Frances Cha has examined the remarkable Wheelock memorial window in Bartlett Hall in The Dartmouth:
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.]
McKenzie Hall, perhaps Dartmouth’s most obscure building, was built as a dairy east of the Heating Plant around 1931. It now houses the headquarters of the Department of Facilities, Operations & Management.
The temporary lack of shutters on Dartmouth Hall’s front facade gives the building an even more rudimentary, eighteenth-century appearance.
All three of Baker’s main doors, originally heavy 1928 metal revolving doors enclosed in apparently bronze-lined cabins, have been replaced with swinging doors of wood stained a light color and lacking either formal panelling or paint. (Earlier, it seemed that the western door, at least, would remain, since it is at the top of a stair and inaccessible by wheelchair.) Salvors sold off the original doors, and one at least is rumored to have been bought by someone who appreciates its history.
The parliamentary Faculty Room in Parkhurst Hall was largely demolished decades ago and a mezzanine inserted in its place, but a few of the roof beams remain in an unfinished attic.
An earlier view of the room. Some of the benches, with their numbered seating spaces, can be found in the corridors of Parkhurst Hall.
Peter Christian’s (in the New York Times; in New London) was a Hanover tavern that occupied a basement at 35 South Main Street lined with dark wood, including beams salvaged from the oldest house in Hanover, the 1770 Storrs’ Tavern (D.K.E.). During the mid-1990s, Old Pete’s replaced it, then another tavern, then The Wrap. The Wrap has become a burrito place called Boloco, for “Boston Local Company.” (One customer was overheard describing a burrito to her deprived child as “like a wrap, but warm.”) When the wrap or the burrito place moved in, all of the old, dark interior was ripped out and presumably sold off. A Boloco clerk said that someone stole the bar one night.
The possibly-1860s granite post mentioned earlier as surviving the Kemeny Hall construction has been pulled, but the fact that it remains at the construction site encourages the speculation that it will be replaced when the building is finished:
The fitness center in the “gymnasium” at the top of Alumni Gym has opened (press release). Photos show a room far busier than when it was a forgotten space on campus.
Dartmouth Life reports on Professor Spicer’s discovery that architect Jens Larson based Sanborn House’s Wren Room on the salon at Bolton House, Linconshire (1685-1686, William Winde).
[Update 05.17.2006: Rod Miller made this attribution in his 1998 dissertation on Jens Larson, p. 28.]
The D has a letter to the editor confirming that the demolition of Thayer Hall is not expected to endanger Humphrey’s “Eleazar Wheelock” murals.
Architect Chris Grimley of Machado & Silvetti “is currently working on a consolidation of the arts programs at Dartmouth College into a single Visual Art Center.”
Although the universal acclaim for the firm’s $275 million renovation of the Getty Villa museum (New Yorker, New York Times) makes Dartmouth’s selection of the firm appear especially prescient, the best predictor of the appearance of the Lebanon Street building might be the firm’s University of Utah Museum of Fine Art.
Construction will start for the new building during the summer of 2008. Unfortunately, it will require the school to demolish the 1914 Clement Hall, Hanover’s best industrial building.
The Office of Planning, Design & Construction has posted several photos of February work on the drill hall or upper gym of Alumni Gymnasium.
Compare this early-twentieth century view:
 
The Harold Parmington Foundation, a fraternity that existed from 1972 to 1984 and had the most unusual fraternal symbol ever, lives on in a touching website that Dave Halpert has set up.
The site has several photos of the house (now owned by the College and occupied by Epsilon Kappa Theta) including photos of the meeting room, the basement and the pool room) as well as Carnival sculptures (for example, 1976) and composite photos (1976).
The D, talking to Dean Redman, has put a date on the Thayer Dining Hall demolition: it will come down by 2010. The article states that the school has not selected an architect for the replacement.
One might offer a thumbnail preservation plan for the school to undertake before demolishing the building:
A rendering of the new fitness center in the renovated drill hall of Alumni Gymnasium seems to show an elevator blocking much of the thermal window at that end of the building; perhaps there was no choice of where to put it, and on-center was better than off-center…
[03.18.2006 “Fitness center” substituted for “mezzanine” to clarify.]
Dartmouth has put up several pages about the art and architecture of Rollins Chapel.
The Tuck School’s website now has a rendering of the Living-Learning Complex designed by Goody Clancy to occupy the site of Hinman Hall, the River Cluster dormitory.
The building’s style appears to be a departure from that of the adjacent Whittemore Hall, also designed by Good Clancy; it will feature a small courtyard enclosed on two sides by colonnades, a new architectural form for the Tuck School.
The Darmtouth passes along the information from Dean Redman that the school plans to tear down and replace each of the Choates, one building at a time. The school’s current interest in replacing the buildings, a departure from its mid-1990s plans to add to them, is no secret; the specifics of the method of destruction seem new.
Other information:
