Category Archives: societies

About fraternities, sororities, co-ed houses, Undergraduate Societies, class societies and their buildings.

A new house on Occom Ridge

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The Dartmouth reports that the college is planning to build a new sorority house on Occom Ridge in the gap between Epsilon Kappa Theta and Delta Delta Delta (Ridge House).


The house will be built for the Kappa Delta sorority during the fall of 2014.

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[Update 06.10.2013: The announcement of the Trustees’ approval (Dartmouth Now) clearly puts the house at 1 Occom Ridge. That suggests that the house will face the street. The two halves of the Tri-Delt duplex, originally numbered 1 and 3 Occom Ridge, apparently will be known collectively as no. 3.]

[Update 06.09.2013: The March 12 Planning Board minutes (pdf) state that the house, with 23 single rooms, will be built “immediately south of the Roth Center.” Does that mean it will be in the interior of the block rather than facing the street? Ugh.


This aerial shows how much space is available southwest of Tri-Delt and how suburban a house would be if it were marooned in that clump of trees.]

Alpha Phi photos up

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The firm of Haynes & Garthwaite has photos of the new Alpha Phi sorority house. There is an interesting selection of models available to the prospective sorority builder: the nineteenth-century frame domestic buildings in which several sororities are housed, the early-twentieth century Georgian clubhouses of the fraternities, and the twentieth-century suburban houses with which many students will be familiar.

(Another project page that’s coming up is that of the Hood expansion by Williams Tsien.)

The new Alpha Phi house

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From some angles, Haynes & Garthwaite‘s new Alpha Phi sorority house on North Park Street recalls the old Sigma Phi Epsilon house on Webster Avenue:

Meacham photo of Sigma Phi Epsilon and The Dartmouth photo of Alpha Phi

Top: Sigma Phi Epsilon (1896 and 1963, demolished 2010). Bottom: Alpha Phi (2012), photo by Tracy Wang courtesy of The Dartmouth.
More photos are available at Trumbull-Nelson.

In other North Park news, The Dartmouth reports that the school is planning to create an LGBT house on the street. The Valley News writes:

Hanover — Dartmouth College will move forward with plans to open a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender student residence in 2014, a project that has been the longtime goal of a college advisor who has been working on the plan for more than a dozen years.

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[Update 11.04.2012: T-N photos link and VN quote added.]

“Goat Room” and other terms

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  • A thorough post on the use of goats in fraternity imagery covers the use of the term “goat room” to describe a meeting room. That term has been used a number of Dartmouth houses including Tri-Kap, Beta Theta Pi, Phi Gamma Delta, Zeta Psi, Sigma Nu, and Psi Upsilon. The first Goat Room built by Beta is visible at the far right of a photo on the Town’s Flickr photostream.
  • Bob Donin’s 2011 oral history interview with William Jenkins ’43 and his wife Mary contains these linguistic observations on page 18:

    MARY: […] And the other thing that’s interesting—and I’ve talked about this to my few good friends who are still around who grew up here—when we said campus, we meant the Green. And it was never called the Green.

    DONIN: Oh, it wasn’t called the Green back then?

    MARY: Well, at least not by any of us. Never used the word Green. And when we said campus, which was an incorrect use of the word obviously, we meant the Green. I’ll meet you on campus. I’ll meet— you know, use it in that context. And it’s very interesting to see the evolution. And another thing that’s different: When you were in college and I was dating and stuff, the word “frat” was considered to be a state university word, and everyone looked down their nose at it, and they never under any conditions would use the word “frat,” meaning fraternity. And now it’s I think commonly used.

    DONIN: So what did you call—oh, you called it a fraternity.

    MARY: A fraternity. Or by the Greek name.

  • A Valley News blurb refers to plans “for a six-story addition just south of the main entrance” of DHMC, for research. Presumably this is the Williamson Translational Research Center.
  • A nice history of the building of the Ray School.
  • A new Maine Heraldry Blog is promising. Go moose-deer!
  • Rauner Library is allowing visitors to lick one of the books in its collection.
  • Thanks to Robert Goodby for citing the Notes toward a Catalog… in the 2006 Lebanon Slate Mill conservation study (pdf). Thanks for the citations to Halls, Tombs and Houses by Blake Gumprecht in The American College Town (UMass Press, 2010) and Carole Zellie in the University of Minnesota Greek Letter Chapter House Designation Study (2003). Glad the Review has adopted this site’s analysis of the new Inn addition.
  • Brilliant. Another post in praise of the aerial photo provided by Bing:

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[Update 11.04.2012: Beta photo link added.]

Last butterfly in the collection: an architect for Alpha Delta Phi (1920-1922)

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The only notable building that the book fails to attribute to any architect is the Alpha Delta house, built during the early 1920s for the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. The continuing expansion of the Google Books database has offered up an answer: Putnam & Chandler of Boston.1”Building and Construction News Section: New Hampshire,” The American Contractor 41:51 (18 December 1920), 52-53. The report states that work was already under way on the house by December of 1920:

Putnam & Chandler later designed the Theta Delta Chi house of 1926:

Other interesting gleanings:

–More than a decade before he designed the Church of Christ (the White Church) in Hanover (1935), Hobart Upjohn designed a church for St. Barnabas in Norwich.2”Building and Construction News Department,” The American Contractor 38:51 (22 December 1917), 36. Upjohn and St. Barnabas are covered in the Norwich Walking Tour.

–Psi Upsilon fraternity had William Lescaze, of Howe & Lescaze, design an unbuilt replacement house during 1931.3Lorraine Welling Lanmon, William Lescaze, Architect (Art Alliance, 1987), 112. The Modernist firm was erecting the PSFS Building (Wikipedia) in Philadelphia at the time.

–Prolific Hartford architect Louis Sheldon Newton designed a 40 x 60 house for a “Phi Sigma Nu” fraternity at Dartmouth.4”Society Buildings,” The American Contractor 37:23 (3 June 1916), 38. The name rings no bells, but the date suggests that this could be the demolished Arts & Crafts house of Kappa Sigma.

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References
↑1 ”Building and Construction News Section: New Hampshire,” The American Contractor 41:51 (18 December 1920), 52-53.
↑2 ”Building and Construction News Department,” The American Contractor 38:51 (22 December 1917), 36.
↑3 Lorraine Welling Lanmon, William Lescaze, Architect (Art Alliance, 1987), 112.
↑4 ”Society Buildings,” The American Contractor 37:23 (3 June 1916), 38.

Hanover’s first purpose-built sorority house

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Although Dartmouth probably deserves criticism for what appears to be a failure to maintain Larson’s faculty apartment house at 2 North Park Street, the college might be working to redeem itself by building a quality replacement: a new sorority house designed by Haynes & Garthwaite of Norwich. The article in The Dartmouth has a photo of the house under construction.

The article notes that Alpha Phi was originally meant to occupy the historic house at 26 East Wheelock, next door to KKG (see Dartmouth Life, October 2008). Town zoning prohibited that change of use, and putting the sorority closer to the Green would seem to be better for the group and better for the campus.

Interesting links with some connection to Dartmouth or the Granite State

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  • Inside Higher Ed has a review of Bryant Tolles’s new book, Academic Architecture in New England. The book, based on Tolles’s 1970 dissertation, provides the best coverage available anywhere of Dartmouth’s original buildings.

  • A new book about the work of alumni firm Rogers Marvel is available.

  • Dartbeat has a map of warmcuts around campus. What is a warmcut? It’s a shortcut that won’t save you time but will let you stay indoors as much as possible.

  • The college publicity office has an article on the 50th anniversary of the Hanover Conservancy, formerly the Hanover Conservation Council. The group manages the Mink Brook Nature Preserve and other areas.

  • The Four Aces Diner in West Lebanon has reopened (Valley News).

  • Eli Burak, whose work has been linked here, is the new official college photographer following the retirement of Joseph Mehling (The Dartmouth, Facebook video (via Dartmouth Now)).

  • The story of the Chicken Farmer I Still Love You graffito, in the Valley News.

  • Dartmouth’s investment in sustainability (The Dartmouth) is likely to create problems when it encounters the college’s interest in preserving the historic windows still found in many campus buildings.

  • A solar-powered blue emergency phone (Dartmouth Planning).

  • Historic photos of Main Street businesses. Note the Dartmouth Bank Building before the arches were added to the front and after the arches were added (but before the building was raised by one level). More of this building and others north of Lebanon Street appear in a slide show from the Hanover Bicentennial parade on July 4, 1961 (via the Planning blog). Also in the slide show is an interesting shot of the buildings that preceded the Nugget Arcade.

  • Is the Watershed Studio’s listing of a Ledyard Canoe Club project a reference to a replacement building, a renovation, or something else?

  • The Co-op Food Store at the roundabout on Lyme Road is the subject of some detailed information provided by ORW.

  • In Norwich, Vermont’s ex-village of Lewiston (see the Rauner post) is a street that was recently named Ledyard Lane (Google Maps). The street leads to the depot, which is still standing, and one presumes it was previously called Depot Street. How strange to see John Ledyard’s name migrating via the bridge across the river to a site he had nothing to do with.

  • An interesting granite monument is set in the ground at the northwest corner of Lebanon and Summer Streets (Google Street View). The “H” must stand for Hanover, but why here? Is it a former town line? Doubtful. Perhaps a former corner of a town-owned parcel.

Lebanon Street monument, Hanover

Monument at Lebanon and Summer.

  • The Rauner Library Blog has a post on the development of the Synclavier and the origins of the Bregman Electronic Music Studio.

  • The latest college map (pdf), released in August of 2010, is the first to show the LSC, ’53 Commons, the VAC, 4 Currier, and other novelties. The map also strangely misnames more than a dozen Greek houses in an apparent attempt to Romanize or transliterate the Greek characters of their names (via Jonathan). Visually, the map might be improved if the ground were shaded and the symbols indicating accessible entrances and restrooms were made less obtrusive. And one might hope that the mustard yellow of the buildings could be replaced with gray, brown, or green.

  • Dartmouth has been digging up the small lab animals that were buried in mass graves at the Rennie Farm during the 1960s and 1970s (Valley News).

  • Dartmouth Now writes about the last male descendant of Eleazar Wheelock.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken links Rogers Marvel and warm cuts fixed.]

Architectural and other notes

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  • The Real Estate Office’s new office building at 4 Currier, designed by Truex Cullins, was awarded a LEED Silver rating.
  • College Photographer Joseph Mehling ’69 is retiring (The Dartmouth). Among hundreds of college-related projects, Mehling provided the photos for the Campus Guide.
  • The Rauner Library Blog notes that the Freshman Book — the Shmenu — was last printed on paper in 2009.
  • CRREL, the Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory north of campus, was giving tours recently (Valley News).
  • Old fire insurance maps of American cities and towns produced by the Sanborn Map Company are invaluable to historians. A post at Bibliodyssey features the elaborate designs displayed on the title pages of Sanborn maps.
  • According to hikers interviewed for an article in The Dartmouth, all of Hanover’s mile markers for the Appalachian Trail are inaccurate. Experience with the Milepost on a couple of drives up the Alcan suggests that the inaccuracies result from the practice of rerouting the trail.
  • The watering trough that once occupied the southwest corner of the Green is featured in a post at the Review.
  • The ongoing basketball office renovations in the Berry Sports Center are planned to include a “display of Dartmouth basketball history and tradition” (Valley News).
  • The Dartmouth had an article back in May about how Rauner librarians hope that the players of new metadata games will help them attach information to untagged photos.
  • Randall T. Mudge & Associates Architect has exterior and interior photos of the Dragon Senior Society hall. The interior paneling, taken from Dragon’s 1931 hall behind Baker, really does look like a Larson & Wells product.
  • The site What Was There brings rephotography into the digital era by superimposing historic photos on Google Street View images.
  • Yale’s new residential colleges site has a nice site map (pdf) showing existing colleges and site of the two new colleges designed by architecture school dean Robert A.M. Stern. The Grove Street Cemetery really is in the way…
  • An article explains the move from the old hospital north of Maynard Street to the new DHMC complex in Lebanon 10 years ago.

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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to trough article replaced.]
[Update 05.12.2013: Broken link to Dragon photos removed.]
[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to new residential colleges replaced, broken link to site map removed.]

Parker Apartments to be demolished

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Contrary to what was reported here in March, it looks as if Dartmouth is going to demolish the 1921 Parker Apartments at 2 North Park Street:

Parker Apartments

Rear (west) facade of Parker

The July 6 minutes of the Zoning Board of Adjustment (pdf) state that the board granted an exemption “to allow for the demolition of an existing apartment building and construction of a new building to be used as a student residence.” Curiously, the minutes list no applicant; it was presumably Dartmouth.

The building appears to be serviceable, and one wonders why the college did not decide to renovate it. The faculty apartment next door is older and smaller, but its renovation worked out well:

Parkside Apartments, 17 East Wheelock

Rear (north) facade of Parkside

Renovation of Parker Apartments planned

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The Dartmouth reports that the college plans extensive renovations to the frame apartment house at 2 North Park Street:





2 North Park Street, view to southwest

The Parker Apartments, named for Joel Parker of the Class of 1811, Chief Justice of New Hampshire, were designed by Larson & Wells and built in 1921.

The school plans to install the Alpha Phi sorority in place of the twelve apartments now in the building. No architect has been selected, according to The Dartmouth. This will follow the similar project for the nearby Parkside.

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[Update 06.03.2013: Broken link to Alpha Phi replaced.]
[Update 08.13.2011: It looks like the building will be demolished.]

The coat of arms on a pair of shoes, and other items

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  • New Balance has put Dartmouth’s current midcentury coat of arms on the tongue of a pair of shoes in its Ivy League Collection (via the Big Green Alert Blog; there’s a post on The Dartmouth‘s blog).
  • Rauner’s blog has notable items on Cane Rush, Foley House, “the Glutton’s Spoon,” and the practice of “horning.”
  • The Valley News has an article on the renovation of the 1890 Wilder Church. The church had a lot of Dartmouth associations early on and is another benefaction of Charles T. Wilder, donor of Dartmouth’s physics lab.
  • Plan N.H. is the state’s “smart growth” group, and it gave a 2009 Merit Award to the South Block project.
  • There is a photo of the Zantop Memorial Garden in Dartmouth’s Flickr photostream (story in The Dartmouth, dedication program). It looks like the garden finally resolves the former awkwardness of the slope in front of Richardson Hall: never a proper stone-walled terrace, but too extreme to plant with grass and try to ignore.
  • The last remnant of Campion’s various long-lived stores on Main Street closed last fall (The Dartmouth, Valley News).
  • The Dartmouth reports that the [flower-] painted panels in the ceiling of Thayer’s main dining room contained asbestos and are being removed.

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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken links to PlanNH pages replaced.]
[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to The Dartmouth repaired, broken link to The Dartmouth‘s blog removed.]
[Update 01.22.2011: Links to shoe and horning articles added.]

Dartmouth Traditions by William Carroll Hill (1901)

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Download

Download a pdf version of William Carroll Hill’s 1901 book, Dartmouth Traditions.

About the Book

William Carroll Hill (1875-1943?), of Nashua, N.H., received his Bachelor of Letters degree, a degree offered only between 1884 and 1904, in 1902. He was the historian of his class and wrote the Chronicles section of the the 1902 Class Day volume, a book that the printer gave the appearance as Dartmouth Traditions. Hill became an antiquarian, genealogist, and historian and apparently wrote a history of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Dartmouth Traditions was published when Hill was a junior. The book is not really about traditions and probably would be better titled Dartmouth Worthies. It is a collection of essays written by students and alumni. While the essays on Daniel Webster and other known personages are not very useful, some essays appear the contain information that is only available in this book. Examples are the report on the investigation into the history of the Lone Pine and the first-person account of the drowning death of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s son.

About this Project

The transcription of this somewhat hard-to-find book began in 2003. The book has since become available in Google Books, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the project. The Google Books version has the great advantage of reproducing the attractive typography of the original, but its computer transcription is not as accurate as that of the version presented here.

[Update 05.13.2011: The Rauner Library Blog has a post on Hill, highlighting the Stowe episode.]

[Update 12.21.2010: Link to pdf posted.]

dartmo 15 logo

Zeta Psi addition completed

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The “Fuller Audits” of house compliance with town safety codes have led to a variety of responses over the past eight or so years, from Gamma Delta Chi’s minimal fire escape to the demolition of Sigma Phi Epsilon. (Phi Tau’s Fuller Audit played a role in its demolition as well.) Most organizations have added a bay or two to the end of the house to enclose a fire stair.

One of the most visible and insightful projects is the one recently completed by Zeta Psi (photos, more). Jens Larson’s firm designed the original house to face north toward Webster Avenue, away from the campus. Smith & Vansant Architects added a gabled portico to the rear, acknowledging the fact that most people approach from that direction.

Here it was under construction, from the Avenue side:



View Larger Map

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken links to Zeta Psi photos removed, replaced with renovation page link.]

The old Howe Library’s stacks addition

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A recent post mentioned that the second floor of the brick addition to the old house at 2 West Wheelock Street is available for rent.

Howe stacks addition
Stacks addition, east facade, view to northwest

Here is some more information on the addition:

In 1900, Emily Howe established the Howe Library in the house where she had grown up (Eleazar Wheelock’s Mansion House, built in 1771 with funds sent from London for the purpose). Howe died in 1912 and left much of her estate to the library corporation, which hired architect Curtis W. Bixby of Watertown, Mass. to design a fireproof addition for book stacks. The addition was built in 1914 and 1915 and displays a level of detail that is unexpected for a background building.

Howe stacks addition
Stacks addition, entrance in east facade

The Howe moved to its current location in the early 1970s and the old building became a shop, with Roberts Flowers of Hanover moving in during 1990.

Another Bixby building of 1915 is the Coolidge School in Watertown, which he designed with Clarence P. Hoyt. The school is now an apartment building and shares some elements with the Howe’s stacks addition.

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[Update 05.03.2014: Broken link to Roberts Flowers replaced.]