The Dartmouth reports on the progress of the works in Baker Library. Changes to the Catalogue Room or Main Hall itself appear to be minimal.
The new coffee shop is going into a room located behind and to the right (east) of the main desk, site of the short-lived News Center. A map (pdf) shows this room alongside the stacks.
Baker’s display cases, separated by pilasters, line one side of the wall depicted at the bottom of the drawing that accompanies the article in The Dartmouth.
The Dartmouth reports that the college plans extensive renovations to the frame apartment house at 2 North Park Street:
The Parker Apartments, named for Joel Parker of the Class of 1811, Chief Justice of New Hampshire, were designed by Larson & Wells and built in 1921.
The school plans to install the Alpha Phi sorority in place of the twelve apartments now in the building. No architect has been selected, according to The Dartmouth. This will follow the similar project for the nearby Parkside.
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[Update 06.03.2013: Broken link to Alpha Phi replaced.]
[Update 08.13.2011: It looks like the building will be demolished.]
Smith & Vansant Architects now have a page detailing their extensive reconstruction of and addition to the Zeta Psi house.
The college is looking for a site on which to build a house for the Alpha Phi sorority (The Dartmouth).
The Dartmouth has a photo of the new modular Sigma Phi Epsilon house.
Board chairman Stephen Mandel’s January 13th letter to the Dartmouth community mentions so many new spaces going into the renovated Inn that the building’s envelope surely must be expanding:
In addition, the “front door” to the College, the Hanover Inn, is planned to undergo a complete renovation beginning this summer. Every aspect of the inn will be touched and will result in a larger number of guest rooms, all updated, new and relocated restaurants, and modern conference facilities. The College remains the owner of the inn but we have hired a third party to manage the inn. The renovation will be funded with mortgage debt and the proceeds of the sale of the Minary Conference Center in Holderness, N.H.
The idea of having a standard conference center near Hanover has been mentioned in past master plans:
Finally, the College is exploring the feasibility of a regional conference center to further enable the dissemination of scholarship.
Lo-Yi Chan, et al., Dartmouth College Master Plan (2002), 10 (11.3mb pdf).
A conventional conference center could probably be a moneymaker, but it is hard to see how could fit on the corner of Wheelock and Main.
Wallace Harrison’s Hopkins Center is not just the latest in a long line of buildings planned for the spot south of the Green, it is the third of three theater complexes honoring Ernest Martin Hopkins proposed for that site. The first was designed in the late 1930s, and the second was a refreshed version of the first put out after the war, both by architect Jens Larson. The postwar version was put on hold, and by the time momentum increased again in the early 1950s, Larson had left, the Georgian idiom had gone out of fashion, and new people (notably Nelson Rockefeller) had become involved.
A 1947 film about Dartmouth made available by the college has several shots of a large model of Larson’s postwar Hopkins Center design. The shots begin about 9:38 into the film.
The men shown discussing the model are identified as Treasurer Halsey C. Edgerton and advisory building committee chairman Professor Russell Larmon, with Hopkins Center Committee executive secretary Robert Haig also appearing.
This plan of the 1939 version is marked with the locations of the photos below. (The plan and a section are from Warner Bentley’s article “The Dartmouth Theatre,” Theatre Arts Monthly 22:4 (April 1939), 306-309.)
The narrator tells us that the proposed $3.5 million Ernest Martin Hopkins War Memorial Center will have a main auditorium seating 3,000 and ancillary spaces for music, drama, radio, “and allied activities.” When the present Hop was built, the site was enlarged, the film and broadcast functions were reduced or eliminated, and the auditorium was reduced and swapped with the theater at the bottom of the site. Perhaps the most notable difference is in the way the projects treated College Street: the model in the film not only preserves the street but places the entrance to its Little Theatre on it.
The Dartmouth reports that a new varsity softball field will be built in the southeast corner of Chase Field:
That transmitter became obsolete several years ago when construction of the nearby field hockey facility inadvertently destroyed in-ground coils needed for broadcast.
Since the accident, WDCR has broadcast exclusively on line. Information on the station’s fiftieth anniversary in 2008 is worth linking to again.
The board finally gave the word to start the planned $13 million renovation of the Hanover Inn in the spring of 2011. The Valley News states that the work “will add 16 guest rooms, consolidate conference space at street level and relocate a restaurant to the most visible part of the building.” The Dartmouth reports that the work will take about a year and will not require the closure of the Inn.
The design is probably the work of TruexCullins, but this has not been confirmed.
The inn’s much less prominent sibling, the Hanover Inn Motor Lodge, has served as a dormitory for decades and was the subject of a profile by C.J. Hughes in the current Alumni Magazine.
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[Update 08.31.2013: Broken link to Truex Cullins interiors boards webpage removed.]
The Tuck School has a gallery of photos of Sachem Village, the married-student housing site south of Hanover.
One 1946 photo shows the earliest Sachem buildings when they still occupied their original location in Hanover, behind Thayer School. Some or all of the prefabricated buildings had begun as wartime housing for shipyard workers. The view from the west shows how the lower of the two types of buildings were arranged in a circle called Wigwam Circle. This quick composite of stills from a 1946 film linked from the Dartmouth Film Archive shows Wigwam Circle from the east looking west:
The dorms that later occupied the site were initially called Wigwam Circle and later the River Cluster.
The two-story buildings visible in the rear of the 1946 photo linked at the top of this post appear again in a 1954 photo at the current location of Sachem Village. (I believe some of the other prefab buildings for married students ended up north of town at Rivercrest.)
Sachem Village has been redeveloped in recent years (see Trumbull-Nelson and Pathways Consulting), and I have no idea whether any of its wartime buildings remain. It seems unlikely.
To confuse matters, the name of the present Sachem Village appears to have come from Dartmouth’s other group of prefab buildings for married students — the counterpart to Wigwam Circle — which stood on Lebanon Street next to Hanover High. Here is a composite of stills from the same 1946 film showing this housing project, the original “Sachem Village”:
A 1947 film from the same collection has some good closeups of Wigwam Circle and the original Sachem Village on Lebanon Street at the 8:57 mark.
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[Update 11.23.2014: Images adjusted, cropped.]
[Update 11.21.2010: Link to 1947 film added.]
[Update 11.20.2010: Images and links to film added.]
Thanks to Bruce Wood of the Big Green Alert Blog for a photo of the demolition of 11 Webster Avenue.
[Update 09.06.2010: A photo sequence and video are linked in the comments.]
In the Upper Valley, architectural elements saved from old buildings seem to wind up at Vermont Salvage in White River Junction.
An interesting large-scale example of salvage and reuse was linked recently from the frequently-updated facilities blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education: At Dickinson College, a 1950s Georgian cupola is being turned into a birdhouse (Dickinson photo).
The cupola’s original building, which was demolished, was called “the Levinson Curtilage” — a name with a story behind it if ever there was one. The Web is not immediately forthcoming.
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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to birdhouse article replaced replaced.]
Dartmouth, which owns the Hanover Inn and the mostly-1960s building it inhabits, recently decided to get out of the business of running a hotel and will turn over the Inn’s management to Carpenter & Co. (The Dartmouth, Valley News, more Valley News, press release on the search).
The Inn has had plans for what appears to be an interior renovation for some time now. It is not clear how the switch affect these plans.
The outsourcing of the Inn’s management is part of a long and shifting relationship. The first tavern on the corner was officially sited by Dartmouth, which conveyed the land to Ebenezer Brewster for the purpose. Brewster was a careful selection: he was made the Steward of Dartmouth College and was granted a tavern license by local authorities who were friendly to the college and in some cases would have been Dartmouth professors.
That was in the 1770s. Buildings came and went on the same site on the corner. After about 40 years the tavern, which had probably always housed paying guests, became the Dartmouth Hotel. It continued for another 85 years or so as an “independent” operation.
After the Dartmouth Hotel burned in 1887, the college bought the land. The college had a succession of intentions. At first it seems only to have wanted to sell the land to a sufficiently reputable hotelier and let him replace the building. Then it decided to erect the building itself and lease out the hotel to an independent manager. (I think it did try leasing out the building in this way for a time.) Eventually the school decided that it would not only own the building but operate it too.
Dartmouth operated the Wheelock Hotel in its new building, renaming the hotel as the Hanover Inn in 1902. The Inn’s operators played up Brewster’s history, putting an image (or a supposed image) of him on the Inn’s sign. The same jolly man of girth also appeared on the sign of the Inn’s motel — the Hanover Inn Motor Lodge — and lent his name to a nearby dormitory for Inn employees.
Dartmouth demolished the 1887 Inn in 1966 and hired a hotel architect to replace it.
The photo accompanying the press release on the recent pre-renovation dedication shows that the word THAYER has been replaced with the words CLASS OF 1953 COMMONS over the door of the building. (The inverted display of the Dartmouth flag is understood to indicate a beverage emergency.)
One of the biggest problems with Thayer seems to be that building’s kitchen gets extremely hot. The Dartmouth reported recently that a 250-ton air conditioning unit will be placed on the building’s roof in the upcoming renovation. Reed Construction Data lists Kieran Timberlake as the architects but seems to describe the earlier full-replacement project, notwithstanding the mere $500,000 cost projection.
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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Mink Brook replaced and Fullington Farm removed.]
A recent post mentioned that the second floor of the brick addition to the old house at 2 West Wheelock Street is available for rent.
Here is some more information on the addition:
In 1900, Emily Howe established the Howe Library in the house where she had grown up (Eleazar Wheelock’s Mansion House, built in 1771 with funds sent from London for the purpose). Howe died in 1912 and left much of her estate to the library corporation, which hired architect Curtis W. Bixby of Watertown, Mass. to design a fireproof addition for book stacks. The addition was built in 1914 and 1915 and displays a level of detail that is unexpected for a background building.
The Howe moved to its current location in the early 1970s and the old building became a shop, with Roberts Flowers of Hanover moving in during 1990.
Another Bixby building of 1915 is the Coolidge School in Watertown, which he designed with Clarence P. Hoyt. The school is now an apartment building and shares some elements with the Howe’s stacks addition.
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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to Roberts Flowers replaced.]
Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity is planning to demolish its 1896 house at 11 Webster Avenue. It will submit its application for site plan review to the Planning Board on April 20th.
The clapboard house, attributed to Boston architects Dwight & Chandler, was built for math professor Thomas W.D. Worthen of the Class of 1872. The house was part of an original row of six contemporary faculty dwellings by the same firm.
The society occupied the house for more than 50 years and added the large righthand wing by well-known local architects Alfred T. Granger & Associates in 1958.
The fraternity has obtained a special exception [ZBA Minutes 02.04.2010 pdf] from the zoning board to erect a new building on the site.
Sig Ep’s house is not the most exciting one on the Avenue, but still, the Town should ask the group to document the existing structure before demolishing it (Claremont documents the historic buildings it demolishes).
Better yet, the fraternity should voluntarily document its own house before tearing it down. Although not the same as preservation, it would be better than nothing.
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[Update 01.13.2013: Broken links to two pdfs removed.]
[Update 05.01.2010: Sig Ep at Wisconsin, rebuilding its house after a fire, had to win approval for the design from the local Landmarks Commission. The house is located in a historic district.]
[Update 07.28.2010: The Dartmouth has a drawing of the front facade of the replacement. Planning Board minutes (04.20.2010 pdf) suggest that Domus, Inc. of Etna is participating in the project.]
Rauner Library has provided a remarkable photo of the Butterfield Museum embraced in a death-hug by Baker Library. This is a view of the south and east facades of the east wing of Baker, looking to the northwest. The problem of Butterfield appears to have had a significant influence on the design of Baker.
See also the photos of the bells and the steel frame of the tower under construction.
With historic Clement Hall demolished (film and photos), the Visual Arts Center construction has been put out for bid.
Phi Delt reconstruction continues, The Dartmouth reports.
Engleberth Construction provides photos of the Tuck Living-Learning Center (Achtmeyer, Raether, and Pineau-Valencienne Halls).
It is not new, but Forever New: A 10-Year Report provides a comprehensive photo of the interior-block facades of Kemeny-Haldeman not available elsewhere.
A remote tour of recent construction via Google Street View images made around August 4, 2009, judging from the Hop’s marquee:
