Symbols, including weathervanes and flags

Posted on 04.07.2020 by Regisseur

Baker Tower Weathervane. The Valley News has been reporting on the petition calling for the removal of the Baker Tower weathervane and the college’s plan to remove it (see also Dartmouth News). A crane crew removed the weathervane on June 25 (Dartmouth News).

The college plans to create a replacement; George Hathorn has suggestions. The June 25 Dartmouth News piece by Aimee Minbiole states that “Vice President for Communications Justin Anderson will assemble a working group to consider designs for a new weather vane and whether other changes in iconography across the institution are necessary.” If that iconography includes the college seal with its depiction of Native Americans, one solution would be to adopt an heraldic seal based on an heraldic coat of arms.

The cascading effects of the weathervane’s deprecation are interesting. The Guarini shield, less than a year old, contains the tiniest imaginable depiction of the weathervane, but it will apparently be changing. (It is even less visible than the Indian head cane that was removed from the pre-2012 DMS shield.) The Town of Hanover is also changing its official logo, which contains a line drawing of Baker Tower that also features a small version of the weathervane. Remarkably, the Valley News story, citing Town Manager Julia Griffin, states that some variants of the town logo already render the two human figures as trees: “Griffin said via email that many of the logos in town show three pine trees on the weather vane, rather than the more troublesome figures. For now, those logos won’t be changed, she said.”

The original 1928 copper exterior of the Baker Tower weathervane is already in storage. The exterior was recreated, according to the Valley News story of June 12, as part of the tower renovation project of 2016, less than four years ago. Compare that missed-opportunity-in-hindsight to the travails of U.Va., which updated its athletics logo in April and two months later finds itself tweaking the new design to get rid of the twisted hilts of the crossed sabers. What is the symbolic significance of a twisted hilt? It is not clear that it has any independent meaning at all, but the promotional verbiage that was put out with the spring update pitched the twisted hilts as a reference to the serpentine walls that line the back gardens of the university’s original buildings. Those walls’ connection to enslavement is the prompt for the latest change.

(One would think that the bigger problem is the association with the Confederate cavalry saber — the crossed, curved cavalry sabers are much more typically seen as an emblem on a mid-19th century slouch hat than in connection with a 17th-century cavalier — but the designer of the U.Va. logo in the mid-1990s says he did not intend it to refer to the Civil War.)

Flags. A lot is going on with flags these days. Mississippi has dropped its flag and will consider the Stennis Flag among the possible replacements. The 9/11 “Freedom Flag” (spotted in the wild here) is the subject of a bill, sponsored by Reps. Spanberger and King, proposing to make it the official flag of 9/11 remembrance (WTVR News). The flag is to be flown on federal buildings from September 11 through 30 each year. Finally, CNN has a piece on the Juneteenth Flag. Maybe looking at the Freedom Flag encourages one to view every flag as a map, but the zig-zag “burst” lines on the Juneteenth Flag can also be read as the plan of a 19th-century star fort. One might prefer a version of the date that omitted the comma, but the specificity of putting the date on the flag in words is appealing.

Other symbols, including plaques. There is an official climate emergency tartan (Scottish Register of Tartans). The FCC has a new seal (see Brand New, also FCC announcement pdf). The eagle has post-Homeland Security wings; the antenna feed line, which curved realistically in the old FCC seal, is made into a rigid line of division of the shield — ouch.

Finally, because this site is always on the lookout for a rogue plaqueing, a link to Kevin Levin’s Civil War Memory post on the series of unofficial historical markers erected by activist historians on Monument Avenue in Richmond. Some of the markers apparently have been ripped up already (WTVR News). Three of the four city-owned statues of defeated rebels have been removed in recent days, and only Stuart remains. Here is a windshield snap taken yesterday; the statue is not expected to last another week. It does feel like Europe in 1989:

The fine line between clever and stupid

Posted on 07.02.2020 by Regisseur

A new site plan for the new dorm by the gym shows some refinement. The “bridge” element facing Crosby Street looks like the main entrance and responds to what planning analyses have identified as a major pedestrian route — the parking lot of the Heat Plant and Vox Lane. That’s nice, and one hopes the emphasis on this route helps cement the place of McKenzie and the Store House. But a good percentage of visitors to the new dorm will be arriving at the front of the building, at the Wheelock Street corner. No path is shown there. The construction timeline states “Commence Completion of Design phase – dependent on fundraising.”
Dana Biomedical Library, reconstructed as Dana Hall, has been renamed Anonymous Hall (Dartmouth News, Valley News). Unlike, say, Nameless Field at U.Va., the building does not lack a namesake; its namesake is simply undisclosed. What would be an unfunny move if committed by the administration might be saved by the fact that it was requested by the donor of the renovation. The Guiarini School (formerly the School of Graduate and Advanced Studies) is headquartered in Anonymous Hall. The building contains a DDS cafe called Ramekin Cafe.
More Irving renderings are available and a time-lapse video of construction is on line.
Dartmouth Ruzicka is being rolled out on the school’s websites, a December article explains.
Berry Mall has been torn up as part of the project to extend utilities to the west end of campus.
The maples on the south end of the Green are coming down. They did always seem a bit diminutive for the space; too round in comparison to the elms, or something.
An article in The Dartmouth explains the Fifty.
A well drilled on the Green is being tested for use in a geoexchange system like the one in use at Fahey-McLane.
A Valley News article on the projected library storage building.
Lawrence Biemiller has a bit on the Hood in a post on lessons that campus buildings have taught.
The college is in a partnership with a developer to build hundreds of apartment units for graduate and professional students near the hospital (Union Leader, Dartmouth News). It is hard to imagine how this could be anything but sprawl, but we will see.
BGA Daily has photos of the indoor practice facility. It looks like the renderings! One does hope that the building will connect to the brick gateway of Scully Fahey Field, although it looks doubtful. There is a curious kind of preservation going on with the brick pier of the Boss Tennis Center: BGA Daily photo.
An article on the new painting at the Skiway.
Rauner Library has an exhibit on slavery at Dartmouth.
The Reed Hall renovation designed by EYP is beginning (Dartmouth News).
Some U.Va. students are saving the old card catalog that was being removed from the main library building (Washington Post), and the U.Va. administration is starting a campaign of plaques, markers, and tours focused on the history of the institution.
If you enjoy Kate Wagner’s McMansion Hell, you’ll enjoy her “Duncing about Architecture” in the New Republic, about a proposed executive order titled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.” The group behind the proposed order, National Civic Art Society, counts the founder of Joe’s Dartblog among the members of its board of directors.

———-

Update 02.09.2020: NCAS item added.

Hell Gate Cabin burns, and other news

Posted on 21.11.2019 by Regisseur

Valley News reports that the 1974 Hell Gate Gorge Cabin in the Grant burned to the ground this week.
A Dartmouth News story profiles the Band; at the recent Yankee Stadium football game against Princeton, the marching bands of the two schools combined for a halftime performance.
Construction on the Irving began in October and will involve the demolition of the northeast corner of Murdough. The current rendering of the interior atrium of Irving is labeled “no beehive.” Presumably the beehive is the stepped hemispherical-roofed conference room (?) that dominated the lower left corner of earlier renderings. Presumably the roof is just omitted from the rendering rather than dropped from the design; the boat-hull jetty on the left side of the stair looks like the base of the beehive.
Valley News reports that DHMC has submitted its expansion plans to the Town of Lebanon; the hospital is going with a bigger parking lot by Jesse’s rather than a multilevel parking deck.
Ledyard Canoe Club is celebrating its centennial.
There are more twists and turns in the story of the plans for the new heating plant (Dartmouth News). The college seems to be looking at options other than a biomass plant.
VTDigger has an article on petroglyphs in Brattleboro submerged since 1909.

Another report from the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, five years on

Posted on 01.10.2019 by Regisseur

During 2014 this site noted the progress that Oxford University was making in its redevelopment of a large former hospital site in the north end of town. At the time, the site of the Blavatnik School of Government was a hole in the ground:

The building has since been finished:

The site before:

After:

As noted, the circle-in-a-square building has a remarkable precedent at Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera (indeed, the Camera is such a symbol of the university that the Blavatnik School uses the Camera rather than its own building as the main image on its website).
The former St. Paul’s Church at left is the Freud Cafe and Bar. It appears much as it did in 1994, albeit more overgrown (see also the 2014 post on chapels as libraries).

Replacing the River stair, the one made of earth and wood, and other topics

Posted on 02.07.2019 by Regisseur

Dartmouth News reports that the college has dedicated Baker’s main interior hall “in honor of Richard Reiss Jr. ’66, who made a $10 million gift to pursue innovative means to explore, analyze, and create knowledge.” Good news, and the lettering (“REISS HALL”) below the lunette at the end of the old Catalogue Room looks great. This was going to be a comment about the confusion of “hall” (meaning “building”) for “hall” (meaning “room” or “corridor”) but it looks like the WPA Guide to New Hampshire (1938) calls the Catalog Room “the Delivery Hall,” so it might be that there is no harm done.
The college is demolishing the erratic old timber stair that runs from the boathouses up the hill to the River Cluster:In its place will be a metal slat stair that is raised off the ground (Planning Board minutes 2 April 2019 pdf). This project seems long overdue, but as usual one is compelled to praise the old stair, which was dark, irregular, organic, and integrated into the terrain, with an aesthetic more Moosilauke than Main Street. It provided a fitting transition between the slick campus buildings and the dangerous Connecticut River.
The college intends to build the Irving Institute “on top of an existing structure and renovate portions of that building” (Planning Board minutes 7 May 2019 pdf). That’s interesting. The old Cook Auditorium in Murdough will still exist, and the plaza on top of it (the characteristic brick-surface landscaping of Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty) will support the floor of the Irving atrium.
The Eleazar Wheelock Society has applied “to remove additions, renovate main block, and construct new ell, with associated site improvements” at the Wheelock Mansion House (Planning Board minutes 7 May 2019 pdf).
Creating a Port of Hanover as an entrepôt for produce coming downriver from the Organic Farm is unrealistic, but a College Barge would make a plausible addition to the waterfront. Not necessarily the Oxford type of barge (see St. John’s Barge), though that would be great for viewing boat races, but more akin to a broad houseboat, meant to provide temporary dormitory space when it is needed. In the Bronx, there is a permanent prison on a barge:
Abbott-Downing’s Concord Coaches at Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.
This is another post on Campus Galli, the project to build a monastery following the (idealized and possibly just metaphorical) Plan of St. Gall, a centuries-long undertaking. Hyper-long term projects are appealing in this modern age; see also Agnes Denes’ Tree Mountain in Finland, intended to be maintained for 400 years.
A fascinating history of the ska-man emoji.

College floats three sites for the new heating plant

Posted on 30.06.2019 by Regisseur

First, the most important news: The college “will be decommissioning the current power plant, removing the stack and repurposing the building” (Planning Board Meeting Minutes 5 February 2019 pdf). That is reassuring. Naturally one would love to see the landmark 1958 stack retained as well and repurposed as a memorial column or a pedestal for public art, but we will take what we can get.

At a public meeting last month, the college revealed the three places that are in the running to become the site of the replacement heating plant (Valley News 22 May, Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth). The sites are:

1. The hill behind the Dewey parking lot, east of Rope Ferry Road and Occom Pond. This would not be the first power plant in the neighborhood, of course: the MHMH plant had a tall smokestack and stood in the parking lot behind 5 Rope Ferry Road (roughly behind the red BMW in this photo from Google Street View):

2. A site along Lyme Road by the Hanover Country Club’s maintenance facility garage at the south end of the golf course. This is the best we can do on Street View:

3. The third location is the former home of Trumbull-Nelson Construction Co., next to the Hanover Public Works Department, on Route 120.

The third option is the most distant and seems to be the only one that would not require trucks full of wood chips to drive through the center of town several times a day. That site would require a lengthy insulated underground pipeline to link up with the existing steam tunnel and pipe network, however. The pipeline can be no more than two miles long if it is to be efficient (Planning Board pdf). According to the map above, the route to the T-N site is about 1.6 miles, following roadways.

Because of its distance from campus and the possibility that it would keep some trucks out of town, the favorite site among the public seems to be the T-N site (Valley News 23 May).

A BASIC historical marker

Posted on 24.06.2019 by Regisseur

The Alumni Council minutes of May 17, 2019 describe an overview of the master plan provided by Director of Campus Planning Joanna Whitcomb. The master plan site welcomes comments; it sounds like the process is moving along, and the next steps include the development of draft principles. Dartmouth’s house system still awaits its Edward Harkness.
The DOC House, on Occom Pond, is being renovated to designs by Randall T. Mudge & Associates.
Concord Monitor columnist David Brooks has been proposing tech-related historical markers for New Hampshire highways, and now the state has taken him up on the idea, placing a marker near the college to recognize the creation of BASIC. This page at this site proposed a similar set of markers for the sites of Kiewit and Bradley-Gerry back in 1999; the state’s BASIC marker, which is required to stand alongside a state highway, lacks the clever gimmick of teaching the reader a little BASIC.
The Dartmouth Hall renovation is finally being started, with Boston architects designLAB signed up. It’s worth reiterating that the building was completed in 1906 and extensively renovated in the 1930s.
Big firm Einhorn Yaffee Prescott is designing a renovation of Reed Hall, and similar renovations are planned for Thornton in 2020-2021.
Trumbull-Nelson sold its headquarters on Route 120 to the college in 2008 and has now moved to a new site down the hill from the airport in West Lebanon (Valley News). The Route 120 site had served as a hog farm in some previous incarnation (Valley News).
A guide to the improvements coming to the Tuck campus mentions some projects that will connect the Tuck campus to the new Irving Institute building fronting Murdough.
The idea behind the manifestly fake quotation attributed to Lincoln (see this post) seems to be spreading. Now the statement that “A nation that forgets its past has no future” is attributed to Churchill, in this Virginia sign (by the Patrick Henry Tea Party). Online searches of Churchill’s writings and speeches have so far failed to turn up evidence that he ever said that.

Praise for the Hood project

Posted on 20.05.2019 by Regisseur

Another interesting observation from the article¹D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019). by D. Maurice Kreis about the new Hood:

Both outside and in the capacious lobby, the brickwork (made in Denmark) is off-white. You could infer that this is the museum making its stand on the Green, rebelling against its red-brick neighbors, but I see the milky color as an homage to the museum’s chief benefactors, whose fortune was originally made in dairy.

Another one of the smarter reviews so far is the one by Samuel Medina in Metropolis (21 March 2019).

A film of a talk that architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien gave at Dartmouth is very interesting. Williams and Tsien will receive honorary degrees at Commencement on June 9.

—————————–

 [+]

References
↑1	D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019).

New building projects and other topics

Posted on 18.05.2019 by Regisseur

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.

Master planning picks up steam

Posted on 17.05.2019 by Regisseur

The master planning site is now seeking comments.

An article in The Dartmouth on the first master planning town hall meeting has this to say:

The Golf Course: “The Hanover Country Club could also be repurposed in the plan, as it is ‘losing a significant amount of money,’ Moore said. He added that the Hanover Country Club will continue to operate as a golf course through 2020. However, its fate after 2020 will be determined by the master plan. Other land that could be repurposed includes Lewiston Lot, an area on the Vermont side of Ledyard Bridge that currently operates as a parking lot.”
Rivercrest: “Graduate student housing was also mentioned several times during the town hall. The Rivercrest property, located north of the Hanover Country Club, is one of the areas being considered for future graduate student housing, Moore said.”

An article on the master plan in the Valley News has lots of interesting tidbits:

The history of master planning: “The development of a new master plan was started in 2012 but was never completed nor was a draft made available to the public following the departure of then-Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim.”
The possible (palatial?) Country Club: “One possibility for the future of the Hanover Country Club is the addition of a new clubhouse on Lyme Road. Keniston confirmed that a group of Tuck students are currently evaluating the financial viability of such a venue.”
Locations for third-party grad student housing: “According to Keniston, $500,000 has been approved for a private developer to build 250 beds either at 401 Mount Support Road or Sachem Village, which already houses graduate students.” See also the later Valley News story on the invitation for proposals.
The new heat plant: “As for the future location of a proposed Dartmouth biomass plant, Keniston said the technical analysis is almost complete to announce two to four potential sites. A community forum will be held mid-May to solicit feedback on the locations from local residents.”

Here’s a scoop from a recent piece by D. Maurice Kreis¹D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019). about the new Hood:

Showing off the expansion and renovation designed by the world-renowned New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Stomberg casually mentioned that the Hood opted to stick with its existing location at the center of campus rather than move to a more distant spot that had been offered, which he characterized as being near the Connecticut River.

Instead, Stomberg said, that’s where Dartmouth will put the new central heating plant it recently announced plans to construct so as to stop burning oil and start burning sustainably harvested wood.

That’s interesting. A site by the River? Could it be Rivercrest? Now that we know that grad student housing will be built in Lebanon, could Rivercrest be on the list of sites for the heating plant? Rivercrest is the next development along the River after CRREL:

—————————–

 [+]

References
↑1	D. Maurice Kreis, “On the Dartmouth Green, Art and Architecture Make their Stand,” InDepthNH.org (9 February 2019).

Irving revealed

Posted on 06.10.2018 by Regisseur

The college has released several images of the planned building of the Irving Institute at the west end of Tuck Mall.

Goody Clancy, the architecture firm that designed the building, appears to be well regarded by Tuck. Goody Clancy designed Whittemore (1999-2000) and the LLC (2007-2008), a set of connected buildings behind the Murdough Center.

The Institute is straightforward. It is not a “look at me” building, but it is not a shrinking violet either. It needs to be straightforward to live up to the outsized role it has been given in campus-making. A building has been needed here for 50 years, and it almost seems a matter of happenstance that an energy institute is the occupant of this one.

The long, shallow brick range with its steeply-pitched gable makes one think of Centerbrook Architects, maybe that firm’s UConn Chemistry Building.

The flat-roofed glass frontispiece is a bit like the Rauner jewel box. The frontispiece is itself fronted by a minimalist and possibly “High Tech”-style quadristyle temple front, if you could call it that. Again there is no gable, just a flat roof that protrudes to the sides as a set of “wings”; a bit Deco, a bit nautical, a bit like James Stirling’s No. 1 Poultry in London of 1997 (Wikipedia).

The use of the white-painted steel design language, in this building, seems to indicate connections and bridges, and it references nicely the Koetter Kim bridge built in 2006 to connect Murdough and Thayer:

The most remarkable of the new images is the interior view. That cantilevered, glassed-in second-floor corridor visible on the left is the existing black jetty of Murdough:

Pictorial history for 250th; other topics

Posted on 14.09.2018 by Regisseur

The project of picking the location for a 350-bed dorm now has a project page. The architect for the site search is Sasaki.
On the Dana renovation, Leers Weinzapfel Associates has some slightly different images — the glass is much smokier, answering the obvious concern about solar heat gain.
A new college history book will be coming out as part of the 250th anniversary:

Told through an eclectic mix of text and images, the new history will be beautifully produced, heavily illustrated and designed to capture the spirit, character, diverse voices, and accomplishments of the College, while implicitly making the case that Dartmouth’s historic contributions to society will only become greater as Dartmouth moves forward in the 21st century.

(Book Arts Workshop bookplate competition.)
The guidelines (pdf) for that bookplate competition refer to an “Official Dartmouth 250 logo.” Such a logo does not seem to have been released yet. The anniversary website has a 250 logo that is made up from elements of the recent OCD visual identity and is part of a larger image described as a “Photo of Baker Library with 250 logo graphic overlay,” but that cannot be it.
The Valley News reports that a new apartment building is being proposed near Jesse’s.
Lebanon is on the way to acquiring control of the B&M Roundhouse between Main and the river in West Leb (Valley News; editorial). It is not clear what buildings on the site might be saved. Here is a Street View:
The Hood addition is finished and the museum will open on January 26, 2019 (Here in Hanover). The landscape design is by Hargreaves.
A charming story in the Valley News about the opening of a time capsule in Royalton.
The Planning Board minutes (pdf) refer to the moving-water rowing tanks in the new addition to the boathouse: “When flushing the tanks, the College will file a discharge permit with the Town. This is expected to occur once a year.” More information on the project is available from Dartmouth News and the Valley News.
The Planning Board has been discussing the Wheelock House project, focusing on the driveway and the maximum of 27 beds that might go into the house. Apparently there is a preservation easement (placed by the college when it owned the building?) that limits changes to the front facade and the interior of the first floor of the original main block of the building. There is no mention of documenting or otherwise preserving any part of the addition before it is demolished (minutes pdf).
There is a newish farmhouse brewery called Polyculture about a half-hour from campus (Valley News). This is a reminder that nobody seems to have run with the fact that Eleazar Wheelock harvested grain and operated a malthouse alongside the college.
The 1964 College on the Hill is on line (pdf).
The River Park development in West Leb is going ahead. The flagship building at 100 River Park is by Elkus Manfredi of Boston. Images of the building show that it partially encloses a Pratt truss bridge: that’s an actual bridge, right, and not a gimmick?
There has been no word in many months on the Sargent Block project, phase II of the big downtown redevelopment project south of the Hop and east of Main Street. Slate had an article on how schools are becoming real estate titans.
More from the Valley News: an article on reusing old skis in furniture and other objects.
A recent article in the Times focused on church reuse in Montreal; a minor further example is St. Jean-Baptiste, whose basement has become the headquarters of the ad firm Upperkut.

The college presents the three dorm sites

Posted on 18.08.2018 by Regisseur

The college has been giving presentations (Valley News article) on the potential sites for a proposed 350-bed dorm. An initial list of four sites was reduced to three when College Park was dropped as a site for even this smaller version of the dorm. The three remaining sites are the former site of Gilman, the current site of Dragon on College Street, and the current site of the tennis courts and the Onion on Crosby Street at East Wheelock.

The suggestion on this site that scattering a few smaller additions around campus would be preferable to erecting a single 350-bed dormitory was based on the assumption that such a large building could not comfortably be shoehorned into a site as small as that on Crosby Street. Considering the fact that the entire McLaughlin cluster only contains 341 beds and has a footprint that is much too large to fit next to Alumni Gym, this assumption does not seem unreasonable.

The reason the college gives for the 350-bed number is the desire to use this swing space dorm to house an entire “house community” at a time. Fair enough — that is what Princeton did when it built Scully and Bloomberg Halls, initially planning the buildings to house a rotating cast of residents of other residential colleges as their own buildings were being renovated.

Adhering to the 350-bed goal will require all of the proposed buildings at Dartmouth to stand four and five stories high, and the Crosby Street site will require a building that stands five-and-a-half stories high.

At any rate, Sasaki (presumably) created a site plan and a massing study for each site and had Boston-area designer Dongik Lee draw up two perspective views of each potential building. These are nicely done and show the same style of building in each location. They are introduced with the caveat that they are not actual building proposals but are for illustration only.

Gilman and to a lesser extent College Street make sense as sites for some future building, but they do seem the lesser of the three sites for a new dormitory. College Street in particular begs to be left as forest or to become a site for an addition to Burke, part of a unified science complex 120 years in the making. (And constructing a building on College Street would bump off the Dragon Hall for at least the third time).

The Crosby Street proposal, called “the Question Mark” because of its shape, seems the most popular among audience members. It is nearer to dining areas and has a site that is not more suitable for some other use.

The site has indeed long been reserved for residential use — the 1998 master plan (pdf p. 19) states that “[a]t five stories, two residences on this site could accommodate 200 beds. Social and study spaces could be added to serve Topliff and New Hampshire [H]alls, too.” Interestingly, the 2001 plan and its 2002 update (pdf p. 12) would allow only 160 beds here.

Mills dorm site presentation slide 24 concept image Crosby site

Concept image of Crosby Street dorm from EVP Rick Mills presentation 16 August 2018

A dormitory on Crosby Street could make nice companion to Topliff, which was the giant dorm of its own era. One hopes, however, that the building could be given a footprint that is large enough — and that extends far enough to the south — to reduce its height somewhat. The driveway to Alumni Gym could be realigned to the south, and Davis Varsity House could be moved to face Lebanon Street as part of Larson Square, giving the new dorm more space in which to spread out. And this is completely unrealistic, at least until a Southern Bypass is built, but wouldn’t it be nice if Crosby Street could be partially or completely closed to traffic? That would be one way to make more space.

College asking for input on siting the new dorms

Posted on 15.08.2018 by Regisseur

The college is holding informational sessions in Filene to air some potential sites for a large, 350-bed dormitory cluster (Dartmouth News). “Following the three sessions, administrators will select a preferred site and begin the design and evaluation phase of work.”

There is no word on how many sites will be on the menu. According to the Valley News, “[t]he college has not said publicly what sites are being considered, but spokeswoman Diana Lawrence on Monday said they are all on campus and will be announced at the meetings” (Valley News). One would not have thought it necessary to state that all of the sites are on campus, but this is going to be a huge group of buildings, likely larger than the McLaughlin Cluster.

The need for many new beds is difficult to dispute, especially if the Choates and the River are to be replaced. But the programmatic case for putting all the beds on one site, as opposed to splitting them among four or five buildings or additions to existing dorms, has yet to be made. The college could be letting the goal of efficiency of construction management on a single site get in the way of good campus planning. And the misguided effort to keep everything together is also likely to encourage unnecessary demolition.

Here is a very rough alternative suggestion of a few of the potential sites for dormitories of a reasonable size (basemap pdf):

August 2018 sketch map of some potential dorm sites

Details on planned Tuck Drive alterations

Posted on 19.07.2018 by Regisseur

The Valley News has an article on the major changes that lie ahead for Tuck Drive.

Vehicle traffic would be one-way eastbound on an 11-foot travel lane …. Bicyclists going downhill would have their own new 5-foot-wide “contra-flow lane,” and there also would be a 4-foot sidewalk separated from the road by a curb, according to Planning Board documents.

That all makes sense from a planning point of view. And it might all fit within the width of the existing asphalt-surfaced roadway, although that seems unlikely. Here’s hoping the designers emphasize the preservation of the historic features of Tuck Drive.

(Someone, somewhere has seen fit to rename this road “Old Tuck Drive.” Is this an E911 thing? If not, it would be great to see this practice end.)

Traditions; historic preservation; Blockbuster Video

Posted on 18.07.2018 by Regisseur

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t remember a commercial video rental place in Hanover during the early 1990s. Topside, the college-run convenience store in the upper level of Thayer Dining Hall, had a small selection of VHS tapes for rent, but that was it, other than the libraries.

Not related to anything, but here are a few shots of the Anchorage Blockbuster, taken last month when it was still in business:

Anchorage Blockbuster sign photo by Meacham

Anchorage Blockbuster exterior photo by Meacham

Anchorage Blockbuster interior photo by Meacham

And here are two from the store in Soldotna, Alaska, which had already stopped operating and was selling everything:

Hop expansion going ahead, and other news

Posted on 01.07.2018 by Regisseur

Nothing is left of Gilman but a hole in the ground (project update).
Well that was odd. The Valley News reports that the NewVistas Foundation plan for a 20,000-person new town in Vermont has been abandoned.
The Valley News reports on the decline of “WinCycle, the Windsor nonprofit that for 16 years has been taking discarded computers and electronic equipment from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth College, refurbishing it, and reselling the equipment[.]”
A lot of naming is going on. The Valley News reports on the DEN becoming the Magnuson Family Center, to be located in the new Thayer building; the Grad School has been named for Frank Guarini ’49 (Dartmouth News); and the college is offering a large donor the chance to rename the Norris Cotton Cancer Center (Valley News). It did always seem a little odd that the center was named for the legislator who wangled the federal funding to establish it.
The WRJ historic district is expanding to include an area that an architectural historian calls Little Italy (Valley News). The Polka Dot will be saved (Valley News).
The Hood staff are moving into the expanded museum, but the opening will not take place until 2019 (Dartmouth News).
Hey look! The Dartmouth 250 logo has gone from four fonts to one, and that one is Dartmouth Ruzicka: Dartmouth 250.
The Valley News reports that Nick Zwirblia has written a novel, The Bramford Chronicles, Book I: Johnny & Baby Jumbo. You might know Mr. Zwirblia better as the Happy Hop Guy.
Rauner had an exhibit on the history of the Ledyard Canoe Club.
The Valley News business magazine, Enterprise, has an article on the Grafton County Farm, a government operation that once might have been called a “poor farm.” Grafton County’s is still operating.
The capital campaign confirms in a general way some building projects:the Dartmouth Hall renovations; the Hood and Hop expansions and renovations, totaling $125m; and residence hall construction including 356 beds worth of dorms for $200m. There is no word on whether the Hop expansion will follow what seems to be a smart design from 2013 by Bora Architects. There is also talk of a request for a $50m endowment for the six house communities. One hopes that each house is endowed individually (starting at, say, $8m apiece) and is named by its benefactor.
The Dartmouth Hall renovation plan is based on an unusual pitch for funding by women (see Inside Higher Ed). More than a century ago, the college targeted the somewhat-arbitrary classification of Massachusetts alumni as a funding source for a new dormitory.
Several campus buildings are getting solar panels on their roofs (The Dartmouth).
There was a lot of news last April about the shuttering of UPNE, the University Press of New England (The Dartmouth, Inside Higher Ed, Valley News).
Students are working on a new historical accountability project that will focus on the role of slavery in Dartmouth’s founding and early history (Dartmouth News).
On Tuck Drive, “[c]onstruction also would add a sidewalk and bike lanes to the road, which is about 20-feet wide, Worden said” (Valley News). That is unfortunate. It’s hard to see how the historic granite curbing and guttering (not to mention the retaining walls) could be preserved if a sidewalk were added. Could the college use a row of poles to delineate a sidewalk on the existing asphalt surface? The fact that Italian immigrant labor gangs built that road by hand while living in huts nearby, probably on the site of the Boathouse parking lot, is still fascinating.
A corrected article on the Gilman and Dana work in the Valley News states that “Broemel said that plans for a north campus academic center during the 3-year tenure of then-Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim had spurred discussion about the best use of the buildings, although Kim’s specific idea never came to fruition.” That point deserves more attention: Gilman and Dana were left vacant and available for the current redevelopment because the large North Campus Academic Center by Kyu Sung Woo Architects of Cambridge was meant to be built in their place. (Mr. Woo, incidentally, has a remarkable weekend house in Putney, Vermont.)
The Class of 67 Bunkhouse at Moosilauke has been completed (TimberHomes LLC).

New country clubhouse a possibility

Posted on 30.06.2018 by Regisseur

An advisory committee discussed the future of the Golf Course during the spring (Dartmouth News) and in the end it recommended keeping the course open and building a new clubhouse on Lyme Road, an idea that has been around for several years (Valley News, committee page with report).

The new clubhouse would have a much more varied program than the old one. From the report:

We have looked at preliminary architectural plans for that space that include four classrooms potentially for OSHER, the usual golf-related amenities, a restaurant for golfers, Pine Park users and faculty, staff, and students on the north end of campus, as well as a large multi-purpose space that could be used for weddings, receptions, and College events.

(“Osher” is the former ILEAD.)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Randall Mudge designed a companion to the Rugby Clubhouse on the other side of Lyme Road?

Dartmo.

The Buildings of Dartmouth College

Category Archives: preservation