The Skiway is overhauling its snowmaking system with a gift from four alumnae among the nine daughters in the skiing-and-snowmaking Dupré family (news release, Valley News).
[Update 01.10.2009: Vermont Business Journal notes other work on the Skiway, including some blasting.]
The Alumni Relations Office has devoted a small stand-alone website to Dartmouth’s trees.
The Council of Independent Colleges maintains detailed building-by building information in its Historic Campus Architecture Project. Â One interesting revelation is that Charles Augustus Young, the Dartmouth graduate of 1853, well-known Princeton astronomer, and participant in the design of Dartmouth’s Shattuck Observatory with his uncle, architect Ammi Burnham Young, is listed as the designer of the 1881 Williston Observatory at Mount Holyoke College. Â The interesting shingled building does not appear to follow the plan of Shattuck.
Cornell’s marching band has been the subject of a parade in Manhattan since the mid-1970s. Â Although it has grown from one block to six blocks in length, it is still New York City’s shortest parade, Cornell reports. Â This year it followed the Cornell-Columbia football game.
Polemicist-architect Leon Krier has seen a small number of his buildings built around the world. Â The few in the U.S. include what is probably his first university building in this country, the Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center at the University of Miami (2005). The bright white, rather Byzantine building is unconventional, although it does not seem to have been given a particularly transformative site (the campus map [pdf] shows it at L-6). Â See the extensive photography by Mary Ann Sullivan and article by Andres Viglucci, “Architecture: A Building Apart,” CNU Florida (posted October 16, 2005).
U.N.H. Professor Blake Gumprecht’s book The American College Town has been published. Â The U.N.H. press release provides some information about the book, and Inside Higher Ed interviewed the author.
Moore Ruble Yudell, designers with Bruner/Cott of Dartmouth’s McLaughlin Cluster, Kemeny/Haldeman Hall, and the upcoming ’53 Commons, continue to work on major campus projects around the world, as explained in an article in Metropolis. Â Here in the U.S., the South Lawn project at the University of Virginia attempts to continue Jefferson’s Lawn beyond its termination at a set of existing buildings, carrying the space across a street and around a corner. Â In Dublin, Ireland, the firm is designing the transformation of the large parklike grounds of a former insane asylum (Grangegorman) into a campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Metropolis also has an article (pdf) on the “post-American campus” in the Middle East, which is experiencing a boom in construction of American-influenced universities. Â American University of Kuwait, the school Dartmouth has chosen to create extensive partnerships with since it opened in 2004, is planning a new campus of its own. Â A preliminary proposal depicted on page 4 of the AUK Chronicle (June 2008) (pdf) suggests that the campus will be secure and auto-oriented and might share more with the early-ninth century St. Gall Monastery Plan than a typical American campus.
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[Update 05.11.2013: Broken link to Metropolis article repaired; broken link to “post-American campus” removed.]
[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to Newsday article on Cornell parade replaced; broken links to Perez Architecture Center and AUK Chronicle pdf removed.]
The Valley News reported that the lease under which the Army Corps’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory occupies its complex on Dartmouth-owned property is ending. Both sides expect to negotiate a new lease with a higher rent. The federal installation is not subject to local zoning.
Although Dartmouth’s proposed acquisition of the high school would have deprived the town of an important element, it would have given the College a large tract of land very close to the campus. Part of the property was already in the form of sports fields, and the high school itself always seemed like it could make a good rugby clubhouse. The swap did not go through.
An unreleased proposal from a few years ago shows that someone was at least thinking of using the property for a new baseball field (putting something like Biondi Park there would have allowed Centerbrook to expand Alumni Gym) and, more interestingly, for faculty or graduate student housing. The ranks of buildings were to stand next to St. Denis Church.
The plan appears in a 2007 presentation (pdf) by architect David Bagnoli of the Washington, D.C. firm of Cunningham | Quill and might have been created by that firm.
What is most remarkable about this plan is that it nearly replicates a housing development that once stood on the same site, the wartime Sachem Village (it was the precursor to the present Sachem Village). A nice aerial of this original Sachem Village appears on page 90 of Frank Barrett’s latest book, Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover.
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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to images fixed.]
References to these still-vague proposals appear in Dartmouth’s recent master plans:
[Update 10.10.2008: Replaced Route 10A with Route 120.]
A lot of river-related planning activity has focused on the Fullington Farm/Chieftain Inn area north of campus recently.
Although the Upper Valley Rowing Foundation seems to have settled on a site closer to Wilder Dam for its future boathouse (design by U.K. Architects), its past meeting minutes have mentioned an interest in buying Fullington Farm, or at least a right to use part of it, from Dartmouth. Now the Friends of Hanover High Crew have signed an agreement with Dartmouth and plan to build a community boathouse on the farm (UVRF May 2008 minutes pdf).
Fullington Farm is the site of the Dartmouth Organic Farm and might be the location of the Lyme Road site that is occasionally proposed as a new home for Thayer School (see 2002 Master Plan, 14 pdf).
At the Chieftain, Black Bear Sculling runs a sculling program. Now the Chieftain is requesting a zoning variance to allow a private club on the property (Zoning Board of Adjustment July 10, 2008 pdf). The zoning board minutes do not indicate the purpose of the club or whether it has anything to do with rowing.
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[Update 11.11.2013: Broken link to the Chieftain removed.]
[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to Chieftain fixed and broken link to Zoning Board minutes removed.]
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:
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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.]
A well-illustrated article on Hanover’s postwar Modernists, Edgar and Margaret Hunter, considers their work in the context of other North Carolina architects.
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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to Hunters article replaced.]
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.
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:
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.]
Trumbull-Nelson has demolished the old Co-Op Food Store and gas station at the intersection of Lyme and Reservoir Roads. The Co-Op is building a replacement on the site (more info) designed by UK Architects of Hanover; the minutes of the Planning Board (pdf) indicate that the landscape architects are ORW Landscape Architects & Planners of Norwich.
The new store, which will not contain a gas station, will face the traffic circle at the intersection and will complement Dartmouth’s Rivercrest redevelopment across Lyme Road, forming a part of what is in essence a new town north of the golf course.
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[Update 07.06.2013: Broken link to more Co-Op info removed, broken link to replacement store replaced.]
[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to 16 October 2007 Planning Board minutes removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to demolition article removed.]
The Office of Residential Life plans to renovate the ca. 1812 James C. Brown House at 26 East Wheelock as a sorority, The Dartmouth reports. A second building slated to become a sorority house is the Parkside Apartments, a Jens Larson faculty housing block at 17 East Wheelock Street. The firm doing the work is Haynes & Garthwaite.
Meanwhile, the status page for the 4 Currier Street project notes that the three frame buildings on the site have been demolished: 4 Currier Place, 6 Sargent Place, and an outbuilding at 18 South Street.
[Update 09.07.2008: Haynes & Garthwaite information added and Parkside Apartments substituted for Ledyard Apartments, named incorrectly in original post.]
[Update 05.07.2009: Leftover reference to Jens Larson, correct when the post referred to Ledyard Apartments, removed.]
Randall T. Mudge & Associates, Architects have created a firm website relatively recently. Familiar projects will include the Powerhouse Shopping Center in West Lebanon, David’s House at DHMC, and Dragon and the Rugby Clubhouse at Dartmouth.
OPDC has photos of Burnham and the Sports Pavilion that occupies the plaza between Burnham and Sculley-Fahey. The Pavilion’s south (field-side) facade, which was not emphasized in the drawings published prior to construction, makes the building look like an early-twentieth century central European lockmaster’s house.
The north end of Burnham Field has a short but impressive stretch of high brick wall to serve as a sign. The decision not to employ the stepped gable motif, which appears in the gym and Spaulding Pool and was repeated in the recent Boss Tennis Center, seems like a missed opportunity to inject some coherence into Dartmouth’s athletic facilities. Floren in particular might have made good use of it; but at least all of these buildings are built of brick, which does a great deal to unify them.
The Real Estate Office page has the best information on the new three-level commercial building about to go up across from the parking garage behind 7 Lebanon Street, sort of across from the Howe.
The Valley News reports that site prep begins today and will involve the demolition of two frame houses behind C&A’s Pizza.
Businessweek also has a short report that explains, as the others do, that the building’s first occupant will be the Studio Art Department once Clement Hall is demolished.
The one view of the building available on the Real Estate site unfortunately does not suggest that it will live up to the standard set by Childs Bertman Tseckares at 7 Lebanon.
The Moosilauke Advisory Committee recommends that Dartmouth demolish the historic Moosilauke Ravine Lodge (Richard Butterfield, 1938-39) near Warren, New Hampshire.
The article on the Committee’s recommendation in The Dartmouth does not suggest that the Committee has consulted with an accredited preservation architect, or an architect who is familiar with historic log buildings. The reasons given for demolishing Dartmouth’s most unusual and most sustainable building are not yet very convincing:
Reason :: Typical solution
logs cracking :: seal them
logs rotting :: replace them
current building codes :: upgrade/overlook – most old buildings fail
not large enough :: add on by extending the Great Hall
The idea that the building was “built to last 50 years” is especially insidious because every building has such a number. No one in 1938 planned for Moosilauke to be demolished in 1988 any more those who built Moore or Berry in 1998 planned to have it torn down in 2048. A “lifetime” number exists for every building and simply describes the period after which significant elements will need replacement. Swapping out logs or replacing a roof is nothing a competent construction crew cannot handle.
Dartmouth should not let the cost of proper maintenance justify destruction, even if an historic log building might cost a bit more to maintain than the cheap imitation that would replace it. The Lodge was built by volunteers and low-paid local loggers, during the Depression, which means that Dartmouth has been enjoying the savings of a low initial purchase price for 70 years. A little extra expense today would be well justified.
Destroying the Ravine Lodge would also waste all of the energy the building embodies, and by rights it should prevent any replacement from claiming to be “green.” The Lodge was constructed using sustainable local timber hauled by horses. All of its systems are indefinitely replaceable and will not tie up valuable metals or harmful chemicals in landfills when they are thrown away after failing suddenly at the end of their useful lives, as the parts of a new building will do.
The college that is gearing up to celebrate the centennial of its Outing Club, that is sincerely dedicated to meeting voluntary “green” regulations, and that produces graduates such as William McDonough should be embarrassed to consider destroying the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. Just as with any other National-Register eligible building, if parts of it are broken, they need to be fixed. Before any demolition takes place, I’d hope that Dartmouth justify such a decision by reporting no that federal and state historic preservation laws will be implicated; that a certified preservation architect with log building experience has written off the building; and that the replacement will not seek any kind of LEED certification.
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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to McDonough removed.]
[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links to McDonough and image fixed.]
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:
The diamond at Red Rolfe is being completely rebuilt, and, with a grandstand, dugouts, and a press box, will become part of Biondi Park. Press Release; Project page. Clark Companies and Gale Associates are the field consultants, and Lavallee Brensinger, designer of the gym renovation, is designing the grandstand. The project page has a perspective rendering available.
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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Clark fixed.]
[Update 07.12.2008: The plans page also includes a nice site plan (pdf), and Big Green Alert Blog has a post with an aerial perspective rendering and a view of the entrance gate.]
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