Incubator progress; other items

Posted on 28.03.2014 by Regisseur

A nice Burakian aerial from above the Chase Field athletic complex in the foreground shows the potential of Piazza Nervi.
A little more on the NCAC: it was not noted before in reference to the Alex Atwood rendering that the building’s extensive underground space was to have had at least two skylights in aboveground lanterns, almost like Pei’s Pyramid at the Louvre.
More on Hillflint, the clothing company mentioned here in October, from Dartmouth Now. Turns out it was started by John Shi ’12.
The school’s Flickr photostream has a photo of the interior of Rauner showing some of the presidential portraits. I don’t recognize the background of President Kim’s portrait — a room in Baker, perhaps?
Outgoing Board Chair Steve Mandel did not mention any potential construction when he wrote:

[T]he new living arrangements will embrace the concept of the “house system.” Students will live together not only in their freshman year but also in upper-class residence clusters for their three remaining years. Investments in academic programming and affiliated faculty are planned to foster community in these residential clusters… These changes should reintroduce a dorm-based sense of identity for undergraduates.¹Letter from Chairmain of the Board of Trustees Steve Mandel (21 March 2014).
The Big Green Alert Blog dissects the seating figures for the new West Stands with reference to an article on the project in The D. It looks like the replacement stands will cost 2,312 seats. For reference, the current capacity of all of the stands at Memorial Field in total is about 13,000.
The D also writes on a planned expansion of the enrollment, faculty, and curriculum of Thayer School. No word yet on new buildings, but they seem inevitable, especially on the parking lot south of the McLean ESC.
An Incubator progress photo has been posted by Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network. Four Currier does seem a great place for it — downtown, in a commercial building, and yet on college property right next to campus. NHBR article notes the hiring of director Jamie Coughlin from the abi Innovation Hub in Manchester. An article in BusinessNH Magazine paraphrases Coughlin:

He says the new 3,000-square-foot space is designed like the abi with open collaboration in mind, to host residencies for entrepreneurs, and help connect students with executives, faculty, and investors.
Did you know that the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network has a residential program?
DHMC News announces the receipt of a gift to fund the construction of a substantial hospice care center. The hospital is still looking for a site.
And DHMC has received the Legacy Project Award from the American College of Healthcare Architects. The press release states:

Dartmouth-Hitchcock represents a paradigm shift in hospital design, incorporating and foretelling some of the most significant healthcare delivery and design issues of the past 25 years. This includes: […] A mall as the organizing concept and circulation backbone.

Architects SBRA have a nice bibliography (pdf) of articles about the hospital.

—————————————-

 [+]

References
↑1	Letter from Chairmain of the Board of Trustees Steve Mandel (21 March 2014).

The West Stands replacement, for real this time

Posted on 12.03.2014 by Regisseur

Finally carrying out a project that was fully planned during 2008, the college has announced that it will demolish the concrete and steel terraced seating of Memorial Field’s West Stand immediately after the Brown game on November 15 (Big Green Alert Blog, Dartmouth Sports (via BGA)). The new design by Fleck & Lewis Architects appears in an unpublicized OPD&PM project page.

The project was actually about to begin when it was put on hold. The structural elements were ready to go, and the press release notes: “The College had already invested several million dollars in precast concrete, which will now give the project a head start[.]”

Two elevation drawings and a plan of the pressbox level appear on an image page linked from the project page. On the drawing of the street facade, the subtle dots in the arches near the center presumably indicate glass or some other infill material: the second bay on either side of the center will contain a stair, and the bay to the left of the center an elevator. The tops of these stairs and elevator will be screened by a new blank entablature of two bays on either side of the center.

The field elevation drawing shows the higher-priced green seats with proper seatbacks in the center. The stair towers present some interesting blank walls: let’s hope whatever goes there is tasteful. The plan depicts the press box at the parapet level, that is, the level with the word DARTMOUTH at its top as shown in the drawing of the field facade.

The replacement seating structure will preserve Jens Larson’s 1923 brick Crosby Street facade, including its midcentury central frieze extension. The Dartmouth Uniformed Services Alumni have a page explaining the building’s memorial elements. Architect Larson, incidentally, had enlisted in Canada and had become a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps (RAF) during WWI.

This would be an ideal time to create a permanent site for Dartmouth’s Canon de 75 modèle 1897 (Wikipedia) and its ammunition carriage, both given by France in 1920 (New York Times). While the carriage remains at the college, the gun, which once defended the stadium’s entry arch, was moved to Hanover Center in 1963. The story of the gun is continued by WMUR-9 New Hampshire:

[T]he college loaned the cannon to a retired military historian and collector, according to police, and when that man died in 1990 the cannon was handed over to another person who later passed it on to another owner, referred to [in] the police statement as a “military Army colonel who wished to remain anonymous.”

All three of the men who have kept the cannon over the years spent their own money caring for and restoring it, according to the police statement.

“These men have taken great pride in restoring this cannon as an honor to its heritage,” the statement read. “All are aware that Dartmouth College could take the cannon back if it wants to.”

Perhaps it is time to ask for the cannon’s return and to install it securely in a sheltered spot in or near the West Stand.

The pause before construction season

Posted on 02.03.2014 by Regisseur

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.

How long before the Ravine Lodge will be replaced?

Posted on 02.12.2013 by Regisseur

Back in 2008 this site noted with suspicion the talk of the possible demolition and replacement of the Ravine Lodge.

A reading the 2010 edition of the Moosilauke Land Management Plan (pdf) is reassuring, however. While concerned, the folks in charge seem to be the last ones who would want to get rid of the building. From page 24 of the plan:

In 2005, the Moosilauke Advisory Committee and Outdoor Programs began discussing the replacement of the Ravine Lodge, because of maintenance issues and because the building was felt to be not sufficient for existing needs. In the fall of 2008, the College administration decided that, for the foreseeable future (at least five years) it does not envision reconstruction of the Ravine Lodge. The existing main building will be maintained as it long as it can safely be done, and rotten logs will be replaced, as part of the College operating budget through the Facilities Operations & Maintenance department (FO&M).

However, concerns about sufficiency of facilities continue.

That paragraph concludes with a warning of “the significant possibility of replacement of the Lodge in the not-too-distant future.”

When a dinner crowd can no longer be seated safely, or when a weakened log can only be replaced at great expense, how should the replacement Ravine Lodge look?

The recent Moosilauke practice has been to build excellent buildings with timber frames, but one could argue that the Ravine Lodge simply must be a log cabin. Does New Hampshire still have forests that can supply big logs economically? I have no idea. Could a sustainable harvest in the Grant provide the right timber? This could be the perfect time to play out Gregory Bateson’s “New College roof beam” story.¹As told by Stuart Brand, William McDonough, and others, the story is that there were no sufficiently-large oak trees on the market in all of England when the ancient beams in the hall of New College, Oxford finally needed replacement. The college head mentioned this to the college forester, and he replied, “we were wondering when you were going to ask about those trees.” It turns out that the forester and his predecessors through the centuries had been maintaining a stand of oaks specifically for the replacement of the hall roof. The story is mythical, of course, but it does seem to be based on real events, since the hall roof was replaced during the 1860s using oaks from college forests (Snopes quote from now-unavailable New College trivia page).

The Ravine Lodge is famous for its collection of cast-off trail signs and other jetsam, and all of this would go to the replacement. Some of the original logs would be incorporated as well. Maybe the new lodge could have a foundation of granite instead of concrete. And the upgrades would be irresistable: it could have a high-capacity septic system, dedicated Croo quarters, a modern kitchen, an accessible elevator, and all the infrastructure the current lodge lacks. Maybe its dining room would be able to seat 125 instead of 85.

If fire safety is the main concern, could the old lodge be saved if its program were reduced drastically? Build the grand new lodge next door and turn the old lodge into a spacious but relatively little-used visitor center, bunkhouse, or storage building.

——

 [+]

References
↑1	As told by Stuart Brand, William McDonough, and others, the story is that there were no sufficiently-large oak trees on the market in all of England when the ancient beams in the hall of New College, Oxford finally needed replacement. The college head mentioned this to the college forester, and he replied, “we were wondering when you were going to ask about those trees.” It turns out that the forester and his predecessors through the centuries had been maintaining a stand of oaks specifically for the replacement of the hall roof. The story is mythical, of course, but it does seem to be based on real events, since the hall roof was replaced during the 1860s using oaks from college forests (Snopes quote from now-unavailable New College trivia page).

More on the sensitive reuse of churches by colleges

Posted on 30.11.2013 by Regisseur

This superb Doric temple is one of my favorite Richmond buildings:

Built in 1841 as the First Baptist Church, it was designed by Thomas U. Walter, who would go on to design the dome of the U.S. Capitol (Wikipedia).

The church is now a student center for the Medical College of Virginia. The rear facade, which faces the school, has a nice addition with a new main entrance that allows the front to remain untouched:

Images from Google Street View.

Medical students looking for a place to worship share the hospital’s chapel, built in 1981 as a nondenominational space: “Rounded walls, adaptable seating and a lack of religious icons offer a place for the whole community,” according to a 2010 news brief.

—–

[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to Hunton page replaced.]

Wintry aerials, etc.

Posted on 28.11.2013 by Regisseur

The design of the Black VAC landscape, including the Arts Plaza, was by Richard Burck Associates, the Boston-area firm that designed Berry Row. The project manager was Lisa Giersbach.
An article on the Williamson Translational Research Building in Dartmouth Medicine (Spring 2013) includes this exchange with Geisel School Senior Associate Dean for Research Duane Compton:

DM: Plans for a translational research building began several years ago. What makes this the right time to move forward with this project?

COMPTON: In 2007, Dr. Peter Williamson and his wife, Susan, made a landmark gift commitment to support the construction of a translational research building for the medical school. A year later, the economy collapsed and nearly all Dartmouth College building plans were put on hold, including the Williamson Building. Now, with the stronger economy, fundraising momentum growing, and the need for additional research space intensifying, it’s imperative that we move forward with the building.
Is Fairchild getting a deck? The floorplan provided as part of the Fairchild renovation project page shows what appears to be a plank-floored deck with tables on the College Street side of the building.

Google Street View of Fairchild.
Dartmouth Engineer Magazine (March 2013) has an article on the Advanced Surgery Center at DHMC, an extension of an existing wing of the complex.
This site keeps harping on the need to preserve and reuse the Heating Plant. For an elegant reuse of a powerplant as a college library, see Moore Ruble Yudell’s U.W. Tacoma project. An 1875 waterworks building in Bonn, Germany was renovated in 1986 to serve as the Plenary Chamber of the Bundestag (photo gallery). And on a different scale, G.G. Scott’s 1947 and 1963 Bankside Power Station was rehabbed in 2000 by Herzog & de Meuron as the Tate Modern (Wikipedia; Louise Bourgeois, sculptor of Crouching Spider, was the first artist to have work commissioned for the Turbine Hall). Dartmouth’s smokestack, although only about a half-century old, must be retained as part of the complex, especially in an environment of few spires. Yale’s master plan devotes one map to locating “major vertical objects” on the campus (pdf, page 94).
I didn’t know that Tuck is offering a dual-degree program (Master of Environmental Law and Policy/Master of Business Administration) with Vermont Law School (VLS pdf).
Congratulations to the football team on an excellent conclusion to the season in the Princeton game (see this photo of the snowy evening in The Woods). The coverage on WDCR on line was enjoyable. For some reason, however, DartmouthSports.com still depends on Flash for much of its free live content. A hint: Adobe announced that it would stop developing mobile Flash more than two years ago, and Flash has never worked on iOS devices.
Boora’s design for the Hop renovation, according to the website, will include “a series of transparent boxes that penetrate the opaque modern exterior at entry points.” The article in The Dartmouth also mentions eliminating confusion in navigation “by changing the entryway structures.” Could these additions include a new street-level front entry pavilion located between the Inn and the Moore Theater (the iconic Hop facade)? This remarkable photo from Aerial Design shows the site, with the recent Grand Ballroom box and its depressed entrance to the Hop visible behind the reduced Zahm Garden.
Aerial Design has a number of excellent photos taken after a snowfall during December of 2012. The streets are uniformly free of snow and look almost like chilly canals in some of the images: the VAC, the Hop, and downtown; the south end of the Green and town; east along Lebanon Street to Memorial Field; and eastward across the campus from Tuck Mall.
Did you know that the New Hampshire legislature gave degree-granting authority to a for-profit university with its main administrative office in Concord and its campus in a 16th-century castle near Turin? St. John International University is having problems according to Inside Higher Ed.

Is it time to rebuild the Ski Jump?

Posted on 26.11.2013 by Regisseur

High school jumping is big in New Hampshire, and it sounds like it’s even bigger among the kids in Park City, Utah, where the Salt Lake Olympic facilities are located.

Although jumping was the centerpiece of Winter Carnival (see the special jumping poster for 1977 Carnival at Dartmouth Images), and Dartmouth fought hard against the end of collegiate jumping in 1980,¹Dennis Gildea, “Dartmouth and the Debate over Ski Jumping in NCAA Competition,” Journal of Intercollegiate Sport 2 (2009), 286-298 (pdf). the jump on the Golf Course was dismantled in 1993.

Warren Chivers at the 1938 Winter Carnival

Dartmouth is already years too late to have any effect on women’s jumping, a sport that will debut at this winter’s Olympics. A recent New York Times Magazine story suggests that the U.S. women’s team might be the best in the world. And collegiate jumpers started holding competitions again in 2011 (Boston Globe story, Times story).

For the last 20 years, Dartmouth has ignored a winter sport — a Nordic skiing discipline — that it once pioneered. Now the sport is coming back in this country. Other colleges seem to be able to handle the cost of insurance. Isn’t it time Dartmouth got back into the competition?

————

 [+]

References
↑1	Dennis Gildea, “Dartmouth and the Debate over Ski Jumping in NCAA Competition,” Journal of Intercollegiate Sport 2 (2009), 286-298 (pdf).

Vermont windows

Posted on 19.11.2013 by Regisseur

An update of the “North Block” golf course development idea: Take a look at the Perkins + Will plan for the Poplar Point Development In Washington, D.C. Naturally Dartmouth wouldn’t need this density or scale, but it could learn from the extension of the existing street grid to form irregular quadrangular blocks; the treatment of the edge condition (the Anacostia River); and the accommodation of streams flowing through the site.
An update of the Hop expansion post: Of course! The new theater and entrance facade represent the final realization of Larson’s old 1940s Hop designs. In this post, a still image from a college video shows how Larson wanted to put a theater and a major entrance to the Hopkins Center on what was then College Street. And the Dartmouth has an article on the Boora project.
I did not learn until recently that this memorable window, visible on the way to Hanover from West Leb, is called a “Vermont window” or a “witch window” (Wikipedia):
Dartmouth has been phasing out the “@alum.dartmouth.org” accounts and assigning everyone, past and present, an “@dartmouth.edu” address (only the address, not an account). This is neater than the old dual system where students had one address/account and alumni another. When the “@alum.dartmouth.org” accounts came in (during 1995 or 1996?) they seemed like an awkward solution. The rationale for creating the new domain was that Dartmouth was barred (by its interpretation of the government’s pre-ICANN rules, one supposes) from using the “.edu” domain for accounts assigned to anyone but employees and students. Yet Harvard came out with its “@post.harvard.edu” domain around that time, so it is hard to see that as the reason.

Although it was fun to use Blitzmail after college, the need for a personal, ISP-independent email account was soon satisfied more effectively on the Web by Hotmail (1996) and Yahoo Mail (1997). Students responded with WebBlitz (1998 or 1999?) but I don’t recall that it prevented the alumni accounts from slipping into some obscurity. The susceptibility of the alumni accounts to great volumes of spam did not help.
The Rauner Blog has a post on Sgt. Allen Scott Norton of WWI with photos of the trenches dug on the future site of Leverone Field House or Red Rolfe Field.
The Planner’s Blog has a post on a new war memorials map.
Finally a photo of new Hop entrance below the grand ballroom — and the ever-shrinking Zahm Courtyard. It is included in the war memorial map.
The College Steward was a charter office first held by Ebenezer Brewster, who established the tavern that preceded the Inn. I’ve wondered if the office could be revived, and whom it should be given to. Contemporary college statutes from England (Downing College Cambridge, published in 1800, in Google Books) suggest that a steward was the head of dining services:

STATUTE XI.
OF THE STEWARD.

THERE shall also be one Steward appointed annually by the Master, from among the Professors and Fellows, to direct every thing which relates to the Commons and Sizings to be served in the hall at dinner and supper, and the wine and other articles provided in the combination room. He shall make all payments in respect of such Commons and Sizings to the Cook and Butler of the College, at such times as shall be appointed by the Master, and shall receive the same from the Tutor, within one week of the end of every Term, for all his Pupils who have been in Commons during the Term; and for all other persons in Commons, he shall be paid by themselves in the same time.
The Grad Studies Office has a photo of the professionally-made sign in its renovated 37 Dewey Field Road. (In the recent interior renovation, references to 37 Dewey Field Road seem to encompass both 37 and 50 Dewey Field Road, the old Homes 37 and 50.)
Insignia: From a College Grant photo album (pdf), page 20, we learn that

The “Diamond D” log brand was stamped with a hammer into all logs leaving the College Grant so they could be identified upon reaching the sawmill.

Unrelated: The clever Europhilia of Football as Football. And it is funny how the Maryland governor’s “Goals” website logo recalls the RAF roundel:
Dartmouth Now has an article on the up-close inspection of the exterior of Baker Tower.
Congratulations to The Dartmouth on its new website. Here’s hoping the upgrade doesn’t involve a new URL for every past article. This site has more than 220 broken links to the D at the moment.

—–
[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to Maryland veterans page replaced.]

The Courtyard Cafe will be going away

Posted on 07.11.2013 by Regisseur

Boora Architects has released some of its designs for the expansion of the Hopkins Center.

The first image is a view of the area now occupied by the café and lawn seen in this Google Street View image:

The hill appears to have been carved away and a new glass-walled entrance inserted at the basement level. The blank-walled righthand portion of this three-level infill addition presumably contains the new theater. A balcony projects from each of the upper levels. This might be a sort of Bass Concert Hall facade.

The second image shows the main corridor, presumably at ground level. This seems to be a view to north: the box office and Moore Theatre scene shop have been blasted through, and we can see straight into the existing Darling Courtyard, the unroofed sculpture atrium behind the Warner Bentley bust. The coffering in the ceiling (or in the underside of the floor of the level above) refers to the oval coffering of the original building; in the center a cutout reveals yet another level above. Something interesting must be happening around the current Spaulding lobby if the new stair is to fit. The existing studio range is not necessarily removed, although it is hard to tell.

This part of the Hop currently stands only one level above ground, of course. In this Bing aerial, the corridor is the flat-roofed, black-surfaced element, while the café is the curving Hood-era addition below it.

The fourth image shows the interior of the new theater, presumably looking to the northwest. Off to the left is visible the main corridor with its green seat.

The fifth image appears to show the expanded Darling Courtyard. It looks like the floor has been dropped into Paddock in the basement and a glass roof placed overhead.

The third image depicts Alumni Hall as transformed into a concert chamber. Presumably the vaults will need to be closed up for acoustic purposes (see Jonathan Owens’s study). The existing wooden plaques seem likely to be moved, since they would be obscured by the proposed wall paneling and raked seating.

Impressive.

—–

[Update 11.21.2013: Last sentence, about Alumni Hall windows, removed. The rendering looks west, not east.]

NCAC now unlikely to come to pass

Posted on 05.11.2013 by Regisseur

The Dartmouth reports again, this time with conviction, that the NCAC project as we know it is stalled. It seems as if it might have been effectively cancelled.

Bertaux + Iwerks Architects present an interesting might-have-been, a pre-NCAC design for a new central DMS building. The design would have given DMS a new signature structure and knitted together the existing campus by connecting Vail to Dana and the Life Sciences Center.

It is hard to tell whether this design would have been any more successful as a work of urbanism than the NCAC design, for all its faults. Then again, the NCAC had more space to play with, enjoying the removal of both Dana and Gilman.

Some campus-related links

Posted on 05.10.2013 by Regisseur

The new mobile-centric campus map is available as a pdf document. It shows fine details like the trails in the College Park and the lanes on the running track.
That nice brick house on Lebanon Street in the Sargent Block was built ca. 1840 by John Williams (Frank J. Barrett, Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover (2008), in Google Books).
The folks over at Hillflint, big fans of Take Ivy (NYT, Wikipedia), are using a line drawing of Dartmouth Hall in their logo.
College master planners Beyer Blinder Belle have contracted with BFJ Planning to come up with a transportation plan (pdf).
Hokie Stone, the locally-quarried building stone of the Virginia Tech campus, has been mentioned here before. Now the football team is wearing helmets that are completely covered by a graphic depicting a wall made of Hokie Stone (Richmond Times Dispatch).
With the Digital Production Unit added to Preservation Services (Rauner Blog), the library has been scanning old photos and putting them on line. The amazing collection is searchable and will provide the subjects for many posts here in the future.
American Architects has an email interview with Machado and Silvetti regarding the Black VAC. The photos, by Esto, are also available on their own.
The Times had an interesting article on the Caracas practice of naming intersections rather than streets.
Professor Jeff Sharlet and his students are producing an online journal called 40 Towns (Corin Hirsch, “Dartmouth Literary Journal 40 Towns Documents Upper Valley,” Seven Days (4 September 2013)). Lindsay Ellis’s story “Kings of the Counter” is about people at the Fort (a.k.a. Fort Harry’s, etc.).
DSpace@MIT, an online collection of MIT research papers, has the late Frederick Stahl’s 1955 MIT architecture thesis, an interesting proposal for the Hopkins Center (pdf). Stahl graduated from Dartmouth in 1952 and died on July 26 (Globe obituary, Boston Architectural College obituary).
Princeton has moved the Dinky Station again, reports the Buildings & Grounds Blog of the Chronicle. The Dinky Line is a short railroad branch that connects the campus in Princeton to the town of Princeton Junction.
This railroad news is unrelated to the campus but stirs the heart: The Union Pacific is going to restore a Big Boy, Engine 4114, to running condition. Who thought one of these creatures would ever come back to life? Unbelievable.

—–
[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to Hillflint item replaced.]

Ledyard clubhouse in danger?

Posted on 05.10.2013 by Regisseur

Maybe this is a cynical view, but the framing of the story in The Dartmouth, with its quote from the college spokesman about the inevitability of mold, suggests that people are thinking about demolishing the Ledyard Canoe Club’s historic clubhouse.

The Riverfront Master Plan (image) is a guide rather than a manifesto, but it shows the building as being replaced during the next 10 years.

Nicknames for Memorial Field

Posted on 18.09.2013 by Regisseur

Bruce at the Big Green Alert Blog asks “If you could pick a nickname for Dartmouth’s Memorial Field, what would you choose?” He provides several suggestions, the best of which is “the Quarry” — not only did granite quarries operate in Lebanon, but Eleazar Wheelock quarried some stone in the College Park. A follow-up post provides a number of other suggestions.

A pool of potential nicknames based on the history of the site might include:

“The Farm” (or “the State Farm”), since the state agricultural school (New Hampshire College) used the site as a farm field prior to 1893;
“Crosby Street,” since the grandstand is located on that street. The street is presumably named for the able and indefatigable¹History of the University of New Hampshire: 1866-1941 (Durham, N.H.: University of New Hampshire, 1941), 23. professor Thomas Russell Crosby ’41, DMS ’41 (1816-1872), a son of Dr. Asa Crosby who served as a surgeon during the Civil War and became the Professor of Animal and Vegetable Physiology at N.H.C. and an Instructor in Natural History at Dartmouth²John Badger Clarke, Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men (Manchester, N.H.: author, 1882), 248.;
“The Oval” (or “Alumni Oval”), since that was the name of the school’s first grandstand and its first dedicated football field and running track, built by Dartmouth alumni on the site in 1893;
“The Trenches” (or “the Western Front,” etc.), since students trained for the First World War by constructing trenches east of the Oval, and Memorial Field was built on the site of the Oval in memory of the men who died in the war; and
“The Arches” (or “the Arcade”), since the main, western stand of Memorial Field is faced with brick arches stacked on two levels.

To see what Alumni Oval looked like when it was new and get a sense of the farm that preceeded it, see this rare and amazing photograph digitized by the College Archives. It was taken from the top of the smokestack of the Heating Plant when the plant was new, around 1899.³The photographer took other shots to the north over Hallgarten, to the northwest toward the Green, to the west toward the side of the Inn, and to the southwest over the town.

It is also possible that the present lack of a nickname suggests the absence of a deep-seated need for a nickname: maybe “Memorial Field” works well enough.

—–

[Update 11.11.2013: Bruce reports that Teevens picked “The Woods” as the nickname. Whose woods these are I think I know.]

——

 [+]

References
↑1	History of the University of New Hampshire: 1866-1941 (Durham, N.H.: University of New Hampshire, 1941), 23.
↑2	John Badger Clarke, Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men (Manchester, N.H.: author, 1882), 248.
↑3	The photographer took other shots to the north over Hallgarten, to the northwest toward the Green, to the west toward the side of the Inn, and to the southwest over the town.

The Wilson Hall Elm has fallen

Posted on 14.09.2013 by Regisseur

The Alumni Office’s twitter account has a photo of the huge elm tree on the ground in front of the Hood Museum. The Valley News reports that the tree struck Wilson as it fell, but it sounds like the damage is minor.

On the bright side, this frees up Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as they redesign Wilson’s entrance.

Other items:

The Hanover Crew’s boathouse is being built.
ORW designed the landscape for the Williamson Building at DHMC and has some nice images of the design.
ORW also has put up a project page for the transit hub in front of the Hop. The original design included a little heated pavilion.
The conceptual design for Boora’s Hopkins Center renovation was completed during Spring 2013 (OPD&PM).

The new OPDPM website has projects

Posted on 21.07.2013 by Regisseur

The Offices of Planning & Design and Project Management (ex-OPDC, ex-FPO) have a new site with an extensive list of projects. Among the new revelations are:

An image of what looks like a sensitive renovation by Smith & Vansant of the Whitaker Apartments at 4 North Park. The building is now called Triangle House (not to be confused with Triangle Fraternity (Wikipedia)), and some details are given at the OPaL website.
Information on the new Kappa Delta sorority house by Truex Cullins. Although the house will have the address of 1 Occom Ridge, its main entrance will occupy the west or rear facade, which faces the parking lot and the campus (image). Not sure about those boxed eaves and shed-roofed dormers; it is a big house.
Information on the Dartmouth Row modernization plan. This project was mentioned during May of 2012 along with the NCAC.
News of a renovation of Fairchild Hall by Wilson Architects.

—–
[Update 04.23.2013: Vansant spelling corrected.]

Whitaker Apartments becoming an affinity house

Posted on 03.06.2013 by Regisseur

Dartmouth is planning to convert Larson’s little faculty apartment complex at 4 North Park Street, the Whitaker Apartments, into “a 25-bed student residence affinity house with a 2-bedroom advisor apartment” (Planning Board meeting agenda). This is probably the planned LGBT affinity house (see (The Dartmouth).

Williams Tsien and a Manhattan museum

Posted on 11.05.2013 by Regisseur

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the designers of the upcoming Hood Museum expansion and Wilson Hall renovation, are in a strange position regarding their building for the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan. The refined and well-regarded Modernist building is only a dozen years old and yet is likely to be razed — by its neighbor and owner, the Museum of Modern Art (Times story and blog post, background from Christopher Gray, overview at New Yorker blog).

The firm has a short statement about the museum building on its website, along with photos taken shortly after completion. Here is a Street View of the building made when it was still in use:

The building was fairly desolate on Wednesday:

But then on Thursday MoMA announced that demolition was not assured, that the building’s fate would be left up to the expansion architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (New York Times).

—–
[Update 05.12.2013: Three links to Flash content on TWBTA site removed, New Yorker link added.]

Dartmo.

The Buildings of Dartmouth College

Category Archives: preservation