Dartmouth Unbuilding and other topics

Posted on 12.09.2021 by Regisseur

The smart brick rear ell of Wheelock House, a century-old two-story-above-basement book stacks addition built for the Howe Library, was demolished last month by the Eleazar Wheelock Society.
Commencement this year took place at Memorial Field for the first time since 1995. The stage was at the opposite end of the field this year. It would be interesting to learn whether the Commencement canopy is the same one that was first acquired for that 1995 ceremony and has been used every year since. Perhaps there have been different ones.
Frank J. Barrett’s new book is called Lost Hanover, New Hampshire (Amazon.com). Julia Robitaille has a Q and A with the author in The Dartmouth (2 July 2021).
The Dartmouth Indoor Practice Facility is now the Graham Indoor Practice Facility.
Photos of the CECS show it really taking shape. The Irving is also coming along. The Call to Lead has a page on new projects on campus that includes a West End video showing interior models of the two buildings (as well as close-ups of the globe finial following the removal of Baker’s weathervane).
DHMC Patient Tower, an appealingly midcentury hospital building by HDR (designers of The Williamson), is slated to stand at the north end of the hospital and join the main building between the bastions of the existing patient towers (Vermont Digger). The site is visible at the right of this iconic aerial.
At the trustees’ meeting in June, “[t]he board approved the expenditure of $2.89 million to advance designs for energy infrastructure projects and $1.65 million to support campus housing renewal design development. Board members also voted to allocate $6.9 million for information technology infrastructure work.”
The college website is being redesigned (Dartmouth News).
The IEEE has put up a plaque on the exterior of Collis (College Hall) to commemorate its importance as the site where BASIC was developed in the 1960s (Dartmouth News). The plaque would be better if it were actually written as a BASIC program, thus proving the simplicity of the language, but this is still good to see. (The BASIC highway marker, because of the limitations of the state’s marker program, is distant from the site where the event actually took place.)
Harvard Law School has replaced its old heraldic shield with a new shield in the form of a logo.

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[Update 09.13.2021: A reference to a “new” globe finial replacing the Baker weathervane has been corrected. The globe previously underpinned the weathervane and was left in place when the weathervane was removed.]

Various topics including two West End flythroughs

Posted on 05.06.2021 by Regisseur

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).

Various topics, including unbuilt buildings

Posted on 29.01.2021 by Regisseur

An article in The Dartmouth notes the completion of work on Reed and Baker and the start of work on Dartmouth Hall.
The HGA [architects] page for the CECS building has an image showing main entrance with the name KEMENY HARDENBERG above the door.
The Goody Clancy page on the Irving Institute is up.
What might have been: The central and right-hand groups of images on Samer Afifi’s site show (1) a more traditionally-massed CECS on the site where it is now being built and (2) a very unfortunately sited Irving Institute way back on the River Cluster site — not only distant from any important campus axis but also blocking any further Tuck School expansion.
This has been noted here before, but it is always fun to see: A Kliment/Halsband-designed addition to the Shower Towers to house Sudikoff. It looks perfectly pleasant, but it must have been overtaken by VSBA planning for Berry Row.
Kellogg Auditorium, perhaps the only building at Dartmouth named for a room, has been renamed Kellogg Hall and renovated as a classroom building. It opened last fall (Susan Green, “Newly Renovated and Renamed Kellogg Hall Opens” (29 September 2020)).
Dartmouth News has a piece on the importance of the DHMC parking lot as a social space in pandemic times.
Many outlets, including the Concord Monitor, have written about the huge college-affiliated apartment complex that will be built on Route 120 at Mt. Support Road.
The Davison Block, a prominent and historic commercial building at the top of Main Street in downtown Hanover, has been sold by the Davison family, reports the Valley News.
The Valley News also had an article on a sort of Christkindlmarkt that was set up in Hanover over the holidays. Fantastic. So many nice touches could be added to downtown, especially on South Main Street above Lebanon Street, whether by raising the street level (happening?), adding bollards, or limiting traffic and parking. An inviting town square could be delineated in front of the Municipal Building.
The Valley News reports on the college’s pullback from the idea of a new biomass heating plant. This is probably good news for the preservation of the old smokestack.
There are some great photos in the annual roundup of shots by Dartmouth photographers. The aerial of Baker Lawn does look like a De Stijl painting, as noted. It might look even more like a work in batik, an impression created by the imperfections in the edges of the paths and the snow-covered roofs.

Hilton Field as a sculpture park

Posted on 27.01.2021 by Regisseur

Here is a thought: What if, instead of calling for an arboretum on the former golf course, the master plan (see the post here) proposed to construct a large sculpture park? A sculpture park on Hilton Field, the part of the golf course that lies north of Occom Pond, would have little more impact on the neighbors than would an arboretum. It would be managed by the Hood Museum as a site for major new works, and it could provide a home for any refugee works that the college thought appropriate to move from the campus, such as Thel (see the article here; the master plan at least hints at the possible removal of Thel).

Speaking of Thel, here is William Blake’s new gravestone in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground in London. It was created by the Blake Society under the leadership of Philip Pullman, of His Dark Materials fame.

Photo of grave of William Blake in London by Scott Meacham

The Anonymous Hall bridge (see photos at the Windover Construction site) deserves praise for adding to the walkability of the northern part of the campus. It seems like the sort of amenity that could easily be cut from a construction budget.

Let’s hope the proposed cemetery bridge (see the final image at the BBB master plan project page for a conceptual view) eventually is built, and when it does cross the burial ground, let’s hope it receives an appropriate amount of design attention. What a fantastic project this could be, and what a great opportunity for an architectural commentary on the influence of ancient Egypt on both bridges and funerary architecture. See for example the post here for a proposal to erect an ominous cemetery gate at each end of the bridge.

Egyptian Revival architecture makes for a good folly; authors Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp have a new book out called The English Folly: The Edifice Complex. Their earlier book, Follies: A Guide to Rogue Architecture in England, Scotland and Wales, features a photo of the Dunmore Pineapple in Scotland (Wikipedia) on its cover. Yes, that Dunmore: the building’s patron, John Murray, was the Governor of Virginia at the beginning of the Revolution. On December 6, 1775, Murray wrote to (that) Lord Dartmouth to say that “I immediately ordered a Fort to be erected” at Great Bridge, on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp (pdf, 1311). The utilitarian and hastily-built timber stockade called Fort Murray was pretty much the opposite of a folly; it withstood a rebel siege but no longer exists.

The master plan: further reactions

Posted on 13.12.2020 by Regisseur

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.

Historical archeology on campus and other topics

Posted on 22.09.2019 by Regisseur

News of an archeological dig on the site of Choate House, on Wentworth Street is thrilling; one hopes that such digs take place all over Hanover. Comparing the younger and larger state-supported University of Virginia is not really appropriate, but U.Va. seems constantly to be conducting digs, such as this one last summer.
In posts of August 17 and September 20, Big Green Alert Daily has photos of the Indoor Practice Facility going up.
The Valley News has an article on DHMC plans for a northward expansion (see also a later article without the plan). The expansion will go between the arms of the vee at the north entrance:
Campus Services has a nice interactive map of projects around campus.
The Rauner Blog has a post on Charles L. Hildreth of the class of 1901 and his campus cyanotypes.
The Valley News has an article about a class that studied the college’s connection to farming and put up an exhibit in the Berry Brickway Gallery.
The Engineering/CS construction update page has a photo of the extensively-rerouted Thayer Drive with this caption: “The new access road (to be named Thayer Drive) is almost complete. The drive begins at West Wheelock, turns left behind the residence halls to Channing Cox parking lot, and around to the back of MacLean Science Center.”
The Digital Library Program is running a great project called Image of the Week.
One of these things is not like the others. Once the OCD visual identity came out, we knew it was possible, but still we hoped it wouldn’t happen: the college has begun to replace the Dartmouth shield with the D-Tree. The school has started with the official letterhead of all places:

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?
The Valley News reports that the college submitted a new plan for the Thayer/CS building, this time showing its location accurately. After the building opens, wouldn’t it be neat if someone painted a line on the bridge that connects the building to MacLean to show where it was meant to stand? If the college is unable to muster the humility required, then some wry engineering student group ought to do it, in secret.
The PBS Newshour has a story on the Hood and its unconventional presentation of out-of-the-mainstream art. See also the good art-centered review in Apollo Magazine and the review in Dezeen. Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien received honorary degrees at Commencement.
Rauner Library Blog has a post on a 1946 proposal for a Canadian flag with a profusion of stars, including the Big Dipper (compare the Alaska Flag, at Wikipedia).
A Valley News article from June describes a tour offered by the Lebanon Heritage Commission.

Remember that time they built the engineering building in the wrong place?

Posted on 28.06.2019 by Regisseur

The Valley News reports that the deep excavation for the new Thayer/Computer Science building has been made in the wrong place: it is ten feet to the south of where it should be. The hole for the parking deck that will underpin the building was dug to the correct dimensions but in the wrong location.

Ignore for the moment the implications for an engineering school of this magnificent error (as well as the possibility that the excavation is in the right place but that the Town-approved documents were never updated after some design change). The article presents two options: conduct new excavations to put the building in the right place, or accept the current site and rehash the Town of Hanover approval process. The second option might be less expensive. Once it is re-approved, the planned bridge to MacLean can simply be extended by ten feet.

New building projects and other topics

Posted on 18.05.2019 by Regisseur

The Valley News has an article on the 50th anniversary of the Parkhurst takeover.
The DOC House at the head of Occom Pond is going to be renovated when there are enough donations.
The Library is working with Russell Scott Steedle & Capone Architects, Inc., to design a new off-site storage facility:

Dartmouth plans to build a 20,000 sq ft stand-alone, purpose-built storage facility to house the library’s low-use print collections and College records. This facility, to be located on Dartmouth’s 56 Etna Road property in Lebanon, will replace the existing Library offsite storage facility[,] which is full.
An article in The Dartmouth details progress on the Indoor Practice Facility (this is the controversial project in the Sunken Garden) and Campus Services has information on the progress of the Boathouse addition.
The year the bookstore died: Earlier this year, both the Dartmouth Bookstore (ca. 1872) and Wheelock Books (1993) closed up.
Now that the Dartmouth Bookstore is gone, the Gitsis Building is being heavily renovated, the Dartmouth reports:

The building’s owner, Jay Campion, said that the renovations are already well underway and should be complete by July, which will allow the three tenants to start setting up their shops. According to Campion, the renovation process has involved a complete makeover.

“We’ll be rebuilding the entire storefront and have basically gutted the building,” Campion said. “We’re re-insulating and replacing the heating and air conditioning systems for this and dividing the space for the three separate tenants on the first floor.”
This public domain collection of images from the National Archives has an interesting group of photos of campus during WWI. Most of them show the trenches that were dug behind the gym, presumably where Leverone stands today. This photo shows a group of cars and trucks parked inside the southeast (or possibly northwest) corner of the gymnasium itself.
Another new project: Renovations of the bluestone plaza in front of the Hopkins Center. The paving stones will be replaced with concrete pavers.
Wilson Architects have posted an updated flythrough of the Thayer/CS Building. Now it is clear that the retaining wall to the west is actually the entrance to the garage; in this rendering, it is just vegetated rather than topped by a parapet and walkway.
Not sure whether the new Planning, Design and Construction website has been mentioned here.
In this Street View the Google employee with his camera backpack is reflected in the windows of Berry Library — as he walks through campus tour group.
This post at Granite Geek solves the mystery of whether the NHDHR database called EMMIT is a reference to the derogatory student term “Emmit,” meaning a local person (or really, a New Hampshireman, not so much a townie). The answer is no.
Lawrence Biemiller has a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed called “Make Way for Trenches! A College Plans to Scrap Its Entire Heating System.” It has good information on the upcoming heat plant and steam-to-water transition projects.
When the new biomass plant is completed, the college will decommission the old heating plant behind New Hampshire Hall. Then it will have an empty building, historic and full of character and eminently reusable, right in the middle of the Arts District. The current feeling seems to be that the building will be demolished, along with its landmark smokestack. Here’s hoping that either or both can be saved, and if they are to be destroyed, at least they can be thoroughly documented first. The University of Virginia is doing the right thing by scanning University Hall, a 1965 domed concrete basketball arena.
The Anthropology Department is leading n archeological aexcavation of an 18th-century house site on campus. That’s fantastic. It’s a pity that no one was doing this in the 1930s (or even the late 1980s, before the construction of the steam tunnel disturbed the east side of the Green).
Unrelated: A week and a half ago, Union Pacific 4014, a 1940s steam locomotive with a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement, was brought back to life. Having seen a couple of Big Boys in impossibly derelict condition in Colorado and Wyoming in my youth, I never thought one of these locomotives would run again. Here’s a film of the colossus, double-headed with UP 844 (a 4-8-4): Film by Jaw Tooth. Here’s another clip by airrailimages. Astonishing.

Various construction topics

Posted on 23.03.2019 by Regisseur

An Architectural Digest story on the Hood by Elizabeth Fazzare again refers to a gray brick supposedly used in the original building, this time stating that it was used in the iconic trabeated gateway. The gateway was made of concrete, however; Moore originally intended it to be of granite.
The Indoor Practice Facility weekly update includes an aerial image showing the building’s footprint.
Van Zelm Engineers, a firm that worked on the 1978 Life Sciences Center and has built some very interesting heating plants over the years, are working on the Irving Institute. Their project page shows a basic footprint for the Institute for the first time: it really is a screen building. The college project page now includes renderings of the side facades and a new interior view.
A flythrough video of the Thayer/CS building by Wilson Architects suggests that the complex will have quite a retaining wall on the west side; one hopes it’s made into “engineering” or at least faced in granite.
The Thayer School Parking Garage project page has some cute computer images of various stages of future excavation. Turner Construction has a camera on MacLean showing the construction site.
Campus Services reports on a project to remove diseased trees from Pine Park.
High-Profile and North Branch Construction have information on the renovation of Blunt into an academic building.
The Dana renovation remains an interesting project. There is a video flythrough at the Leers Weinzapfel Associates site, and it shows a little pedestrian bridge on the west side of the building. A glimpse of the building’s lobby shows the Guarini shield on an office door and a “graduate lounge” occupying a part of the building, possibly a holdover from the similarly-named space called for in the giant unbuilt dining commons that MRY and Bruner/Cott proposed for a site a few yards to the southwest. The glassy Dana frontispiece will be topped with a patio; the penthouse has a flat canopy roof that is covered in solar panels and almost gives the building the air of a pagoda.
Some Tuck Drive details from the July 3 minutes of the Planning Board (pdf):

The road is about half a mile long. He stated they will be working within the existing asphalt and drainage swales in order to maintain the existing stone walls. Lighting along the road will be minimal. Fixtures will be spaced 80-120 feet apart. Better access to the loading dock at Murdough will be provided. From Wheelock Street, Old Tuck Drive will be a two way street and give access to the Ledyard Parking Lot. After the turn off to the parking lot, the drive becomes a one way access. There is a pedestrian crossing point marked by a raised speed table. Guardrails will be installed along Old Tuck Drive. There is a bike lane separated from vehicle traffic by a double yellow line. Close to Tuck Drive there will be sidewalks on both sides of the drive.

[…]

Mr. Scherding stated the campus was open with busy streets and students were used to crossing streets and sharing roads. He stated the Director of Public Works suggested narrowing the road at pedestrian crossings to make it safer. Mr. Scherding said they talked about having a physical barrier between the vehicles and the bike lanes but currently it is not on the plans. ESMAY asked what the guardrail would look like. Mr. Scherding stated it would look like the existing granite bollards.
A report of the September trustees’ meeting describes a renovation project in which “the College intends to improve learning spaces throughout Dartmouth Hall to ensure that the building can meet the needs of faculty and students in the 21st century. As part of the planned construction, the College will restore some of the structure’s historic elements, overhaul the building’s systems, and upgrade its energy efficiency.”
Revision Energy has a page on its solar installations at the college. Some of the dormitory installations really do transform the appearance of the buildings.
Bruner/Cott has a page on its renovation of Baker Tower. The interior graffiti appear to have been removed.
The automated parking system of the UK Architects addition to the rear of the Bridgman Building is drawing some attention (ACPark.com, Parking-Net.com).
There is more news on the off-campus (or edge-of-campus?) heating plant project (Dartmouth News, The Dartmouth). Although a nice spot for it would be the Dewey Field parking lot (orange), my money’s on a few Lyme Road sites, shown in red:

Speculative map of potential heating plant sites

West End work beginning

Posted on 12.09.2018 by Regisseur

The Thayer School expansion involves a lot of changes to an entire district of the campus. Campus Services has information on the overall project.

The page describes the new Thayer School building:

The proposed building, to be located south of the Maclean Engineering Sciences Center, will be constructed over a new three-level parking garage. The garage will replace Cummings lot, and will significantly increase the number of parking spaces in this area. This project will also change the flow of traffic along West Wheelock Street and throughout the West End. Thayer Drive will close, and a new access road will be constructed specifically to provide access to the parking garage, and Thayer loading docks and the Channing Cox parking lot. Old Tuck Drive will be reconstructed and reopened to support one-way traffic heading from west to east. Improvements to the intersection of West Wheelock, West Street, and the new access road will also be made to improve access and safety of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers.

Dartmouth News has a story on the proposal for a new set of stoplights on West Wheelock Street at Thayer Drive (see also the Valley News).

We learn from the college news story that the Thayer School building “will be connected at ground level to the MacLean Engineering Sciences Center and Cummings Hall.” Presumably “at ground level” means aboveground as opposed to belowground, where the garage is. Because renderings show only a second-level bridge connecting the new building to MacLean; pedestrians will go under the bridge to follow the “Green to Blue” route. See this rendering reproduced from the latest Dartmouth Life print publication (showing the existing brick wall of MacLean in white on the right):

image of Thayer School addition from Dartmouth Life

Incidentally, the college’s project manager for the Beyer Blinder Belle West End Master Plan was planner Douwe Wieberdink; he’s now with BBB. And the landscape architects for the West End work are Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: perhaps one can feel a bit better about the fate of historic Tuck Drive following its partial demolition.

Hop expansion going ahead, and other news

Posted on 01.07.2018 by Regisseur

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

Bicentennial stamp design credits, other topics

Posted on 02.04.2018 by Regisseur

The Dana project page shows the renovation and addition totally redoing the skin of the building: compare the Street View. The entrance is being moved from one end of the north façade to the center of the south facade, where it will occupy a full-height, south-facing, and very warm-looking glass addition (see the Planning Board minutes pdf).

The project will include “a pedestrian bridge spanning the sunken lawn on the west side of Dana. Parking will also be added to support approximately 60 new spaces, and will connect to the Maynard parking lot” according to the project page. The Planning Board minutes also mention a green space in the interior of the block: that seems to be the corridor that passes beneath the bridge. The parking lot seems to occupy the Gilman site.

The rowing training facility project page shows that the facility should definitely read as an addition.

The first-day-of-issue ceremony program for the 1969 Dartmouth College Case stamp has some detailed information about the stamp’s design:

The design of the stamp was selected from four sketches submitted by John R. Scotford, Jr., graphic designer for Dartmouth College and an alumnus. The drawing of Webster was done by P.J. Conkwright of Princeton in 1954 from a painting by John Pope (1821-1881) which now hangs in Parkhurst Hall in Hanover. The building in the background is Dartmouth Hall, built in 1784. During Webster’s undergraduate days and at the time the Dartmouth College case was being argued before the Supreme Court, Dartmouth Hall housed the whole College – dormitory, classrooms, library, and chapel.

The stamp was engraved by Edward P. Archer, who did the vignette, and Kenneth C. Wiram, who did the lettering. Both are on the staff of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

The type styles used are Craw Modern for the words “Daniel Webster” and “6¢ U. S. Postage,” and Torino Italic for the words “The Dartmouth College Case.”

A Dartmouth News article announces that Studio Nexus of WRJ, designers of the Co-Op Food Store expansion, won an award for their design of the DALI Lab in the basement of Sudikoff. The lab will be moving to the new Thayer/CS building in a few years.

The college is renovating the Blunt Alumni Center for academic use, with design by Studio Nexus and construction by North Branch. The brick house that forms the front of Blunt was built ca. 1810 for Professor Zephania Swift Moore ’93 and was owned by Medical School professor Dr. Dixi Crosby DMS ’24 and his family for decades beginning around 1838. The college bought the house and in 1896 had Lamb & Rich remodel it and add a large frame dormitory ell at the rear. The entrance portico with its giant-scale columns is a typical Rich device. The dormitory addition was replaced by the current Modernist brick office addition (1980, Benjamin Thompson Associates). The current project will create a new entrance on the north side of Blunt, giving easier access to Silsby Hall across Tuck Mall:

The Valley News has an article about the new programming initiative of the Hanover Historical Society. A presentation on the history of the golf course was on tap.

The Valley News also has an article about the plans of the Friends of Hanover Crew to demolish their 1770s farmhouse on Lyme Road, seen here in Google Street View:

This is unfortunate and disappointing. On the one hand, the group was saddled with this house when it acquired the property near the river. On the other hand, it is hard not to ask whether the group has taken on some obligation to the history and preservation of this place. If the house cannot become a headquarters or clubhouse for the high school rowing club, could it be renovated and rented out as an income generator? Would someone be willing to move it? Would the college be able to rescue it and move it a few hundred yards down the road to the Organic Farm?
The Smith & Vansant site features some recent renovation projects, including Triangle House and a number of historic buildings used as faculty housing.

The Hood has a video about the ongoing construction work and an article about the brick used on the addition’s exterior.

DHMC opened the Jack Byrne Center for Palliative and Hospice Care at the end of last year (Here in Hanover, DHMC, Health Facilities Management). Architects E4H — Environments for Health have photos.

Details on the new road to the Thayer & CS building

Posted on 31.03.2018 by Regisseur

The BBB West End Master Plan (super image from BBB site; see also the Campus Services project page, written by BBB) turns out to be more than a schematic design. The meandering suburban business-park road is going to be built:

Another change will be the removal of Engineering Drive, which runs from West Wheelock Street to the Cummings lot. A new roadway, called West Access Road, will be constructed to provide access to the parking garage and Thayer loading facility as well as limited access to the West End Circle. A now-closed portion of Old Tuck Drive, which originates just above the swim docks and the Ledyard parking lot, will be reopened and will connect the roadway to Tuck Mall, pending town approval.¹1. Susan J. Boutwell, “Integrating Engineering, Computer Science, Entrepreneurship,” Dartmouth News (28 March 2018).

The project page for the Thayer/CS building provides more detail: “Engineering Drive will close, and a new access road will be constructed specifically to provide access to the parking garage and Thayer loading docks. Old Tuck Drive will be restored and reopened to support one-way traffic heading from west to east.”

Maybe the site conditions (steep slopes, existing buildings) require the endearingly-named West Access Road to look the way it does. After all, Tuck Drive²2. Please, let’s stop calling it Old Tuck Drive. The word “Old” seems to have been added to the name of Tuck Drive to distinguish the short branch of the road that was eliminated by Fahey-McLane. That was a dozen years ago. There is no need to keep using the word. is a curving, naturalistic auto road. Yet one hopes that the new road will respect urban principles by reinforcing campus spaces.

One also hopes that the West Access Road will be reconnected to Tuck Mall once construction of the building is completed: that would seem to be the reason for the two-level pedestrian bridge that will join the building to the McLean ESC.

From the Dartmouth News article: “Construction is expected to start early next year on a three-level underground parking and loading facility, which will sit below the four-floor education portion of the building.” In the map that accompanies the article, the entrance to that ~~subterranean lair~~ underground garage appears just off the southwest corner of the new building. Last fall, the project page included a view of the building’s south facade from which is taken this detail showing the intriguing, grottolike entrance:

 [+]

References
↑1	1. Susan J. Boutwell, “Integrating Engineering, Computer Science, Entrepreneurship,” Dartmouth News (28 March 2018).
↑2	2. Please, let’s stop calling it Old Tuck Drive. The word “Old” seems to have been added to the name of Tuck Drive to distinguish the short branch of the road that was eliminated by Fahey-McLane. That was a dozen years ago. There is no need to keep using the word.

Dartmo.

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Category Archives: Thayer & CS building