an appropriate amount of design attention. What a fantastic project this could be, and what a great opportunity for an architectural commentary on the influence of ancient Egypt on both bridges and funerary architecture. See for example the post here for a proposal to erect an ominous cemetery gate at each end of the bridge.
Egyptian Revival architecture makes for a good folly; authors Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp have a new book out called The English Folly: The Edifice Complex. Their earlier book, Follies: A Guide to Rogue Architecture in England, Scotland and Wales, features a photo of the Dunmore Pineapple in Scotland (Wikipedia) on its cover. Yes, that Dunmore: the building’s patron, John Murray, was the Governor of Virginia at the beginning of the Revolution. On December 6, 1775, Murray wrote to (that) Lord Dartmouth to say that “I immediately ordered a Fort to be erected” at Great Bridge, on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp (pdf, 1311). The utilitarian and hastily-built timber stockade called Fort Murray was pretty much the opposite of a folly; it withstood a rebel siege but no longer exists.
