Academic Center flux

An article in The Dartmouth states not only that the North Campus Academic Center is delayed and that its projected inhabitants are changing, with DCHCDS and DICHCP moving to the Williamson, but also that past problems have included “the Board of Trustees’ disapproval of the building’s design.” Is that why it seems to have gone from partial brick to all-white?

One wonders whether a new president might bring in his own favored designers.

ADD, Inc. designed the renovation of a part of the Nurses’ School dormitory Home 37 (a.k.a. 37 Dewey Field Road) to house Dana library until the Academic Center is built. The Planner has photos of the colorful work.

An article in the Valley News includes a perspective rendering of the Williamson Translational Research Building at DHMC (small version in DICHCP press release).

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[Update 04.25.2013: Alex Atwood has a photo of a nice model and some sectional renderings of the NCAC.]

The scoreboard of the future

The Dartmouth writes on proposed amendments to the Town’s zoning ordinances, including amendments that deal with athletic scoreboards. The minutes of the Planning Board from February 5 (pdf) state that Dartmouth has eight outdoor scoreboards and provide this background:

Bob Ceplikas, Deputy Director of Dartmouth Athletics, said there have been a lot of changes over the years with the set-up of Division 1 sports venues, including technology. It is more and more standard for Division 1 football stadiums to include video displays in their scoreboards. Dartmouth is now the only Ivy League school that does not provide video display. The Ordinance’s current language does not allow for scoreboards to exist as they currently do; it does not even allow for the score to be displayed. The Ordinance should be brought up to date to reflect the real purpose of an athletic scoreboard.

No comment on the possibility of a video display (one of the thrills of seeing a college football game in person is the presence of it: there is no replay, so you have to pay attention), but the idea that the scoreboard at Memorial Field could be redesigned is intriguing.

A generous donation of the Class of 1966, the scoreboard is informative, traditional, and appealing — but it could be made even better. The number of typefaces could be reduced from five or so to three. The various vertical surfaces could be brought into the same plane. The “TIME OUTS LEFT” text could be aligned in a more balanced way. A little more space could be given inside some of the white borders, and the general crowding and busyness could be reduced.

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[Update 06.09.2013: The text of the ordinance, as found in the March 12 Planning Board minutes (pdf), prohibits advertising:

Athletic scoreboards may display:
A. Information pertinent to the event and facility
B. Recognition of donors and sponsors by name only
C. Other general athletic or institutional information
D. Any other information customarily displayed on contemporary scoreboards, but not to include commercial advertising.

That should remove some concerns.]

From Kiewit to…

Correct me in the comments if I’m wrong, but after Dartmouth demolished Kiewit, it gave Computing Services an office in Baker Library, outside the Tower Room:


In 2011, however, the college apparently gave that space to the undergraduate deans and shunted Computing Services to the first floor of Berry.

Now the deans have joined Computing Services in the first floor of Berry (The Dartmouth, see floorplan pdf), and the Computer Store has been displaced to the basement of McNutt (Dartbeat).

Advanced Surgery Center addition to open in summer

  • The Advanced Surgery Center addition to the north end of the DHMC complex will open this summer (Thayer School News). A presentation about the ASC reveals that it will have a distinct circulation route for animals.
  • Thayer School’s $300 House Project from a while back has been written up in The Guardian:

    After the contest, a workshop was held at Dartmouth University where selected designers and architects further sharpened their ideas. Jack Wilson, team leader at Dartmouth, is now preparing to build two pilot projects in Haiti, one rural and the second urban.

  • Not related to anything on campus, but an interesting idea encountered while perusing aerial views of Berlin, Germany: K.F. Schinkel’s pioneering 1830s Bauakademie building (Wikipedia), demolished by the East Germans, was recreated as a cloth-covered scaffolding in 2005. It appears in current Bing low-angle aerial views.
  • Charlottesville architect William McDonough ’73 (Wikipedia) shares an anecdote about attending a Dartmouth talk by Buckminster Fuller in a blog post at the Times.
  • Phase I of the Collis renovation, focused on the café, is finished (The Dartmouth).
  • The Dartmouth Club of New York (at the 1915 J.G. Rogers clubhouse of the Yale Club) had a pong tournament last month (more).
  • New information about the 2005 SBRA master plan for DHMC is coming to light:

    An analysis revealed that the original DHMC organizational structure is reached its limits, necessitating a new way of organizing the campus. To provide an effective way to unify a larger assemblage of buildings, the master plan proposes a new circulation paradigm, employing a perimeter loop road that provides a sense of orientation and hierarchy to the dispersed building sites on land owned by DHMC and Dartmouth College.

Site updates:

  • The fifteen-year backlog of linkrot has been tackled. All 270 or so broken links have been fixed or eliminated since November. Mobile formatting has been added and the old “Links” page was removed 11.17.2012. The html version of the “Notes toward a Catalog…” was deleted today.
  • Sorry about the login screen popping up for comments. It is not supposed to appear.
  • If this site proves too exciting, head over to the Lamb & Rich, Architects site. Small improvements and sometimes a few discoveries have been creeping into each iteration of the catalog of the firm’s buildings.
  • Please do click on the new advertisements on the right-hand side of this page.
  • Thanks to Bruce at Big Green Alert for linking to the book at Google Books and this site in a post last month about “Dartmouth University.”

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[Update 06.09.2013: Broken link to presentation removed.]

Organic Farm master planning, other topics

  • The Planner’s Blog announced that Maclay Architects of Vermont is working on a master plan for the Organic Farm north of campus. One proposed land-use diagram mentions a possible site for a child-care center.
  • Dartmouth Now has an article on the new restaurant in the Inn, located right at the southeast corner of the intersection of Main and Wheelock.
  • Wikimedia Commons has a nice reproduction of the unbuilt 1923 addition designed by Larson & Wells. Surely the firm’s only design in the Egyptian mode, the rear range placed perpendicular to the original building is difficult to read as anything but living quarters; the firm did a similarly large and even more domestic proposal for a newbuild Dragon around the same time.
  • The Rauner Blog has a post on George Stibitz and his remote operation of a digital computer in 1940. The terminal in Hanover was located in McNutt.
  • Vermont Public Radio has a story on the Ice Chimes sculpture. See also the unrelated Alumni Relations post on Carnival snow sculptures.
  • The Victor C. Mahler 1954 Visiting Architects Lecture is now bringing one architect to campus each year for a lecture, starting with J. Meejin Yoon (Dartmouth Now).
  • The Williamson is moving ahead at the DHMC complex (The Dartmouth, Green Building Council profile).

Finally, a photo of the Inn’s ballroom addition

The school’s Flickr photostream has a new set of photos covering the renovation and expansion of the Hanover Inn. As noted here a year ago, the construction of a “Grand Ballroom” in the Hopkins Center’s Zahm Garden seems as much an addition to the Hop as to the Inn.

The first photo of this addition foreshortens the composition somewhat — the glass pavilion actually projects from the metal-clad box — but it explains the relationship of the various building masses.

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Update 05.03.2013: Another photo showing the new Hop entrance pavilion in the distance.

Orozco Murals a National Historic Landmark

A week ago, the Orozco Frescoes in Baker’s Reserve Corridor were designated as a National Historic Landmark (National Park Service, The Dartmouth, Dartmouth Now, NHPR). The nomination was noted here last November. The Planner’s Blog has some information on the effort.

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Update 05.03.2013: An article from The Dartmouth.

Collis renovations wrapping up

The Dartmouth reported on March 4:

At this month’s meeting, the Board of Trustees also voted to allocate $38 million to ongoing projects to improve existing facilities, including the Collis Center and Baker-Berry Library.

The Planner’s Blog has a post with photos of the servery nearing completion in the renovation of the Collis Center.

While you weren’t looking, they changed the name of the Collis Center to “the Collis Student Center,” and then they changed that to “the Collis Center for Student Involvement.”

Kendal is buying the Chieftain

The Valley News reports that Kendal at Hanover will purchase the Chieftain Motor Inn (see also The Dartmouth. As the News reports, the fondly-recalled 23-room motel was built during the early 1950s on a 10.7-acre parcel along the River just beyond what is now the Kendal continuing-care retirement community:


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[Update 11.11.2013: Broken link to the Chieftain removed.]
[Update 04.07.2013: Link to The Dartmouth added.]

The “Dartmouth University” proposal

The strategic planning report for the “Global Dartmouth” working group (June 2012), released today, makes six proposals, including this one:

6. Rename Dartmouth for international audiences, by:
-Using “Dartmouth University” or some equivalent to refer to the institution as a whole.
-Using “Dartmouth College” to refer to the undergraduate school of Arts and Sciences.
-Maintaining existing labels for other schools.

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03.07.2013 Reactions:

One must presume that the working group is not completely tone-deaf and is instead exaggerating for effect. If international public relations is such a problem, then the solution is more or better public relations. The facts that Imperial College London is at number 8 and King’s College London is at number 57 in the Times rankings tend to suggest that this is the case. Each of those “colleges” is a public research university ranked at least 60 places above Dartmouth.

If a name change really were needed for the international market, one would imagine that the first step would be to continue to deemphasize “College” (for example, “William & Mary” is listed as such by the Times) and the second step would be to add an explanatory tagline to the website and other publicity materials provided outside the U.S.:

Dartmouth, an Ivy League University

Dartmouth College, a Small Research University

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

The Sunset, a Small Motor Inn

On the other hand, if the proposal were taken seriously, this is how it would play out: the Board would announce, as part of the Sestercentennial1The College of New Jersey, known colloquially as Princeton College, changed its name to Princeton University at its Sesquicentennial in 1896. It still polices the use of the College of New Jersey name. in 2019, that the arts and sciences undergraduate program would always be Dartmouth College but that the historic umbrella institution, which had never had a name of its own, would be called Dartmouth University.

shields of Dartmouth University

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References
1 The College of New Jersey, known colloquially as Princeton College, changed its name to Princeton University at its Sesquicentennial in 1896. It still polices the use of the College of New Jersey name.

The Inn’s Grand Ballroom

There are still no published exterior photos of the Inn’s new grand ballroom with its new Hopkins Center entrance underneath.

Some interior photos have shown up on Flickr: one, another.

The Inn’s photostream has many interior photos.

The new ballroom blocks the glazed north wall of Alumni Hall. This view from Alumni Relations’ Flickr photostream shows Alumni Hall with the newly-blocked wall on the left. On the other side of the wall, the balcony that originally overlooked the Zahm Garden now seems to be a service corridor.

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[Update 02.10.2013: Inn photostream link added.]

Wilder’s unfortunate plaque

Dartmouth has marred the generally-well preserved front facade of the historic Wilder Laboratory by gluing (?) a plaque to it (APS News). It is hard to blame the American Physical Society for overlooking Dartmouth’s historic preservation goals or for drafting the text of the plaque with less care than one might hope for,* but Dartmouth should be embarrassed by this oversight.

When Wilder undergoes a restoration in the future, the plaque will probably be moved to an appropriate location. It is not clear whether the removal will leave permanent damage.

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*The plaque reads:


At this site, the Wilder Physical Laboratory, Dartmouth College, from 1900 to 1903 E.F.
Nichols and G.F. Hull performed the first precise measurement of the radiation pressure
of light on a macroscopic body, as predicted by J.C. Maxwell in 1873. The Nichols-Hull
experiment provided convincing evidence for the pressure of light, and the transfer of
momentum between light and matter, a phenomenon which has enabled critical
developments in a wide range of fields from atomic physics to biology to astrophysics.


HISTORIC PHYSICS SITE, REGISTER OF HISTORIC SITES
AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY


Quibbles with the wording:

  • The plaque has enough space to inform the reader that he is at Dartmouth College but too little space to provide the first names of the two researchers? They are Ernest and Gordon.
  • Why say “At this site” when the event really did not take place at the front of the building? (I would argue that “At this site” usually indicates either a precise location or the site of a non-existent building, neither of which is the case here.)
  • The experiments actually took place in some laboratory, probably upstairs: wouldn’t it be great if the plaque could tell us this by its text or its placement?
  • Why omit the comma after 1903, especially if you are not going to end the first line after 1903? This mistake makes “E.F.” look like a new form of “A.D.”
  • Are the pressure of light and the transfer of momentum between light and matter really one phenomenon, or are they two phenomena, as indicated by the commas around the momentum phrase?
  • Is it traditional to include three items in the “from x to y” formulation, or would it be better to say “a wide range of fields including x, y, and z”?
  • Does the redundant phrase “REGISTER OF HISTORIC SITES” imply some undeserved connection with the National Register of Historic Places? Wouldn’t that phrase be more accurate and explanatory if it occurred after the phrase “AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY”?

Boora Architects to design Hop expansion

Obscured by the news of Phil Hanlon’s appointment as the college’s next president (Dartmouth, Valley News, The Dartmouth) is the announcement by the Hop that Boora Architects of Portland, Oregon will design the long-awaited Hopkins Center expansion (Dartmouth Now). Boora has done several projects at Stanford and appears to have a lot of experience in expanding existing arts centers. The University of Oregon’s School of Music + Dance is an appealing project, and the Hop-like opening up of the Bass Concert Hall at UT Austin is remarkable.

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Hop announcement removed.]

A view of the Collis project

Not described in the June post on this project is the wonderful aerial view of the Collis Center cutaway model created by Oudens Ello.

With its decapitated columns and especially its full trees, which encroach on the building and Romantically cast shadows on the floors of nearby rooms, it really does look like A View of the Ruins of the Collis Center. If the walls were crumbling instead of sliced cleanly, the image would be a complete homage to Giovanni Battista Piranesi or Joseph Gandy (Wikipedia; his unfortunately prescient painting of John Soane’s Bank of England as a ruin is in the Wikimedia Commons).

The project is bringing the serving area of the cafe right out to the front of the building, into the original reading room space. The existing mid-1990s dining room, originally built as the Club Room, will remain where it is.

The Riverfront Master Plan

The College Planner has made available long-term proposals of the Riverfront Master Plan (pdf) by Milone & MacBroom of Waterbury Vt.

The plan contains several intriguing ideas:

  • New buildings behind and next to (north of) the Friends Boathouse.
  • The expansion of the Fuller Boathouse and the rebuilding or removal of the singles shed next to Fuller.
  • An addition to Ledyard Canoe Club (one hopes it is an addition: it could be a replacement) and the removal of the three boat sheds behind Ledyard.
  • On Tuck Drive, a Sewer Pump House.
  • The transformation of much of the current large parking lot into parkland.

The diminishing supply of Connecticut brownstone and other topics

  • It is easy to forget that the Rufus Graves who was extremely involved in the college and the town — and who built the first bridge over the river at Hanover — is the same Rufus Graves who was central in the founding of Amherst College (Amherst bio).
  • The New York Times has an article on the closing of the last Connecticut brownstone quarry. The remarkable part of the story is not to much that Portland Brownstone Quarries is closing, but that any of the quarries ever reopened once they closed during the 1940s. (This one apparently reopened during the mid-1990s.) Brownstone was used to entirely cover some collegiate buildings, such as Wesleyan’s Fisk Hall, but it does not seem to have been as popular as red brick and limestone. Harvard might be to blame. It is worth noting that brownstone was a popular trim material for Romanesque buildings, such as Bartlett and Wilson Halls at Dartmouth.
  • The Boston Globe has “a series of New England getaways on public transportation,” and the latest number features idyllic Hanover, New Hampshire. It is good to learn about new restaurants that have sprung up, but it is easy to quibble with the use of “College Green” as a (Dublinesque) place name.
  • One need no longer concern oneself about the faux-antique spelling of the name of the restaunt at “5 Olde Nugget Alley.” The building is now occupied by 3 Guys Basement Barbecue (see the restaurant site, PigTrip review).
  • There is some neat rephotography on the master planning website. (See Shawn Clover’s remarkable composite images of the San Francisco Earthquake, then and now. Via Slate.)
  • The Valley News on the extension of the rail trail to connect downtown Lebanon and West Lebanon.
  • Low-angle or oblique aerial photos of Hanover: there are now many available. Lakes Region Aerial Photo has a good collection. Air Photo North America has a few with the Shower Towers still standing after Kemeny was finished. Aerial Design has lots of photos, including winter shots. Then there is this nice overall view published by Thayer School.
  • The College Planner’s blog has seen a lot of activity lately.
  • Thanks to Bruce for the mention on the Big Green Alert Blog. Both the team and the coverage are particularly exciting this year. Thanks to Kevin G. Quinn for the cite to the Old Division Football paper in Sports and Their Fans: The History, Economics and Culture of the Relationship Between Spectator and Sport (Mcfarland, 2009), 235. Thanks to the master planning staff for the cite to the Campus Guide in the history section of the master planning site.

The new Fullington Barn; what did Eleazar brew?

TimberHomes LLC writes:

On a warm late-October day students and staff from Dartmouth College joined the TimberHomes LLC crew to raise the Fullington Barn, a 26’x36′ timber frame structure that will be used for farm related tasks and storage. Over the course of the next two weeks students and staff will continue to work with us to “finish” the frame by installing the roof & siding material, windows & doors, and also creating an insulated room.

The Dartmouth reports on the project, and Dartmouth’s Flickr photostream has a photo. (Dartmouth is also building a 9×12 privy for two composting toilets out there, according to the Hanover Planning Board minutes of August 21, 2012, pdf.)

This barn-raising is not the first for the college. Eleazar Wheelock wrote of the period ending September 10, 1772:

I have now finished (so far as to render comfortable and decent) the building to accommodate my students, of eighty by thirty-two feet, and have done it in the plainest and cheapest manner, which furnishes sixteen comfortable rooms, besides a kitchen, hall, and store-room. I have also built a saw-mill and grist-mill, which appear to be well done, and are the property of the school, and will likely afford a pretty annual income to it. I have also built two barns, one of twenty-eight by thirty-two feet, the other of fifty-five by forty, and fifteen feet post.1Eleazar Wheelock, A Continuation of the Narrative, &c. from May 6, 1771, to September 10, 1772 (Eleazar Wheelock, 1773), 3-4.

Those are very interesting details, but it gets even better:

I have also raised, and expect to finish, within a few days, a malt-house of thirty feet square, and several other lesser buildings which were found necessary. I have cleared, and in a good measure fitted for improvement, about seventy or eighty acres of land, and seeded with English grain about twenty acres, from which I have taken at the late harvest, what was esteemed a good crop, considering the land was so lately laid open to the sun. I have cut what is judged to be equal to fourteen or fifteen tons of good hay, which I stacked, by which the expense of supporting a team and cows the ensuing winter may be considerably lessened. I have also about eighteen acres of Indian corn now on the ground, which promises a good crop. My laborers are preparing more lands for improvement; some to sow with English grain this fall, and others for pasturing[.]2Id., 4.

The Malthouse, which stood near where Wheeler Hall now stands, would have been used to prepare English grain (and corn?) for brewing in the Brewhouse:

A little more than three Years ago, there was nothing to be seen here but a horrid Wilderness, now there are eleven comfortable Dwelling-Houses (besides the large one I built for my Students, and other necessary Buildings, as Barns, Malt House, Brew-House, Shops, &c.) and some of them reputable ones, built by Tradesmen, and such as have settled in some Connection with, and have been admitted for the Benefit of this School, and the most of them near finished, and all expect to be habitable and comfortable before Winter, and all within Sixty Rods of the College[.]3Eleazar Wheelock, A Continuation of the Narrative of the Indian Charity School, &c. from Sept. 26, 1772, to Sept. 26, 1773 (Hartford, Conn.: Eleazar Wheelock, 1773), 22-23.

It is not known where the Brewhouse stood, but it would have been on or near the Green. Wheelock also described that building, or a pair of buildings, as the “brew and bake house.”4Eleazar Wheelock, Hanover, N.H., to the Honorable Trust, London, England (10 November 1773), in appendix to David McClure and Elijah Parish, eds., Memoirs of the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock (Newburyport, Mass.: Edward Little & Co.), 305-306 (“It so happens, that the store house, brew and bake house, and also the mills which I have built, stand upon my own land.”).

————————

References
1 Eleazar Wheelock, A Continuation of the Narrative, &c. from May 6, 1771, to September 10, 1772 (Eleazar Wheelock, 1773), 3-4.
2 Id., 4.
3 Eleazar Wheelock, A Continuation of the Narrative of the Indian Charity School, &c. from Sept. 26, 1772, to Sept. 26, 1773 (Hartford, Conn.: Eleazar Wheelock, 1773), 22-23.
4 Eleazar Wheelock, Hanover, N.H., to the Honorable Trust, London, England (10 November 1773), in appendix to David McClure and Elijah Parish, eds., Memoirs of the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock (Newburyport, Mass.: Edward Little & Co.), 305-306 (“It so happens, that the store house, brew and bake house, and also the mills which I have built, stand upon my own land.”).

Orozco Frescoes nominated for National Historic Landmark designation

Stephanie McFeeters, “College is the only Ivy not spending to lobby,” The Dartmouth (9 November 2012):

For example, when the Orozco murals in Baker Library were nominated to be a National Historic Landmark, Austin said she contacted Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to ask if she would advocate on the College’s behalf to the National Park Service.

Sure enough, the nomination for The Epic of American Civilization Murals in Baker Library shows up on a list of draft nominations to NHL status, with the nomination form (pdf) prepared by Park Service historians Roger Reed and Alexandra Lord. The nomination is part of the Park Service’s American Latino Heritage Initiative.

The National Historic Landmark program is older than the National Register of Historic Places. Landmark nominations are made by the Park Service itself rather than by private parties and are much less common than National Register listings. Every Landmark is automatically listed on the National Register.

Until now, Dartmouth has not been particularly interested in these designations, and no college-owned building has been listed on the National Register. The private Sphinx Tomb is the only building listed in Hanover.

The Manton Foundation funded the recent renovation of the Reserve Corridor, where the murals are located, and the room has been renamed the Orozco Room (Dartmouth Now, The Dartmouth).

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[Update 11.11.2012: Last paragraph added.]