Category Archives: photos May 2006

Photographs of the campus taken during May 2006.

The end of the Hanover Country Club

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Along with ending five varsity sports, the college is closing the Hanover Country Club after nearly 125 years (see the announcement, which features another great Burakian aerial; see also the more detailed Hanlon message and the FAQ).

The golf course has been thought of as a land bank, a reserve for future development, for decades. A thorough college planning process can be expected before anything is built on the golf course.

Here are some suggestions for the plan:

  1. The historic clubhouse, a 19th-century barn that was extensively remodeled by Professor Homer Eaton Keyes in 1916 and 1917 (a post here), should be preserved, ideally on its current site. It could be expanded and turned into a dwelling.

    Hanover Country Club House, Dartmouth College
  2. If the golf course is going to be developed, it should be developed thoroughly. Piecemeal scatterings of parking lots and isolated buildings will only draw suburban sprawl closer to Hanover (a concern expressed in a 2008 post here). The college should plan for an all-encompassing, long-term project that reserves important natural areas, establishes a street grid, and envisions buildings surrounding walkable public spaces.
  3. More to the point, the development should be urban, not campus-like. The golf course lies outside the 10-minute walking radius of the college, and none of the buildings built there should contain spaces for instruction or student dining or living. These should be mixed-use commercial buildings like the ones found in Hanover’s first downtown, South Main Street. That is the idea presented in a 2012 post here that featured this image:

    north block proposal
  4. One exception to the no-campus guideline might be made for a new business school campus. Professional schools are located at the edges of the college, and the Tuck School has looked in the past at new sites along Lyme Road — which is too far away. A new Tuck campus beginning behind the Life Sciences Center and extending up into the golf course could be impressive. Thayer School might be happy to take over the old Tuck buildings.
  5. While commercial buildings extend northward along Lyme Road, what kind of construction should the college promote on old Hilton Field, the area beyond the DOC House and the Clubhouse? To bring some income, provide needed housing for academic families, and appease the existing neighbors, the college might want to consider building houses here in the character of the historic neighborhood.

From Kiewit to…

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Correct me in the comments if I’m wrong, but after Dartmouth demolished Kiewit, it gave Computing Services an office in Baker Library, outside the Tower Room:


In 2011, however, the college apparently gave that space to the undergraduate deans and shunted Computing Services to the first floor of Berry.

Now the deans have joined Computing Services in the first floor of Berry (The Dartmouth, see floorplan pdf), and the Computer Store has been displaced to the basement of McNutt (Dartbeat).

An aerial view of the Academic Center’s site

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Bill Hemmel has a nice collection of recent aerial photos of the campus, including this one:

Lakes Region/Aerial Photo NH: Hanover/Dartmouth &emdash; Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH

Dartmouth will demolish Gilman (at right, with white window frames) and Dana (the square building above it) to provide a site for the North Campus Academic Center.

At this stage in the design process, the siting of the Academic Center is the best and most interesting attribute of the building. Disobeying the grid that orients the rest of the medical school complex, the Academic Center will approximate the curve of College Street. Here is a very rough guess at the building’s footprint:

Guess at footprint of NCAC

This would seem to rule out a New Maynard Street (not a serious idea):

New Maynard Street proposal

The new building will wall off the medical quad from the street at least as much as Dana does now, and it will finally liberate the quad’s southwestern corner. In place of the frustrating and obstructive hyphen that new joins Gilman to Remsen, the new building will erect a broad ramp to give pedestrians free access to the quad and the Life Sciences Center beyond.

In the context of Vail and its older neighbors, the potentially dull, planar surfaces and ominous cantilevering of the new building might be hard to criticize. This is Dana’s entrance, for example:

Dana entrance

But the obvious difference is that the med school’s Modernist buildings, all by SBRA, are built of red brick. While their scale and style set them apart, their material ties them to the campus. The Academic Center, which initially was shown as having one portion clad in brick, appears to be destined to wear a museumlike white material, possibly stone or metal paneling, all the way around.

The building guidelines in the 2002 Campus Master Plan propose that new buildings maintain at least some connection to the old:

There is a predominance of red brick buildings in Flemish bond, vertical, white, multi-paned windows, entry pediments, and pitched copper roofs. While we do not believe it desirable to limit the design of new buildings to a particular style, the use of some of these existing elements can go a long way in linking the new with the old.

Since it seems to be important to use color to set the Academic Center apart, one wonders whether the building could be built of white-painted brick. The oldest buildings of the campus, those of Dartmouth Row, have been painted white for decades, and yet they have been so little imitated that they remain strikingly different.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Dana image fixed.]

The next Visual Arts Center

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I. Introduction

The nearing completion of the Visual Arts Center points up the current underuse of the site next door at the corner of Crosby and Lebanon Streets.

Crosby and Lebanon Streets, existing

Existing conditions. All maps based on official campus map (pdf).

This is a large and important site. Whatever building goes here — let’s assume it is an arts-related building — will be visible to visitors arriving on Lebanon Street. It will need to be a gateway building, as the 2000 downtown Hanover plan illustrates so thoroughly. The Rogers Marvel 2002 Arts Center Analysis (pdf) also emphasizes the potential of this site on page 38.

author photo of Crosby and Lebanon Streets, 2006

View to the northwest showing the corner, 2006.

The first impulse is to follow the footprint of the existing low-scale facilities building. But this site is not only large, it is also unusually malleable. The college and town might be able to relocate Crosby Street in radical ways to completely reshape the ground available for the gateway building.

Why might Crosby be changeable? Because it has been changed in the past. Crosby Street was first laid out in 1872, to separate the state farm on the east from the state college dormitory site and other buildings on the west.

Crosby Street originally ran straight through to Lebanon Street. It was not until the early 1960s that Crosby’s southern delta was given its current incongruously suburban form. When Dartmouth sought permission to close down South College Street for the Hopkins Center, the Town asked Dartmouth to rework Crosby Street in return, aligning the street with Sanborn Road to form an ex post facto four-way intersection.

author photo of Memorial Field, 2006

View to the north showing the front (west) facade of Memorial Field, 2006. The sidewalk preserves Crosby’s original alignment.

Should we worry about Sanborn Road if Crosby is realigned? No. In fact, the downtown Hanover plan proposes in text and an illustration that Sanborn Road be blocked off. Instead, Hovey Lane will give access to this neighborhood through a short outlet punched through to South Street (see map below).

Would the abandonment of Crosby Street’s current alignment open up any possibilities for a college building on the corner? Each of the following proposals assumes that McKenzie Hall/Shops on Crosby is preserved; Sanborn Road is rerouted; and commercial buildings are built on the college land along the south side of Lebanon Street.

II. The Maximum Arts

The gateway building could expand to fill all of the empty land added to the corner:

maximum arts proposal

The maximum arts proposal.

This plan would block an important view of Memorial Field and make Crosby Street into a narrow tunnel. A good use of space, but not good preservation or townscape.

Some variation on this plan, however, might be a good one:

variation on maximum arts proposal

Variation on the maximum arts proposal.

III. The Minimum Arts

Crosby could be pulled to the west, adding a big empty lawn in front of Memorial Field:

minimum arts proposal

The minimum arts proposal.

This plan would not make efficient use of space, and its creation of new lawns would not actually improve the view of Memorial Field.

IV. The Square and Temple

A big public square could be carved out of the surrounding buildings:

square and temple proposal

The square and temple proposal.

If the big square feels barren, a little temple that shares an alignment with nothing else could be dropped down in front of Memorial Field.

This plan would take advantage of the interesting fact that both Memorial Field and St. Denis Roman Catholic Church were designed in the early 1920s by Jens F. Larson. The two buildings appear to be perpendicular to each other, both aligned with Crosby Street.

author photo of St. Denis, 2006

View to the southeast showing north (front) and west facades of St. Denis, 2006.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Memorial Field image fixed.]

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.]

The historic Hanover Country Club House

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Hanover Country Club House, Dartmouth College

The Hanover Country Club would seem to be Dartmouth’s oldest athletic building, a nineteenth-century barn remodeled as an Arts & Crafts clubhouse by Homer Eaton Keyes in 1916. It is still in excellent shape and well used, although there has been talk for several years of replacing it, presumably with a clubhouse some distance from campus on Lyme Road.

(The school’s oldest intercollegiate athletic facility must be the Alumni Oval of 1893, which was remodeled as Memorial Field and is being remodeled again this summer — meaning that the site and the form have been replicated through the years but that none of the original materials survive.)

[Update 09.12.2006: clubhouse remodeling date corrected.]

Bartlett Hall’s Wheelock Memorial Window, in the bathroom

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Frances Cha has examined the remarkable Wheelock memorial window in Bartlett Hall in The Dartmouth:

Wheelock memorial window, Bartlett Hall, Dartmouth College

The window depicts John the Baptist and quotes him: “Vox Clamantis In Deserto Parate Viam Domini.” In doing so, the window recalls Wheelock’s invocation of that message in his suggestion that the college motto be “Vox Clamantis in Deserto.” (Meacham photo)

[Update 04.12.2010: Parate inserted.]