The owners of the last two working farms in the township have applied to Hanover’s Planning Board (minutes pdf) for permission to subdivide them.
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[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to 28 April 2008 Planning Board minutes removed.]
One is gratified to see that, in preparation for naming Baker’s Catalogue Room after a donor, the fundraising website has changed its description of the redeveloped space from “Scholars’ Green” to “Main Hall.”
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[Update 12.02.2012: Broken link to Dartmouth Experience site removed.]
Ask Dartmouth has an article on campus trees, a popular topic; this one mentions that the elm in front of Wilson Hall (the tall one on the small grass oval surrounded by the paved path?) had to be removed. The OPDC also had a notice about this:
6/30/08 – IMPORTANT NOTICE:
The elm tree in front of Wilson on East Wheelock Street was diagnosed with Dutch Elm Disease. In order to prevent the spread of the disease to other adjacent elms on campus and in the town, the tree will be removed today, Monday June 30th, by the Town of Hanover. In some cases,trees can be saved with treatment and removal of the affected areas, but in this case the disease was too widespread as determined by the College and Town staff working together.
The former automobile dealership of Clement Hall, whose main block was built in 1914 using mill construction, will be demolished within days. The Dartmouth. Many governments require landowners seeking permission to demolish historic buildings to mitigate the effects of the destruction of history at least somewhat by documenting the building to HABS standards. While Dartmouth has announced its voluntary compliance with regulations designed to protect the natural environment, it seems to lag behind others, including state schools, when it comes to the cultural environment. One hopes that a basic set of large-format black and white photographs, at least, will survive after Clement Hall is torn down.
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 Fuller Audits conducted under the Student Life Initiative about ten years ago pointed out the building-code failings of each student society house. Almost every fraternity, sorority, or co-ed house needed an enclosed exterior fire stair and possibly an elevator. Since then, the College has altered or added onto the nine or so society houses it owns, one society has built itself a new house, and about sixteen other groups have been working independently to add to their own houses.
The variety of approaches is relatively small. Long brick buildings designed as fraternities usually get extended at one end, while frame houses closer to a square or a tee in plan are given a rear ell. Almost every addition is “contextual” and attempts to harmonize with the building to which it is attached. The two latest additions represent the extremes.
Theta Delta Chi is extending to the north its north-south oriented building adjacent Thayer Dining Hall using a design by the Portland, Maine firm of Arcadia Designworks. Arcadia’s outlook is broader than most — the firm also handles industrial design and apparently created an improved lobster trap — and its addition to Theta Delt is unusually “contemporary” in style.
The extension avoids both the brick construction and the roof form of the historic house designed by Putnam & Chandler of Boston. If Hanover had a Design Review Commission, as many cities these days do, it probably would not approve this addition.
Zeta Psi, on the other hand, has commissioned a firm intimately familiar with the work of Jens Larson (Smith & Vansant Architects of Norwich) to expand its house in several directions. Saucier & Flynn, the College’s landscape architects, are handling the landscape design. The conceptual drawings (pdf) include floorplans bearing a notation rarely seen in architecture, an indication of the designers’ familiarity with the client: “Pong tables shown for scale.” The alterations include an extension to the west end of the house and a new gable over the two-level portico at the rear. Hanover’s zoning authorities have approved the project (pdf).
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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Smith & Vansant fixed; broken link to 6 March 2008 zoning board minutes removed.]
The temporary dining hall to substitute for Thayer while it is being replaced will stand near Alumni Gym, The Dartmouth reports. The areas near the tennis courts on either side seem to be good candidates.
Several major projects, including ’53 Commons, the Thayer Dining Hall replacement, and the Visual Arts Center, have been delayed, The Dartmouth reports.
Kieran Timberlake has already shown preliminary designs for the Thayer replacement. The Dartmouth quoted Associate Provost Mary Gorman as noting that the building will be taller than Thayer — tall enough to see over the trees in the cemetery and into Vermont — and will have a nice outdoor space in front of it.
The Valley News writes on an experimental attempt to recreate habitat for nighthawks on the roofs of downtown Hanover buildings. The 1980s shift from traditional gravel roofs to membranes is thought to have reduced the nighthawk population.
In general construction news, Guy C. Denechaud writes that “Projects Are Plentiful at Dartmouth College,” Valley Business Journal (April 7, 2008).
The Valley News reports that the fieldhouse at Burnham, called the Sports Pavilion, is open as the clubhouse for the soccer and lacrosse teams. The school will add an athletic trainers’ facility to the north side of the building in the future.
Alpha Theta is also working on repairs to comply with the Fuller Audit.
The Dartmouth reports that Bartlett Hall is being rehabilitated.
New Hampshire Hall’s exterior was photographed prior to the expansions that is under way now.
The most notable announcement in the OPDC’s recent spate of updates (the changes include a map-based reorganization of the Projects Page) is the news that Fleck & Lewis Architects are designing the New Hampshire Hall renovation. The project page has a full set of plans and four detailed elevation drawings.
Instead of inserting a fire stair within a column of former bedrooms, the architects will put a symmetrical pair of subsidiary one-bay wings at the ends of the building and devote each to a new stair and entrance. These wings will reproduce or even elaborate on the circle-square motif of the original building’s gables.
Although it is unfortunate that the project includes the demolition of the building’s historic windows, the overall project appears sensitive to the character of the hall and continues the theme of its sympathetic 1985 Hilgenhurst rear addition.
The demolition and replacement of all but the brick arcade screen of Memorial Field’s main or West Stand will be designed by Fleck & Lewis Architects. The completed building will seat 4,736 people, a number almost certainly smaller than its original capacity.
Buchanan Hall, the shy Modernist Tuck School building on Tuck Mall, will be renovated by Fleck & Lewis Architects, the OPDC has announced. The building started as a student dormitory but now will be converted into a center for Executive Education. The upper levels of the four-level building will contain housing, while faculty and administrative offices and lounges for executives will occupy the ground level.
[02.03.2008 correction: the four- (not three-) level building was not converted to offices with the completion of Whittemore.]
Dartmouth Life reports that Hitchcock is open again after its extensive renovation.
The Class of 1978 Life Sciences Building is taking the place of Strasenburgh Hall, a cramped Medical School office building. Strasenburgh was built as a dormitory, and for that reason it was the only building on the School’s “original” (1950-1980) campus not designed by SBRA: the dormitory, like its Tuck School counterpart Buchanan Hall, was designed by the consulting architects of the College, Campbell Aldrich & Nulty.
Dartmouth Medicine magazine (Winter 2006) has an article by Jennifer Durgin on Strasenburgh’s past, and it includes an excellent aerial photo of the medical campus. Strasenburgh’s small scale and busy faceting made it one of the least unappealing buildings of the group.
Jens Larson’s main or western stand at Memorial Field is a concrete grandstand screened by a brick facade overlooking Lebanon Street. The Big Green Alert Blog reports that the previously-announced Memorial Field project (construction to begin October 2008, occupancy September 2009, according to the schedule pdf) is more than just a renovation of the structure: the school will demolish the entire concrete stand and replace it with a new one, leaving the brick facade in place.
This project will make the stand more accessible, more comfortable, and less capacious. The likely drop in seating capacity, continuing the trend of the Floren-motivated shrinking of the East Stand, might be desirable. The green-paneled press box, which seems to be from the 1950s and is the latest in a series of expanding press boxes, also will be replaced. The replacement could be a harmonious brick design that responds to Floren, and if Centerbrook has a hand in the project, this result seems especially likely.
Memorial Field’s original West Stand as viewed from the head of the field, by Davis Field House. The distinction between the concrete stand and the applied brick facade or screen is evident. The replacement press box will probably be much wider.
The stand’s center bay contains the only “interior” and the only portion past the street front that is worth saving. This vaulted passage is the site of the memorial element of Memorial Field.
The concrete stand itself is utilitarian and not in the best condition.