Beyer Blinder Belle’s Strategic Campus Framework (pdf), including the subsidiary West End Master Plan, was declared by the firm to be complete in July (BlueMedium, Strategic Campus Framework project page, West End Master Plan project page). The firm put together a short video on the planning process.
The megastructure of the Hopkins Center for the Arts forms the largest part of a zone that an essay on this site called Hopland or possibly SoWhee; lately the college has been calling this area the Arts District.
A project to renovate and expand the Hop has been the works for years. After a thorough arts master plan by Rogers Marvell and a thoughtful Hop expansion design by Bora Architecture, the college recently invited 15 firms submit designs; among the respondents it selected three finalists1Hop Project FAQ. and eventually chose the New York office of Snøhetta. That firm finished schematics in the fall of 2021,2Pierce Wilson, “Construction update: West End may encounter additional delays, East Wheelock cluster to begin renovations next summer,” The Dartmouth (12 October 2021). and in January of 2022 the trustees approved funds to complete the designs.3Dartmouth News.
The college unveiled the new designs on Thursday (see the college announcement, which includes a page devoted to the renderings, a page on some of the new spaces, and a FAQ page; the Snøhetta press release; the Valley News article;4 Alex Hanson, “Dartmouth details Hopkins Center for the Arts renovation plans,” Valley News (7 April 2022). and the Archpaper article5Matt Hickman, “Snøhetta shares first look of a reimagined Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College,” The Architect’s Newspaper (8 April 2022).).
The announcement features five images of the Snøhetta design by the Argentine firm Methanoia:
An oblique aerial view to the south, which gives the best idea of how the front additions relate to the existing complex;
A view to the south, which shows the north facade additions. This image from Google Street View is an equivalent view of current conditions;
An interior view to the south, which shows the new main entrance lobby with its stair leading up to the recital hall and the Top of the Hop. The site of this stair is currently a small courtyard. What seems to be a vestige of the existing Strauss Gallery is visible off to the right;
An interior view of the recital hall facing north; and
A somewhat generic interior view of the performance lab, which shows the renovated and raised Alumni Hall.
The projecting front addition
The Snøhetta design, while focusing on some of the same inflection points as Bora’s design, takes the more radical step of setting up a new projecting addition off the front of the Hopkins Center complex. Although the basic idea of a projecting addition is not new (this post here showed such an addition in a master plan about 15 years ago), the adoption of an arbitrary non-axial orientation for this box is novel and important.
The new recital hall comes off Alumni Hall to the northwest at an angle that looks to be somewhat steeper than the angle by which Wilson projects off the complex to the northeast. The adoption of an angled alignment for the recital hall does a lot to break up rectilinear monotony of the block.
Although the recital hall will occupy the Zahm Garden site, “[a] fountain and war memorial now located in Zahm will be moved to other campus locations”6”Dartmouth Releases Hopkins Center for the Arts Renderings.” The recital hall does not disturb the Minary addition to the Inn, although the rendering cruelly obscures Minary almost entirely behind a tree.
The recital hall is sheathed in glass at its front and rear and apparently is blind-walled wood elsewhere; the entire building is is decorated by a triangular-arched giant-scale tracery, also apparently made of wood.7The recital hall and potentially the large rear addition to the Hop seem to present a great marketing opportunity for the New Hampire forest products industry. These somewhat-Gothic triangular arches form a counterpart to the Moore Theatre’s round arches and its half-groin vaults and become the signature motif of Snøhetta’s set of interventions in the complex.
The creation of this western projecting counterpoint to the existing, iconic Moore Theatre on the east naturally implies a recessed joint between the two.
The main entrance
In Snøhetta’s design, the recessed joint between the new recital hall and the existing theater forms a new central entrance for the Hop. This makes a great deal of sense and, again, was advocated for in an essay here years ago. Even if students keep on using their shortcuts (or snowcuts) by entering the complex through Moore or Minary, this new entrance will provide clarity for the visitor and will allow the Moore Theatre finally to take on its own identity.
The images do not show any signage, but it would make sense to place the words HOPKINS CENTER in large letters above this new central entrance. We do know that at the Moore Theatre, “[t]he outdoor marquee sign will be reimagined as planners consider new opportunities to share programing information through multimedia signage.”8Hop Project FAQ.
Alumni Hall
Alumni Hall will be retained but its roof will be “raised” — demolished and replaced, surely — to allow the space to become a performance laboratory. “Alumni Award winners recognized on plaques in Alumni Hall will be recognized in Blunt Alumni Center.”9Hop Project FAQ.
The large unremarked rear addition
Bora proposed a new theater addition for the Hop’s existing Hood-side courtyard (of Courtyard Café fame), but Snøhetta does not: “The Courtyard Café will remain in the redesigned Hop[.]”10Hop Project FAQ. Instead, Snøhetta appears to site a large rear addition, described as containing “space for students,”11Renderings page. in the vast parking lot that lies behind the Inn and along the buildings of South Main Street. This is a place that has been crying out for construction many decades, but the addition will also take with it a part of the existing Hop, the small east-west block containing the HBs. The college does seem to have devoted some attention to this:
Hinman boxes are no longer used by students, who have been raised on digital communications and often receive packages far too large to fit in a Hinman box. Because the boxes hold a special place in the hearts of generations of Dartmouth alumni, sections of the boxes will be kept and memorialized in the new building.12Renderings page.
Conclusion
Judging from just the five renderings, the impressive design strives for a high-minded timelessness rather than subsuming itself entirely to Wallace Harrison’s vision or being content with tinkering at the margins. Now what we crave are floorplans.
| ↑1, ↑8, ↑9, ↑10 | Hop Project FAQ. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Pierce Wilson, “Construction update: West End may encounter additional delays, East Wheelock cluster to begin renovations next summer,” The Dartmouth (12 October 2021). |
| ↑3 | Dartmouth News. |
| ↑4 | Alex Hanson, “Dartmouth details Hopkins Center for the Arts renovation plans,” Valley News (7 April 2022). |
| ↑5 | Matt Hickman, “Snøhetta shares first look of a reimagined Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College,” The Architect’s Newspaper (8 April 2022). |
| ↑6 | ”Dartmouth Releases Hopkins Center for the Arts Renderings.” |
| ↑7 | The recital hall and potentially the large rear addition to the Hop seem to present a great marketing opportunity for the New Hampire forest products industry. |
| ↑11, ↑12 | Renderings page. |
The college released the final (November 2020) version of the master plan (pdf) in July of 2021 (Anna Merriman, “Dartmouth master plan calls for growth along Lyme Road,” Valley News (2 July 2021)). The plan is not getting enough press or enough praise, so here are some observations:
As noted earlier, the possibilities for growth in the central campus look great (page 38).
The north end opportunity sites are all super. Old Hospital Quad will be an incredible space 130 years in the making (pages 42-43). Fairchild Tower always did seem more than necessary for its purpose; it is really a signpost building (pages 44-45).
Putting student housing in Remsen-Vail might be touchy. If you wanted to reuse a dull Sixties building as housing, you should have done it with the DHMC tower. Remsen-Vail could be appropriately used for academic purposes, however (page 44).
Lyme Road development is inevitable, but it is not clear how realistic it is to show such development without parking lots (pages 46-47).
When it comes to the West End, the novelty in this plan is the meander of the Cemetery Bridge (Thayer Viaduct). It is more like a boardwalk on a nature trail and does not appear to be a suspension bridge at all — but won’t it be extremely difficult to put bridge footings in a cemetery? (Pages 48-49).
More on the West End: Again, the original Tuck School building here could make an amazing undergraduate dormitory, but one would hate to see Tuck School vanish into the suburbs (pages 48-49).
South End and Downtown: The athletics promenade between Lebanon St. and Thompson Arena is excellent and long overdue. It could be a fine linear work of landscape architecture. Annexing Davis Varsity House as a part of the “house community” for the Crosby Street swing space dorm could be a superb move. The reasoning behind the focus on wellness for an expanded McKenzie is not clear — couldn’t it be used for anything, including arts uses? — but it makes no difference as long as the building is saved. McKenzie might present a real opportunity to create a new building within the historic brick walls (pages 52-53).
Quibbles are minor and basically the same as before: Thayer School didn’t go from the old Experiment Station directly to the West End in 1939, it spent several years in Bissell Gymnasium (page 9); the reference to “Dart Hall” is kind of irritating (page 38); and it’s “Bema” not BEMA (page 41).
The map on pages 28 and 29 showing named landscape opportunities is an important document. Some offhand proposals for these spaces:
| Name in Plan | Proposed Replacement |
| Riverfront Park | Leydard Park |
| West End Green | A tough one; this was the Wigwam Circle postwar housing area. |
| Tuck Green at the end of Tuck Mall | Tuck Circle |
| Dart Row Commons | Fayer Green? “Commons” is not really appropriate for an open space. |
| Maynard Yard | Old Hospital Yard. This really is a better name. |
| Life Sciences Lawn | Another tough one; there is very little historic context here. |
| North End Green in a strip of Dewey Field | Dewey Field. Another one that really is a better name. |
| Vox Lane | NHCAMA; New Hampshire something; or State College something? “Vox Lane” has always been arbitrary, which is disappointing in this richly historic precinct. |
| Park Street Gateway | Piazza Nervi. This is tougher to justify now that grass rather than hardscape is proposed for this space. |
Dartmouth News announced that the Strategic Master Plan (pdf) is available on line.
Some potential projects are fleshed out in new detail, including the Cemetery Bridge on pages 48 and 49.
The experience design page at Arup has a small blurb about the Hopkins Center project with a conceptual illustration. It is difficult to tell what space the image depicts, but it could be a new room built within the Hop Courtyard.
This has not been mentioned much, but the architect of record for the Snøhetta Hop project is EYP (see “Snøhetta to redesign Dartmouth College’s arts center,” The Construction Specifier (15 February 2021)). EYP is doing a lot in Hanover these days, including some of the Dartmouth Row remodelings. The firm also conducted studies that are leading up to the new power plant/green energy project.
See Katie Angen, “Dartmouth’s 1960s-era Anonymous Hall makes a name for itself with 2030 overhaul,” The Architect’s Newspaper (31 March 2021); David Malone, “Dartmouth College’s new faculty and graduate student center completes,” Building Design + Construction (26 February 2021); Matthew Marani, “With an Array of Sustainability Measures, Dartmouth’s Newest Building Stands Above the Pack,” Metropolis (2 June 2021). Some articles about Anonymous Hall refer to the space to the north as “a north quad,” which is fine, but others refer to “North Quad,” which does not seem right.
The current images for the Dartmouth Hall remodeling show the subtle front podium. At the moment, the project update page has an excellent photo of a shutterless building with scaffolding around the cupola. The renovation of the Charles Rich-designed building involves the insertion of new structural steel framing and concrete floors (Amar Scherzer, “Thornton Hall renovation to finish in summer, Irving Institute construction to complete in fall,” The Dartmouth (11 May 2021)).
A nice flythrough video shows the CECS building; for some reason the markings on the glass bridge that will indicate where the extra ten-foot segment was added do not appear in the video. Oh well. Instead of “Kemeny Hardenberg,” as shown on the HGA page, the entrance to the building in the video now reads “Center for Engineering and Computer Science.” How is the abbreviation pronounced, by the way — is it Kex or Secs? The North to West Utility Extension page shows how very large the building is.
There are several new photos of the Irving under construction and a new flythrough video available on the building’s project page. It is so good to see the facade of the old Murdough Center, its glass hoarding now white-framed instead of black, preserved within the new atrium.
Old news: the college constructed a pair of 60 x 120 skating rinks on the Green in January, and a light installation was installed in the Bema in February.
A fascinating study of early 19th-century parasitic infection has emerged from the summer 2019 archaeological work at the Choate House site on Wentworth Street (Amy Olson, “Studying 200-Year-Old Privy on Campus Hits Pay Dirt,” Dartmouth News (3 May 2021)). The recent growth in campus archaeology continues to thrill (and to revive a sense of regret over potential missed opportunities in the 1990s, including on the southeast corner of the Green).
Something’s going on around here: The privy article refers to “Dartmouth Libraries’ Baker-Berry Library” and the recent iconography article refers to “Dartmouth Library’s Baker Library.” Surely a reader of the official Dartmouth News website is not going to mistake Baker for a constituent facility of the Town of Hanover’s Howe Library? On a somewhat-related note, the new Indoor Practice Facility displays the words DARTMOUTH INDOOR PRACTICE FACILITY. Why the “DARTMOUTH”? Could it be mistaken for a Hanover High facility? Perhaps the word is just standing in for the name of a donor.
Influential planning historian John Reps died on November 12 (Edith Fikes and Patti Witten, “Urban planning historian John W. Reps dies at age 98,” Cornell Chronicle (25 November 2020)). He became interested in maps at Dartmouth, where he was a member of the Class of 1943. His history of his collecting is worth a read.
The book Beneath the Green: The Map at Dartmouth is a 2019 collection of student projects from Mary Flanagan’s mapmaking class.
See Merideth Barnett, “Honoring the Past, Shifting for the Future,” Currents Magazine (1 May 2021) for a look at campus traditions that includes Dartmouth among its examples. In this article, “advancement professionals and higher education researchers share why traditions endure, how they shift, and what role advancement today plays in celebrating and shaping them.”
Here is an interesting college tradition: digging up a different buried bottle of seeds every 20 years (Cara Giaimo, “One of the World’s Oldest Science Experiments Comes Up From the Dirt,” New York Times (21 April 2021).
Office of Communications, “Working Group Will Outline Best Practices for Iconography” (6 May 2021):
The Campus Iconography Working Group has begun work to draft recommendations for artwork, images, and nomenclature across Dartmouth’s physical and digital environments. The group, which includes students, faculty, staff, and alumni, will consider items such as paintings, sculptures, statues, and official insignia.
Contrast that project with the recent OCD overhaul of Dartmouth’s visual identity on an essentially graphical basis.
It seems likely that the group will recommend the retirement of Dartmouth’s 1944/1957 coat of arms, the familiar shield depicting a pair of Native Americans walking toward a college building (not Dartmouth Hall but a generic college or, at best, a Dartmouth Hall precursor).
Jonathan Good’s Proposal for a Heraldic Coat of Arms for Dartmouth College anticipated this retirement decades ago and suggested an appropriate replacement.
It is important that Dartmouth, while retiring its current coat of arms, create a replacement coat of arms. There is a risk that the college will do nothing and that the D-Pine, a fine less-formal symbol particularly suited to athletics (notwithstanding its description by the Office of Communications as “the most formal brand mark”) will become the official symbol of Dartmouth College.
Any iconography decision will apparently not affect the naming of the Geisel School of Medicine (Inside Higher Ed).
Dartmouth NEXT, a sort of Great Issues for the world, uses the map (or really the pattern) of paths on the Green in a graphical way to form a right-pointing arrow logo:
A course exhibit from April 2020 titled The Indian Symbol at Dartmouth: A Story of Voices and Silence contains a number of notable documents from the archives. The 1932 article on “the new official insignia,” for example, is very interesting and brings to light an obscure design. One note: The Eleazar Wheelock Tombstone, which is carved (not stamped) with a version of the Indian head symbol, is actually a non-funerary monument located in Columbia, Connecticut. Wheelock is buried in Hanover, N.H.
See the previous post on this topic.
The two locations of Geisel
The new-look Remsen/Vail at the north end of campus is an improvement and looks like the work of Leers Weinzapfel Architects, the designers of the reskinned Dana Library/Anonymous Hall adjacent (page 44 of the plan).
Remsen-Vail
If the Geisel School of Medicine were to relocate to new facilities, this opportunity for adaptive reuse can accommodate up to 550 undergraduate student beds and/or academic space, and could include new facade materials, enlarged windows, and a welcoming new entrance.
One might have no particular objection to the architecture but still recoil at the idea of placing undergrad beds or academic space this far away from the center. Undergraduate uses do not belong this far north. As a ten-year swing space allowing the rehabilitation of other dorms, perhaps, but it is just too far away.
The larger point here is that Geisel seems uncertain about its location. That the school is split between its traditional home here at the north end of campus (including its fancy admissions office in a renovated 19th century hospital ward) and its technical and efficient home alongside the suburban hospital south of town has always seemed strange. Students begin their education in Hanover and conclude it at the hospital in Lebanon.
Whether this split the result of intention or of nothing more than the lack of a replacement for Remsen/Vail at the DHMC campus, the plan suggests that Geisel could leave Hanover and make its DHMC site a true and complete med school campus. If that happens, it would be hard to argue that the vacated Geisel buildings in Hanover should not be used by Dartmouth (although a similar argument was successful in the past, when most of the hospital complex was demolished; VSBA had suggested that the Modernist main tower, at least, be renovated as a dormitory).
The proposals for a med school campus at the south end of the DHMC complex are so sensible as to raise the question of why they have not been built or at least planned already. A main building, some housing, and a modest green space for a medical school? Perhaps it is a measure of the committed suburbanity of the hospital complex that such a thing has not been accomplished thus far. The Geisel campus can grow as a grid of independent buildings flanking outdoor spaces rather than as the nucleus of a radiant sunburst of parking lots.
The Grand Limited-Access Road
New limited-access roadway for shuttles, emergency vehicles, and bicycles connecting Sachem Village and DHMC.
The transit link across the woods between Sachem Village and DHMC stands out as completely obvious and necessary, even to someone who knows the area only from maps.
Is the access limitation placed on the road because it goes through the residential neighborhood of Sachem Village? If there were some way to make it a proper road, it could take a lot of pressure off downtown Hanover. Yes, limited-access streets are pleasant and necessary — perhaps South Main Street above Lebanon Street? — but preventing this road from handling traffic seems cruel to Hanover.
The future has already arrived in the West End
Not much is novel here because there are two major buildings currently under construction. The rest of the area, while populated with buildings from the Sixties and Seventies, is still something of a blank slate. West End Green might be a bit vague (trees will do that) but it is an improvement.
Speaking of the Tuck School, it always seems to be threatening to leave:
In the future, the Tuck complex could be renovated and expanded to advance its competitive edge. Or, if relocated to new facilities, Woodbury and Chase, originally built as student housing, as well as Tuck Hall could be repurposed for undergraduate
housing, providing up to 230 beds.
Putting undergrad beds in the Tuck complex would be a neat trick, but moving Tuck out to some shiny, flimsy complex at an isolated forest site in Lebanon would be a blow to Dartmouth.
Does the college need to give a territorial guarantee to keep Tuck on campus, perhaps a promise of a portion of the future sites around West End Green and an access corridor or exclave on West Wheelock Street, a B-School Kaliningrad?
Minor points
What is the unlabeled property to the northwest on the map on page 5? It is the college-owned woods in Corinth, VT (see page 60).
The Covid-19 information in the master plan makes for a timely preface but already seems a bit dated in this 30-year plan.
“Gibson” is spelled “Givson” on an image on page 36.
“Hanover Campus” is inconsistently capitalized. The version with a lowercase “c” seems preferable.
Calling it “the College Park BEMA” is odd. There is no other Bema to confuse it with, so “the Bema” or “the Bema in College Park” would suffice. And “BEMA” does not need to be in all capital letters — the word “BEMA” in caps is a backronym (a back-formed acronym) for Big Empty Meeting Area, and as such makes a cute campus legend, but the Greek-derived word after which this space is named is “Bema.”
Is it strange to call it “Mount Moosilauke Ravine Lodge”? The mountain is Mt. Moosilauke and the lodge seems like it should be called the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.
The map on page 9 showing new nodes hopping around campus is neat and insightful, but it could make its point even more strongly if it showed Thayer School’s time in Bissell Gym (on the Hop plaza, basically) from 1912 to 1939. And if the map substituted Geisel for MHMH, it could show three nodes instead of two: first the Medical School (on the Burke Lab site, from 1812 to the 1950s[?]), then MHMH, then the hospital complex in Lebanon.
See the latest version of Planning for Possibilities on the Presentations and Outcomes page. So far, the October 2020 draft plan and a slide deck have been posted.
The new master plan is very impressive.
The scope of the plan is impressive. It is the first master plan for the college to at least account for all college properties (the map on page 5 is zoomed out so far that it shows part of Canada) and the first plan to frame the campus in a regional context. Especially where transit is concerned, the Organic Farm and DHMC really do need to appear on the same map.
The document is more readable and less technical than its predecessors. Its creators made the interesting decision to use oblique aerial views exclusively — meaning that none of the proposals for development appear as flat “plans.”
The potential projects on campus look excellent. Placing a building on the lawn of Shabazz Hall makes so much sense. The natural site for a new physical sciences building beyond Burke of course requires yet another demolition of Dragon. The proposals for Bartlett and Wheeler additions are fantastic, with the latter being particularly bold. The natural row behind Mass Row could incorporate an abutment of, or at least an entry plaza for, the Cemetery Bridge at its south end. The Bema pavilion makes sense (maybe the place will see more use if it has a proper covered stage?), though erecting a frame building would be unusual in that space.
One might wish the planners had considered building on the vacant lots in front of Sanborn and south of Blunt as well. And why not show a building site on Berry Row between Kemeny and Moore? It has always been planned that way, even going back to VSBA days after the purchase of the hospital property. Oh well. (The plan also does not clearly note the anticipated Ledyard Canoe Club replacement, but that is not important.)
Here’s hoping that the college preserves the old frame buildings that are now standing on the various development sites. There are two buildings on the site behind Mass Row, two on the Choate Road corner, two in front of Thompson, and two on College Street next to Sudikoff. There is also a certain amount of appeal to the idea of saving Sudikoff itself, the village-like assemblage of brick house-forms, and of saving Raven, but neither building is of a scale to stand up to Moore Hall next door. Clearing the Sudikoff corner is the breaking of eggs to make an omelet in this plan.
The big question: Hilton Field (the western portion of the golf course)
The plan proposes that the oldest portion of the shuttered golf course be turned into an arboretum. This is a clever choice, especially given the neighborhood and its sensitivities. An arboretum really is typologically and functionally similar to a golf course or, for that matter, a city park or a cemetery. In the end, this minor change in use might amount to nothing more than ceding the land to nature as at the adjacent (and intermingled!) Pine Park. And yet an arboretum will not take Hilton Field off the table for some distant future development if it is needed. Still, the college would probably be remiss not to put a half-dozen houses for sale to faculty along Hilton Field Road at the same time it lays out the arboretum. What an opportunity!
East and North of the Green
The Thel sculpture is not mentioned, but it might be endangered:
Fairchild Field
A new shared surface for cars, pedestrians, and bikes, in lieu of a vehicular access road, creates better pedestrian connections between the Physical Sciences Complex and the Historic Core.
Anything that replaces the access road would be an improvement.
The plan devotes a great deal of attention to Fairchild Tower. It proposes a new interior stair and a bridge (to Wilder, presumably). Fairchild has always seemed a chilly, hollow signpost, but the illustrations in the plan remind us of how stylish it is.
Moving south across Wheelock Street, the big Vox Lane redevelopment image shows McKenzie and the Store House as not only preserved but expanded vertically into a “wellness” building — fantastic. That will be one of the most architecturally interesting buildings on campus. (This proposal was not included in an August presentation image and thus seems to be a recent inspiration.)
South of the Store House is shown a parking garage on the FO&M corner. Fine, but one hopes that it will have retail uses on the ground level. It could make for a neat visitor entry to campus: you drive to town, park in the garage, follow the signs to the back door of Wilson Hall — the new admissions office, in this plan — and when you embark on your campus tour and pass through Wilson’s great arch you see the Green laid out before you.
It is good to see the athletics promenade alongside Leverone (page 52). And Piazza Nervi is on the map, described this way:
Park St Gateway
A gracious gateway to athletics and the campus visually connects the Leverone Fieldhouse and Thompson Arena, both historic modernist structures designed by Pier Luigi Nervi.
That “gateway” project would move the two houses currently blocking the view of Thompson Arena and, interestingly, would add a roadway in front of Thompson. Clever: lining a lawn with streets sets it off as a public space, a public green.
North Campus
The architects’ image of a Maynard Street Green on page 45 looks like a Currier and Ives print.
The plan mentions the possibility of moving all existing uses out of the Rope Ferry Road buildings and turning the buildings into graduate dorms. Interesting! But wait, do they mean vacating Dick’s House too? They do, apparently — which would be too bad. Would there be any infirmary on campus, or have student health services become a collection of vending machines? Presumably the infirmary would go to the “wellness” building at McKenzie. If that is what it takes to save McKenzie, then so be it.
And beyond: Land banks on Lyme Road
The new buildings north of the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center are a great start, and there could be many more here. Dewey Lot has so much space, as stated in the report, and so much potential. The depression here creates a fantastic opportunity for an extensive below-grade parking deck. As stated on this site in the past, however, the functions placed here should not be college-related. This is no more a part of the campus than is the CVS (Grand Union) building, and college ownership of this site does not change that fact.
Moving up along Lyme Road outside of town: The two alternative land bank locations labeled “Site 1” will inevitably be suburban and oriented to Lyme Road, notwithstanding the plan’s idealism about self-driving cars. They really will have parking lots, because they will become office parks and convenience stores. As far as the choice between near and far, the farther site, next to the fire station, seems preferable. There is less chance that it will contain anything that undergraduates would need to visit.
More on the two locations of Geisel, the Grand Limited-Access Road, and the rest of the plan in a future post.
A draft of the strategic master plan, Planning for Possibilities (PDF), was released last month without fanfare:
The document contains a lot to talk about. Commentary here will be forthcoming, but for now the key word is Arboretum. More information from the Strategic Planning Team is available on the Presentations page, and Director of Campus Planning Joanna Whitcomb will be giving an on-line presentation on November 11 at 7pm (register).
—————-
[Update 11.11.2020: The plan was presented to the Trustees’ Master Planning & Facilities Subcommittee in August (cached page), and a short version of that presentation is available in PDF. That document shows some interesting Sasaki renderings of a Choates addition and the Crosby Street dorm that did not make it into the current plan. The current draft plan, along with an audio slide deck from May, were released on the Presentations page ahead of the November Trustees’ meeting, and the Board approved the master plan last week (Dartmouth News).]
The school has put out to bid a $50 million master plan project. The note says “Owner reviewing development options – Master Plan presentation planned for November 2019.”
The planners have been doing an impressive amount outreach, and there is a page listing various presentations. The Valley News has a November 8 article on the plan and its pending release, and the college news has coverage.
Most interesting is a Berry Main Hall exhibit (pdf) from November. It has very nice maps, including one showing some 30-year landscape opportunities with perspective views. Mass Row has an appropriate mirror dorm behind it, removing North Fairbanks, but maybe we can presume that South Fairbanks will be saved. The best one by far shows the Fairchild area, and it finally, finally, gets rid of the curving suburban driveway that destroys the quad between Wheeler and Steele. It even hints at the removal of Thel though one doubts that such a thing is likely or even necessary.
The plan is bold enough to mess with the town, showing South Main as a bike-friendly zone. The plan counts on the existence of the future cemetery bridge, which is good to see. It proposes a neat path network running east of Lyme Road, heading up to the Rugby Clubhouse and so on. The public release of the complete plan is scheduled for this winter.
The D-Tree itself is nice, especially as an athletic logo, but it’s not a shield. And while the college might have good reason to take the midcentury Dartmouth shield out of its letterhead, it should commission a new shield for that purpose, as part of a new heraldic coat of arms. See, for example, this proposal from 1995.
Didn’t anyone find it notable that every one of the four Associated Schools now finally has a shield that depicts the Connecticut River in its base, just as the Dartmouth shield does?
| ↑1 | See also California Gov. Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz of Bojack Horseman, introduced in S4E1: “It happens that I’m an excellent skier who won numerous medals in the sport when I raced for Dartmouth but, again, I am shocked that fact is relevant in the matter of selecting our state’s governor.” In Episode 7, he emerges after tunneling to reach a group trapped underground: “Vox Clamantis in Deserto. It is I, Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz.” |
|---|
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 has revealed its new branding strategy (pdf), devised by Original Champions of Design (see news from the Office of Communications, Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth, and Brand New).
The strategy is the largest part of a new identity push that is described in “Telling Our Story” (pdf).
The new identity replaces the mild revamp described in the 2014 brand style guide (pdf). A September 2016 tweet by OCD at Rauner gave a hint that something was up and shows the depth of the firm’s interest in history. (And it’s possible that the image of the commemorative tile on page 50 came from this post; see also this 2013 post encouraging the mining of college history.)
From Dartmouth News:
The new graphic elements include four key items: a Dartmouth wordmark, which is the typographic treatment of the Dartmouth name; a custom-made typeface; a redesigned “lone pine”; and an icon that combines the lone pine with the letter D. Additionally, there is a new palette of colors to complement the traditional Dartmouth Green color, as well as new icons for use in social media, all of which will better communicate the Dartmouth identity, says Anderson.
The typeface is by Jesse Ragan (creator of RudolphRuzicka.com) and is based on the type that Ruzicka designed for use on the Bicentennial plaque, in the Zahm Garden outside Paddock Music Library), and the later Dartmouth Medal. (It is not to be confused with Dartmouth’s other 1969 typeface, the one that was designed by Will Carter and Paul Hayden Duensing and was revived recently for the Inn’s own rebranding.)
Like the typeface, the “D-Pine” mark is a nostalgic call to the early 1970s. It has a pleasing retro-kitsch character and makes one think of orange down vests, canned beer, and what are now called trucker hats. It would make an excellent athletics mark.
The use of the Versailles-like map of the paths on the Green as one of the four suggested patterns picks up an idea from the Year of the Arts (style guide).
And now we have an explanation of the origin of the seal-like House emblems (post, post): “The firm [OCD] also worked with the house communities last year to design a set of [insignia] with a unified design language, which debuted last fall, Anderson said.”
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[Update 02.18.2018:]
It’s true that the D-Pine, as fine as it might be, does not make an adequate replacement for Dartmouth’s midcentury shield. Perhaps the chart should look something like this?
The first examples of house insignia are being released. They follow the graphical guidelines set out by the college (pdf).
The “house community” on the Hitchcock Estate, known at the moment as West House, has offered its official symbol: an elm tree. The symbol is used in action a few times in a recent Westletter (pdf). The elm refers to but does not depict the wonderful elm in front of Butterfield Hall. (That tree might have been planted by professor/trustee Henry Fairbanks, who built his mansion where Russell Sage now stands in 1864.)
Next we have East Wheelock House, a cluster that was still known as “the New Dorms” during the mid-nineties. One of its constituent buildings, Morton Hall, was damaged in a fire about a year ago and has been gutted and remodeled by the college. Thus the East Wheelock emblem is a phoenix. No relation is intended to the Phoenix Senior Society, a 35-year old Dartmouth women’s society. (The Phoenix Senior Society was also evidently the name given by the Sphinx when a photo of its building was published in 1907.)
An article in The Dartmouth notes that an emblem for each house has been commissioned from the same professional designer. These designs look like seals, especially with the wording around the border (and perhaps in the future the phrase “West House,” whose repetition makes the design look like a coin, can be replaced with the house motto). Most importantly, the designs — so far, anyway — are authentically connected to the houses they represent.
The report of the 210th Alumni Council meeting updates us on plans underway to create a freestanding School of Graduate Studies that will coordinate the 17 Ph.D. programs and 12 Masters’ programs that exist alongside the professional degrees of the three professional schools. Grad Studies is now holding its first investiture ceremony (Dartmouth Now). The coat of arms was just the first step…
The Council meeting summary states that “[t]he College has also received sufficient donations to support the initial year of the new residential model of house communities.” That’s an interesting funding method; presumably in the long term the school will seek a naming gift for each Community. The funding element is not mentioned in the full report, although the need for heraldry (again) is foreshadowed:
House programming budgets will support a wide range of activities including “feeds,” intramurals, concerts, field trips, new annual traditions, alumni events, house swag, experiential learning, and leadership development activities.
Happy to see the term “feed” surviving.
It was a surprise to find last year that the famous Concord Coach that regularly carried the football team to the railroad station more than a century ago still existed (post). Now, courtesy of Time Well Kept: Selections from the Wells Fargo Corporate Archives, we learn that the coach of famous Hanover liveryman Ira Allen survives as well! From the book:
J.S. and E.A. Abbot and Company built coach #746 in the spring of 1864 for New Hampshire stage operator Ira B. Allen, who ordered his coach made two inches narrower and lighter than other typical nine-passenger coaches. Coach builders painted #746 dark green, a standard but seldom-chosen color requested by Allen, whose staging business in Hanover carried many students and visitors to Dartmouth College.
The coach, which is no longer painted green, is on display in Miami.
The Alumni Magazine in its May-June issue featured a number of historic photos of life at the college, carefully colored by Sanna Dullaway. The photo of the Golden Corner and watering trough, the tenth or so image, looks like it gets the color right.
The Big Green Alert continues to cover progress at Memorial Field, with photos on May 14, 20, and 22, and June 4.
Really intriguing things are going on with the proposal for a natural gas pipeline from Lebanon to the Heating Plant via DHMC (Valley News).
Received the latest campus map through email ahead of the reunion next weekend. It looks nice. It labels all of the sports fields and, possibly for the first time, labels the Softball Park and Burnham Pavilion (I thought that one was also unnamed as the Sports Pavilion?). It depicts the Lewiston buildings. It calls attention to the fact that the parking lot behind Thayer/53 Commons is still called “DDA Lot,” even though DDA became DDS a quarter-century ago. One does wish that the mapmakers would abbreviate the “Saint” in the names of the churches. And is the official name of the cemetery really the “Town of Hanover Cemetery,” when it was built on college-owned land and run by the Dartmouth Cemetery Association? Finally, one hopes that the roadway labeled “Old Tuck Drive” is not called that in practice. There is no “new” Tuck Drive to distinguish it from, and it’s the same as it ever was: Tuck Drive.
The Dartmouth reports on Tri-Delt’s decision to go local.
The website of Gamma Delta Chi documents the changes that the organization is making to its house, including an extensive set of alterations to the Pit.
The Valley News, reporting on the AD derecognition, quotes college spokeswoman Diana Lawrence:
“Students are free to join any organization that’s not recognized by the college,” she said, so as far as Dartmouth is concerned, “they can become Freemasons.”
In case you were wondering in 1799, “the Board of Trust declared itself in a decree that any student becoming a mason should thereby cease to be a member of College.”1John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College, 1815-1909 (Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1913 ), 520.
The Rauner blog has an interesting post on the ownership of the Green.
The voters of the Town defeated the West Wheelock Gateway District proposal (Valley News).
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| ↑1 | John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College, 1815-1909 (Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1913 ), 520. |
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Dartmouth Now reports in “House Professors Named to Residential Communities“:
The house professors will each serve a four-year term beginning July 1, 2015, and will move into on-campus residences near their respective house communities the following summer.
In fact, other than the current East Wheelock professor, who will continue, none of the professors has been publicly named to a particular residential community. See also The Dartmouth.
A new sport to try: the primitive biathlon (a href=”http://www.vnews.com/home/16288958-95/a-snowback-throwback-biathlons-receive-a-retro-makeover”>Valley News).
The Food Co-Op has posted a video of the renovation and addition project as it stood in March.
The Rauner Library Blog has a post on the remarkable collections of digital photos that are coming on line. Among the topical Photo Files:
As of this post, approximately 34,000 images representing topics through “Lacrosse, Womens” are available.
Charles Gibson Design did print design and logo and stationery for the Lebanon landscape architecture firm of Saucier & Flynn.
The Dartmouth reports that the trustees have finally decided to replace both the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge and the Ledyard Canoe Club clubhouse. Although the article uses the word “rebuild” several times, the buildings are not going to be carefully dismantled and put back together like the Ise Jingu grand shrine (Smithsonian mag), and they will not be replaced with replicas as Dartmouth Hall was. Each one will be demolished and have a novel building designed by Maclay Architects put up in its place. Given the past work of that firm and collaborator TimberHomes LLC, the timber-framing company co-founded by D.O.C. historian David Hooke, the results should be excellent. Built of posts and beams instead of stacked logs, a new Ravine Lodge could really be “an unlikely cathedral,” as the film calls it.
Dartmouth Now reports that the William Jewett Tucker Foundation is splitting into the Dartmouth Center for Service, so named for the time being, and the William Jewett Tucker Center. The endowment funds whose donors are no longer living will be split evenly between the two new foundations.
The football team has unveiled its new black uniforms; Big Green Alert has photos.
With the 250th anniversary of the charter grant approaching on December 13, 2019, the newly-admitted Class of 2019 is being called the Anniversary Class (see The Dartmouth).
In 4 Currier, the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network Innovation Center and New Venture Incubator is operating (NHBR, via Dartmouth Now).
The extensive renovation has ended and Triangle House is now open (Dartmouth Now).
Amidon Jewelers is closing its store on Main Street, The Dartmouth notes. Amidon has been in town since 1935.
The College is looking at using natural gas or another fuel in the Heat Plant in place of No. 6 heating oil (The Dartmouth). It’s not clear that this move will lead to a new heating plant on Dewey Field, but there is always the possibility.
From Dartmouth Now, “neighborhoods” get a timeline:
The Board also discussed the ongoing planning and development of possible residential housing models that could be implemented beginning with the Class of 2019.
Dunc’s Mill, a Vermont rum distillery, displays on its building a rare matched set of Vermont windows (see the post here).
The Tucker Foundation is seeking comments on its split into religious and service groups (Dartmouth Now).
The Planner’s Blog has a post on induced demand for roads.
The Dartmouth has a general article on campus construction that says:
Gilman Hall, the now-closed former home of the biology department and proposed location for the academic center, will remain vacant for the foreseeable future, Hogarty said. Though the College investigated potential uses for the building over the summer, it did not decide on an immediate course of action. While housing was considered as one option, this would have been too expensive.
With Gilman on the road to weedy dereliction, somebody with FO&M needs to rescue those original lettered transom panels.
The Pine Park Association has a video of the construction of the new pedestrian bridge over Girl Brook.
Bruce at the Big Green Alert blog justifies his proposed name for the soon-to-be annual season-ending football game against Brown: The Tussle in the Woods.
There is some discussion of the Ravine Lodge demolition proposal at Views from the Top.
Waterfront New York: Images of the 1920s and ’30s is a new book of watercolor paintings by Aldren A. Watson, the Etna illustrator and writer who died in 2013 (Valley News, aldrenwatson.com). Watson might be familiar to readers from the trio of aerial sketches he did for The College on the Hill: A Dartmouth Chronicle (1965), precisely-delineated snapshots of Dartmouth in the 1770s, 1860s, and 1960s. The last of these is etched at a large scale on a glass partition in Six South.
There is a new football website (via Big Green Alert blog). In the Athletics > Ivy League section, the green “D” logo has mercifully shed its TM mark.
