Category Archives: Parkhurst Hall

About the Parkhurst Administration Building.

The archaeology of Faculty Row

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The Digging Dartmouth project for the spring, led by Anthropology Professor Jesse Casana, investigated traces of the Brown House, which stood south of Parkhurst (Dartmouth News video, The Dartmouth). The article in The Dartmouth provides this heartbreaking tidbit:

Casana felt inspired to investigate Dartmouth’s subterra after observing some not-very-archaeological excavation of the lawn outside his office in Silsby Hall. He noticed that as crews were digging trenches to lay pipes for the new Irving Institute, they had unwittingly unearthed the remains of the foundation of an 1850s-era household.

As always, Professor Casana’s work is to be praised and the college’s ongoing failure to investigate ahead of construction is to be disparaged.

New building projects and other topics

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  • The Valley News has an article on the 50th anniversary of the Parkhurst takeover.
  • The DOC House at the head of Occom Pond is going to be renovated when there are enough donations.
  • The Library is working with Russell Scott Steedle & Capone Architects, Inc., to design a new off-site storage facility:

     
    Dartmouth plans to build a 20,000 sq ft stand-alone, purpose-built storage facility to house the library’s low-use print collections and College records. This facility, to be located on Dartmouth’s 56 Etna Road property in Lebanon, will replace the existing Library offsite storage facility[,] which is full.

  • An article in The Dartmouth details progress on the Indoor Practice Facility (this is the controversial project in the Sunken Garden) and Campus Services has information on the progress of the Boathouse addition.
  • The year the bookstore died: Earlier this year, both the Dartmouth Bookstore (ca. 1872) and Wheelock Books (1993) closed up.
  • Now that the Dartmouth Bookstore is gone, the Gitsis Building is being heavily renovated, the Dartmouth reports:

     
    The building’s owner, Jay Campion, said that the renovations are already well underway and should be complete by July, which will allow the three tenants to start setting up their shops. According to Campion, the renovation process has involved a complete makeover.

    “We’ll be rebuilding the entire storefront and have basically gutted the building,” Campion said. “We’re re-insulating and replacing the heating and air conditioning systems for this and dividing the space for the three separate tenants on the first floor.”

  • This public domain collection of images from the National Archives has an interesting group of photos of campus during WWI. Most of them show the trenches that were dug behind the gym, presumably where Leverone stands today. This photo shows a group of cars and trucks parked inside the southeast (or possibly northwest) corner of the gymnasium itself.
  • Another new project: Renovations of the bluestone plaza in front of the Hopkins Center. The paving stones will be replaced with concrete pavers.
  • Wilson Architects have posted an updated flythrough of the Thayer/CS Building. Now it is clear that the retaining wall to the west is actually the entrance to the garage; in this rendering, it is just vegetated rather than topped by a parapet and walkway.
  • Not sure whether the new Planning, Design and Construction website has been mentioned here.
  • In this Street View the Google employee with his camera backpack is reflected in the windows of Berry Library — as he walks through campus tour group.
  • This post at Granite Geek solves the mystery of whether the NHDHR database called EMMIT is a reference to the derogatory student term “Emmit,” meaning a local person (or really, a New Hampshireman, not so much a townie). The answer is no.
  • Lawrence Biemiller has a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed called “Make Way for Trenches! A College Plans to Scrap Its Entire Heating System.” It has good information on the upcoming heat plant and steam-to-water transition projects.
  • When the new biomass plant is completed, the college will decommission the old heating plant behind New Hampshire Hall. Then it will have an empty building, historic and full of character and eminently reusable, right in the middle of the Arts District. The current feeling seems to be that the building will be demolished, along with its landmark smokestack. Here’s hoping that either or both can be saved, and if they are to be destroyed, at least they can be thoroughly documented first. The University of Virginia is doing the right thing by scanning University Hall, a 1965 domed concrete basketball arena.
  • The Anthropology Department is leading n archeological aexcavation of an 18th-century house site on campus. That’s fantastic. It’s a pity that no one was doing this in the 1930s (or even the late 1980s, before the construction of the steam tunnel disturbed the east side of the Green).
  • Unrelated: A week and a half ago, Union Pacific 4014, a 1940s steam locomotive with a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement, was brought back to life. Having seen a couple of Big Boys in impossibly derelict condition in Colorado and Wyoming in my youth, I never thought one of these locomotives would run again. Here’s a film of the colossus, double-headed with UP 844 (a 4-8-4): Film by Jaw Tooth. Here’s another clip by airrailimages. Astonishing.

250th anniversary planning heats up

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  • One might be surprised at paucity of info out there on the demolition of a part of the Hood Museum and the construction of a large addition. The D has a demolition photo from the Green taken last fall. Curbed.com has a post with two post-demolition photos. (See also the set of fascinating photos of the architectural model at Radii Inc.)

  • Metropolis does have a story on the Hood. These are excerpts:

    Dartmouth first began seriously mulling over the Hood’s fate in 2001, when it commissioned a speculative study by Rogers Marvel Architects. In 2005, it commissioned another by Machado Silvetti, the architectural firm that designed the Hood’s newest neighbor, the Black Family Visual Arts Center. Then in 2010, it commissioned yet another study, this time by Centerbrook, the practice that Charles Moore cofounded afterparticipatory process, which put users on a level playing field Moore Grover Harper. None created the visual presence — that new front door — that Dartmouth administrators were looking for.

    The college began soliciting proposals from a broader pool of architects. A selection committee, including faculty and administrators, winnowed down a short list. In the end, four architects were selected to be interviewed. John Scherding, director of campus design and construction, vividly remembers the TWBTA proposal:

    “All of us in the room felt it was brilliant. They were the only firm that suggested disconnecting the Hood from Wilson Hall, allowing Wilson to stand proudly on the corner of the Green. They were the only firm that showed a strong identifiable front entrance to the building, infilled the courtyard to provide program space, and really strengthened the north-south axis. It was a very powerful and simple concept that satisfied all of the needs.”

    It thoughtfully preserves the gallery spaces (one exemplary detail: To preserve the windows along the staircase, and the dance of light along the walls, TWBTA will convert some of the windows into light boxes of stained glass) and will likely improve the museum experience in many fundamental ways.

  • The sestercentennial celebration website is up. The wordmark makes some interesting typeface choices. The unique “250,” which is set in a type that might be based on Bodoni, includes the most arresting element: a numeral “2” whose diagonal (neck?) is partially erased. The numeral “5” is partially hidden by the “2,” but there is no explanation for the missing bit of the “2.” Is it meant to look like the imperfect printing of an eighteenth-century pamphlet? It looks a bit like a stencil. In any case, the “Dartmouth” on the second line is set in the official Bembo (standard Bembo, not the Yale-only version), and the third line (“1769-2019”) is set in a sans serif font.

  • The sestercentennial will involve a year-long program of events (President’s message) created by a planning committee seeking to meet a number of goals.

  • Here’s a clever little film about an interesting story: Goudy & Syracuse: The Tale of a Typeface Found.

  • Interesting insignia decisions here: the midcentury Institute of International Studies in California was acquired a few years ago by Middlebury College (Wikipedia). In 2015, Middlebury “introduced a brand identity system that embraces the full breadth of its educational endeavors by placing the Middlebury name on each of its schools and programs” (MIIS page). And what a varied collection of institutions it is, including summer schools, conferences, and academic programs. The unified identity is based on a shield. I don’t know about the Midd shield: the globe looks like it’s from a different design language, from a 1960s U.N. brochure. The chapel touches the top of the shield. The hills, because they meet the edges of the shield, read as the sleeves of a gown or as curtains. Maybe this is because the eaves of the chapel are shown as angled bars floating free on the clouds.

  • The Institute is the only Middlebury institution that gets a truly distinctive shield, a variation “that replaces the Green Mountains of Vermont and Old Chapel with the historic Segal Building from the Monterey campus and the year of the Institute’s founding” (MIIS page).

  • A Kickstarter project for Design Canada, “The first documentary chronicling the history of Canadian graphic design and how it shaped a nation and its people.”

  • The New Yorker has has an article on lines of desire. Speaking of unplanned paths, the aerial photo of the vacated pipeline protest camp in the New York Times is remarkable.

  • McGraw Bagnoli Architects have published a brochure about the firm that details the five urban design projects planned by William Rawn Associates during the early 2000s. This is fascinating. It will be interesting to see whether the school ever completes the Sargent Block project and what plan it follows.

  • Smith & Vansant have photos of some of the houses the firm has renovated for the college, including Unity House and Thayer Lodge, both on South Park Street, 26 East Wheelock, 19 South Park, and the Victorian professor’s house of the North Park House community.

  • Architect Vital Albuquerque (again, great name) < ahref="http://rwu.edu/academics/schools-colleges/saahp/portfolios/alumni/vital-albuquerque-class-01">presents more unreleased renderings of the unbuilt NCAC, including a remarkable photo of a model of the project.

  • Engelberth Construction has its page for the West Stand Replacement up.

  • At the last board meeting,

    Hanlon outlined goals to renovate a number of aging buildings, and the board approved funds to proceed with a schematic design for the renovation of Dana Hall, the former home of the biomedical library located at the north end of campus, to facilitate the expansion and improvement of faculty office spaces.

    The board also approved a capital budget of $30 million to fund a number of projects, including the Morton Hall renovation and planning and feasibility studies of the abatement and demolition of Gilman Hall; renovations to Reed Hall and Thornton Hall; and undergraduate housing expansion and renewal.

  • A Moosilauke update with photos by Eli Burakian. The building has an interesting mix of construction techniques. Some of those “character” timbers are fantastic.

  • Some of the photos of the federal building that houses the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, such as the one in this New York Times story from February 9, show the elaborate metal lanterns flanking the entrance of the 1905 building. The lanterns might be familiar: architect James Knox Taylor, then Supervising Architect of the Treasury, modeled them on the torch-holders of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence of 1489 (GSA page on the Browning U.S. Court of Appeals Building). The Strozzi torch-holders also inspired Charles Rich in his design for Parkhurst Hall (1913).

  • Drove past Nervi’s SCOPE arena in Norfolk, Va. (1971-72) last weekend and admired the ribs that form the roof of this entrance pavilion (Google Street View):

In the archives of the Alumni Magazine

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Some fun things are to be found by rummaging indiscriminately in the new on-line archive:

Harrison’s first design for the Hop appeared in a remarkable illustrated article from 1957.1”The Hopkins Center,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1957), 17-21, 25. This is the boxy, pre-arcade version of the building. The Top of the Hop was to have a cylindrical glass-walled void running through its center, all the way from the roof to the theater lobby. This seems to have evolved into the modest Barrows Exhibition Rotunda at the building’s entrance.

Ray Nash wrote on the college seal in 1941.2Ray Nash, “Rediscovering the College Seal,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1941), 17-20. Speaking of the seal, “Hanover’s best skylight… is found in Parkhurst Hall” according to a “best-of” list written in 1984.3”Hanover’s Bests,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1984), 42. The skylight, which depicted the seal, was removed during a interior renovation and seemed to have been lost by May of 2006. Was it ever returned?

An article on the Rockefeller Center included architectural commentary by designer Lo-Yi Chan.4Donald McNemar, “Rockefeller Center: The Ideal of Reflection and Action,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (June 1981), 30-33.

In the election of John Steel to the board of trustees, the alumni association counted its ballots on May 23, 1980. The board put off its vote of June 6, however, asking the association to investigate “any irregularities” in the campaign. On July 28 the association recommended action on the nomination, and the board elected Steel on August 16 — a delay of about ten weeks. He was seated at the board’s November meeting.5Editor, “The College. Steel Elected,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (September 1980), 26. Compare Todd Zywicki, “History of Trustee Election Rules,” Dartmouth Review (6 October 2006), 2 (“In 1980 a man named John Steel ran as a petition candidate for trustee and was elected in a landslide. Efforts were made by the College and the board at the time to refuse to seat him and after protracted litigation, he finally prevailed.”).

George Hathorn wrote a well-illustrated article on “Unbuilt Dartmouth” in 1978.6George Hathorn, “Unbuilt Dartmouth: Castles in the Clouds,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1978), 29-33.

The master plan for Memorial Field appeared in a 1920 article.7James P. Richardson, “The Plans for Memorial Field,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (February 1920), 640-643.

Noel Perrin wrote an observant 1974 photographic study of Hanover-area sprawl.8Noel Perrin, “The College in the Suburb,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1974), 18-23.

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References
↑1 ”The Hopkins Center,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1957), 17-21, 25.
↑2 Ray Nash, “Rediscovering the College Seal,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1941), 17-20.
↑3 ”Hanover’s Bests,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (December 1984), 42.
↑4 Donald McNemar, “Rockefeller Center: The Ideal of Reflection and Action,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (June 1981), 30-33.
↑5 Editor, “The College. Steel Elected,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (September 1980), 26. Compare Todd Zywicki, “History of Trustee Election Rules,” Dartmouth Review (6 October 2006), 2 (“In 1980 a man named John Steel ran as a petition candidate for trustee and was elected in a landslide. Efforts were made by the College and the board at the time to refuse to seat him and after protracted litigation, he finally prevailed.”).
↑6 George Hathorn, “Unbuilt Dartmouth: Castles in the Clouds,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1978), 29-33.
↑7 James P. Richardson, “The Plans for Memorial Field,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (February 1920), 640-643.
↑8 Noel Perrin, “The College in the Suburb,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May 1974), 18-23.

The pause before construction season

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  • There is a construction photo of the KD house on Occom Ridge in The Dartmouth.
  • There is now a National Historic Vehicle Register patterned on the National Register of Historic Places (Hemming’s).
  • The school architects have posted a collection of minutes from meetings of the Executive Committee for Facilities & Space, including subcommittee minutes, from the 2008-2010 period.
  • Among the interesting items in the committee minutes is a Haynes & Garthwaite plan for a replacement building at 26 East Wheelock (pdf). It was unbuilt but obviously gave rise to 2 North Park.
  • The committee minutes also describe the 2008 Parkhurst stair hall renovation (pdf). Looking around the stair hall in 2006, there was a sense that the 2005-era renovation had never been properly completed. The iron globes (?) were missing from the stair newels; the vestibule plaque had been moved to the big empty wall at the landing; and most notably the Dartmouth Seal skylight had been taken out and not returned. It is not clear that the 2008 project fixed those problems.
  • Hanover High won the NHIAA ski jumping championships at Oak Hill (Valley News).
  • Hanover is getting a food truck (The Dartmouth).
  • The school has appointed a new VP for Campus Planning Lisa Hogarty (The Dartmouth).
  • The Rauner blog posted on the Dartmouth Medal.
  • The school Flickr stream has a super winter aerial by Eli Burakian.
  • Here is a photo of the north lounge in Collis after the renovation.
  • Eastman’s Pharmacy on Main Street has closed (The Dartmouth, Valley News). It was opened in 1938.

Architecture topics in the Upper Valley

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  • Keep checking the Six South Street Hotel blog for construction photos.
  • The New York Times had an article back in 2008 on the legal incentives to identifying “ancient roads” in Vermont. It brings to mind the observations of Christopher Lenney in Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England (2005).
  • The Hanover Conservation Council provides maps and other information on sites including Mink Brook and Fullington Farm, the latter in the news because it is the site of the boathouse of the Hanover High crew.
  • The St. Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, just a few miles away from Hanover, has purchased Blow-Me-Down Farm (Valley News).
  • Alumni Relations has a gallery of campus trees. Number 7 is the Parkhurst Elm.

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Mink Brook replaced and Fullington Farm removed.]