Interesting future projects

References to these still-vague proposals appear in Dartmouth’s recent master plans:

  • The Hanover Bypass: A new interchange for Interstate 91 south of Norwich would send a new bridge across the Connecticut, leading to a road through the woods to Route 120 near the DHMC. This would allow hospital and Lebanon traffic to avoid the corner of Main and Wheelock. Dartmouth and the hospital own most of the land along the route, which lies in Lebanon, and seem likely to favor a bypass. The Town of Lebanon does not appear to favor it.
  • The Bartlett Hall Addition: An extension to the east, at least, toward the Sphinx, would occupy a site with plenty of room, some of it a vacant lot left by Culver Hall. The road could be eliminated or moved eastward. Bartlett is extremely distinctive and picturesque, and any addition would have to answer the question of style right away.
  • College Park Gates: this idea is from Saucier & Flynn’s landscape master plan. The College Park once had a design language of its own, although it is difficult to tell whether it was more Victorian iron curlicues or Victorian bark-covered sticks, as in the Adirondacks. At any rate, College Park does not seem like a red-brick Georgian place. The plan also suggests bringing College Park down to Wheelock Street, at least by reference. It would be nice to connect the Sphinx, which seems like an island, to the park itself.

[Update 10.10.2008: Replaced Route 10A with Route 120.]

Campus and area architecture news roundup

The designs for Memorial Field’s West Stand or the replacement for Thayer Dining Hall have not been revealed, but a few smaller items of interest have come out over the past few months:

  • Construction of the ’78 Life Science Center began in early September, notes the OPDC, after the Occom Pond Neighborhood Association’s appeal of Hanover’s zoning permission was dismissed (press release). A webcam shows the site when it’s light out.
  • The reconstruction of Rolfe Field and the construction of the surrounding Biondi Park have been delayed by site conditions, quoted Jim Hunter of Clark Construction Company: “Dartmouth is just so old that you never know what you’re going to
    find underneath the ground.” When students were digging trenches in the area during World War I, they found an old house foundation.

  • Moore Ruble Yudell has a page up for the North Campus master plan.
  • A huge amount of effort has gone into building a sprawling housing development near the hospital at Gile Hill, and into making it not seem like affordable housing (site map). The project was designed by Gossens Bachman Architects of Montpelier, designers of the Rock of Ages Corporation Visitor Center and of a design for the Vermont Granite Museum.

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Gile Hill plan and site map removed.]
[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to master plan replaced.]

Concerns about expanding the campus onto the Golf Course

Over the last decade, Dartmouth’s planners have concluded that the College must expand northward onto the Golf Course relatively soon. See, for example, the 2001 Master Plan, page 11 (pdf).

The latest 2001 plan tentatively suggests a location for the new road that would be required to make this expansion possible. The road would run from the Medical School/Dewey Field, cut through Dewey Hill, and head to the northwest to provide building sites on the very edge of — or actually on top of — the 17th hole of the Golf Course.


proposed road on Golf Course


Rough compilation of maps suggesting route of golf course road north of Medical School, with potential building sites indicated by solid red dots; Baker at lower left

The buildings on this road would lie beyond the 10-minute walking radius that Dartmouth takes for granted as defining its pedestrian campus. The road, which would traverse fairly steep slopes, seems likely to go nowhere and to lack a connection to either Rope Ferry or Lyme Road. Because this development would focus on a paved thoroughfare instead of an architectural space, as all of Dartmouth’s most successful expansions do, it seems likely to be suburban in character — more Centerra than Tuck Mall.

Such an expansion would only seem inevitable if one were to begin with the premise that the existing campus is “full.” That premise cannot be accurate. Dartmouth should do everything possible to prevent it from becoming accurate. There are still plenty of places to add to existing buildings or erect new ones near the center of campus. Many of these sites contained buildings in the past or have been the subjects of building proposals dating to the 1920s:


unsolicited master plan for Dartmouth 2008


Unsolicited master plan showing approximate sites to be built upon in preference to Golf Course; the only demolition required is in the Choates

Dartmouth should replicate existing densities before it expands in ways that are suburban, needlessly university-like, or simply cause the College to spread too far from the Green.

[Update 02.06.2010: Although campuslike development beyond the walking radius should be avoided, townlike development is desirable.]

Extensive trove of planning documents available

The Planning arm of the OPDC has expanded its Web content lately. Now there are historic maps and aerial photos available. The College Planner, Joanna Whitcomb, even has a blog.

Most interesting is the very extensive file of planning documents of the last decade. There are some remarkable items here:

  • Machado & Silvetti’s 2006 presentation on the Visual Arts Center to the Board of Trustees (pdf);
  • Kieran Timberlake’s 2006 Basis of Design for the Thayer Dining Hall Replacement (pdf) (good news: at least at the time of that presentation, the demolition of South Fairbanks was not part of the proposal; instead the architects presented a clever plan to close the south end of Mass Row and loop vehicles from Wheelock Street behind the church and back to the street);
  • Saucier & Flynn’s 2007 Landscape Master Plan (pdfs) (interesting proposal to establish a public square or plaza between Leverone and Thompson)
  • Centerbrook’s SLI study (pdf) (including intersting things reported but not shown on line in the late 1990s, such as an idea for a building to join Collis, Robinson, and Thayer; and the big building idea that led to Floren);
  • Photos of a model of the ’53 Commons pdf) emphasizing the glassy tower;
  • Dartmouth’s 2002 Master Plan (pdf) (mentions the idea of building a regional conference center, probably not in town; the Trustees’ long-held goal of demolishing the entire River Cluster; the one-time consideration of building an off-site commissary to serve all dining halls; the idea of putting a parking garage on the lot next to Cummings; and, strangest of all, the rejection of a proposal to move Thayer School to Lyme Road!).

Hanover projects of ORW Landscape Architects

ORW Landscape Architects & Planners of Norwich provide, among their transportation design examples, information about a project for Hanover: a set of street standards that fits with the Brook McIlroy plan.

The site includes drawings of a reworked south entrance into town (note the commercial building in the parking lot of Grand Union/CVS, as Brook McIlroy suggested); an eastern welcome by Memorial Field focused on a proposed corner tower and building on the very important site where the FO&M buildings are now; and two proposed street sections, one for Lebanon street with Brook McIlroy’s wide sidewalks for cafe seating.

The firm has also done a riverfront park design study, a trail plan, and a suburban development proposal in Lebanon, a proposal for corridor enchancements in Norwich, and a proposal for new buildings in downtown White River.

“Whittemore Green” as a name

As the irregular grassy plot in front of the River Cluster becomes better defined and and is transformed into a front door to the Tuck School (through the school’s Whittemore Hall), the space needs a name.

Landscape architects Saucier & Flynn have mentioned “Whittemore Green” in town planning meetings (pdf).

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to 11 July 2006 minutes removed.]

Campus maps in general

The campus map released in February now shows Fahey-McLane and other new campus projects, as well as the new commercial buildings of the South Block, below South Street.

Harvard’s campus map, probably because it is not required to show accessible entrances and parking lots, seems to have a bit more visual appeal.

Princeton has a master plan () that is very well illustrated with maps. Unlike many master plans, it gets right to the details and shows specific sites for future buildings, at least those planned for the near future.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to Harvard and Princeton replaced.]

Large urban redevelopments at other schools

A major theme of campus planning in the early twentieth century seems to be the redevelopment by a college or university of a large discontiguous tract. Whether for purposes that are mostly or partly non-academic, the common characteristic is the form: a treelined urban grid, not an academic campus of connected grassy spaces. The South Block project in Hanover (purchased 1998, redeveloped 2005-2007) is one example. Penn has its parcel, Columbia is pursuing its huge work north of its campus (see Plan NYC; pdf map), Yale just purchased a suburban pharmaceutical research park, and Harvard is beginning its Allston redevelopment (map; aerial rendering; Globe article). Allston might be the largest of the group, and it is meant to be “sustainable.”

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Allston items, sustainability page, and article below removed.]
[Update 11.17.2007: An August article by Jeff Stahl in Urban Land (pdf) covers this trend.]

The steam tunnel continues

Dartmouth’s steam tunnel continues to stretch northward. A thumbnail sketch:

  • From Heating Plant along the Green to the Berry site (mid-1990s)
  • From Berry site up Berry Row to Moore (around 1998)
  • From Moore, tap into historic hospital tunnel network to reach Kellogg Auditorium and adjoining chiller plant (early 2000s?)
  • From Kellogg, run northward behind Medical School to future Life Sciences Building site (2007).

Landscape master plan

Saucier & Flynn offer a small version of what looks like a lushly-detailed landscape master plan for Dartmouth. The Tuck Mall portion is especially notable, since it shows the initial portion of the mall (what was the entire mall during the 1910s) as a broad academic field lined by paths, and only the more distant portion with a road in the center as is the case now.

The school put a sidewalk in on the north side of the mall last month, according to an article in The Dartmouth. The article did not note whether the sidewalk is the first step in implementing the master plan’s proposal for Tuck Mall.

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[Update 11.12.2012: Broken link to pdf below removed.]
[Update 07.24.2007: The Planning Board minutes of June 6, 2006 suggest that the sidewalk project is an implementation of the master plan.]

Visual Arts Center page on architects’ site

The Dartmouth provided an update on the Visual Arts Center, and the designers have an unlinked project page that states:

A new facility for the college’s Studio Art and Film and Television departments, the Visual Art Center represents the consolidation in of two related programs for the first time in the college’s history. The new center occupies a prime location and consequently must function not only as an educational space, but also as a new entrance to the both the campus and the arts precinct. An 80,000 square foot building, stretching along a length of Lebanon Street from the Facility Operations and Management department to Spaulding Auditorium in the Hopkins Center, the new building is given a sizable portal that frames the existing Hood Museum complex and functions as a door to the south entrance of the campus. Commercial programs will mix with the educational functions along the street to further enhance the town’s Master Plan.

Campus planning

A few well-illustrated recent studies share a recognition of the urban nature of the college campus:

  • R.M. Kliment and Frances Halsband (designers of Burke Laboratory) propose a pragmatic route called “The Walk” (pdf) running through several varied urban blocks to tie together isolated properties owned by Brown University.
  • Yale’s extensive “Framework for Campus Planning” (pdf) by Cooper, Robertston & Partners maps the trash-collection routes of Yale’s campus while noting that most buildings there have university names as well as street addresses; the scale comparison of Yale to the other Ivies (including “Dartmouth University”) is interesting. The plan covers signage, noting the six official typefaces and proposing a unified system. Cooper, Robertson is also working on Harvard’s huge Allston expansion.
  • Oxford has a master plan by Rafael Viñoly for the site of the Radcliffe Infirmary, up by the Royal Oak pub. It offers several Parisian blocks lining pedestrian avenues that focus on the Radcliffe Observatory, which is the chief building of Green Templeton College (Wikipedia).

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    [Update 11.12.2012: Broken links to “The Walk,” Cooper, Robertson, and Allston fixed; broken link to Oxford plan pdf replaced with link to website; broken link to Green College replaced with updated link to Green Templeton College.]

    Landscape projects explained

    Landscape architects Saucer + Flynn have posted new information including descriptions of eight projects for Dartmouth as well as landscapes for North Park Street Graduate Student Housing, 7 Lebanon Street, the DHMC, projects in Centerra, and the Sphinx.

    The firm also designed a wrought-iron fence for Skull & Bones in New Haven, which is not the kind of landscape project you see every day.

    Master plan to be updated

    The Trustees recently discussed updates to Lo-Yi Chan‘s 2001 master plan and the designs for the Visual Arts Center, the Life Sciences Building, the Class of 1953 Commons, and the New Thayer Dining Hall (press release).

    Peter Bohlin, whose firm is designing the Life Sciences Building, designed a nature center building for the Vermont Institute of Natural Science not far from Hanover in Queechee, Vermont.

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    [Update 11.12.2012: Broken link to VINS pdf replaced with generic link to website.]

    Where is Sand Hill?

    Landscape architects Winston Associates announced during 2004 that Dartmouth had selected Winston and Wolff-Lyon to plan a 200-unit Sand Hill neighborhood that would include an integrated parking/transit transfer center.

    Sand Hill does not seem to be a prominent landmark in Hanover or Lebanon. A Parking Committee Recommendation describes Sand Hill as an undeveloped site with room for 450 parking spaces, while the OPDC parking spreadsheet (Excel file) indicates that 300 new parking spots are expected to open in the Sand Hill Lot during fiscal year 2007.

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    [Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Winston link really fixed.]
    [Update 11.12.2012: Broken Winston link fixed.]

    Wolff Lyon’s master plan for Rivercrest (2004)

    The Boulder-based firm of Wolff Lyon Architects, which developed some of the guidelines for the massive redevelopment of Denver’s Stapleton Airport as a town, worked with Boulder landscape architects Winston Associates to complete a master plan for Dartmouth’s total reconstruction of its suburban Rivercrest housing development, north of CRREL and south of Kendal. This project, also known as Dresden Village in planning documents, seems to be taking a while in the town’s regulatory process.

    (More on the firm from Wellington in Breckenridge, Colo. Is it coincidence that the master planner for Kendal at Hanover, adjacent Rivercrest, is another Boulder firm, Architecture Incorporated?)

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    [Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Winston really fixed.]
    [Update 11.12.2012: Broken links to Winston and Wellington fixed.]
    [Update 01.25.2007 Update: Winston link added.]