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.

———–

[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.

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.

Crosby Street dorm off the table and other news

Posted on 05.04.2020 by Regisseur

The construction of the Indoor Practice Facility is nearly finished (see Big Green Alert). The school’s existing indoor practice facility, Leverone Field House, is being eyed as a site for a temporary hospital ward during the pandemic (Valley News). The west wing of Alumni Gym is also under consideration (Valley News).
This interesting tidbit appeared at the end of a board news release about new trustees:

The new board members were elected at the board’s spring meeting, held this year at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

That seems like a first. The main news release (issued 1 March) has more information:

The board met at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., where they engaged in wide-ranging conversations with a diverse group of Stanford leaders including trustees, the former and current presidents, the provost, faculty in leadership positions, and representatives from departments across campus.

Not sure what to make of that, whether the learning opportunities were added to enhance the remote meeting or the meeting was held on the other side of the continent specifically in order to learn from Stanford.
Shattuck’s Revenge. At the Stanford meeting, the board approved a capital budget to fund projects that include “include renovation of Thornton Hall; planning and design of the Dartmouth Hall renovation; planning for proposed projects with private developers, including graduate housing and energy infrastructure; and” other projects. An interesting mention is made of $3 million “for planning and schematic design to explore the renovation and expansion of the Choates residence halls and the East Wheelock residential complex,” and funding for the future Hop renovation (still on the table!) and construction of teaching and research spaces is also noted. Not a word, however, on the Crosby Street dorm, which has been in planning for more than two years now. The project page for the design of the building was quietly removed from the Campus Services website during the last few weeks.
Irving Oil Co. has a rendering of the Irving Institute that differs in detail from the other images out there.
The college launched its capital campaign two years ago at Duggal Greenhouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Some photos from the event show considerable attention to detail: the use of Dartmouth Ruzicka lettering on the front facade; the model (15′ high?) of the bonfire, reimagined as a cocktail table; and the plaster/pasteboard renderings of Baker Tower and the main buildings of Tuck, Thayer, and Geisel (it’s white, but it’s a reasonably accurate rendition of the school’s ex-hospital building on Maynard Street).
Unrelated even to architecture: Although it is not unusual to hear of a company that has been operating since 1905, it is unusual to find one that has been making the same product since its beginning. How odd would it be if that product were a Morse code key? Take a look at Vibroplex and its Original Standard key. This is not quite an example of Ferry Porsche’s theory that the last car ever to be built will be a sports car (see Porsche’s site), because the FCC seems to effectively subsidize the use of Morse Code by prohibiting other modes of communication on certain radio frequencies, but it is close.

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.

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

Irving revealed

Posted on 06.10.2018 by Regisseur

The college has released several images of the planned building of the Irving Institute at the west end of Tuck Mall.

Goody Clancy, the architecture firm that designed the building, appears to be well regarded by Tuck. Goody Clancy designed Whittemore (1999-2000) and the LLC (2007-2008), a set of connected buildings behind the Murdough Center.

The Institute is straightforward. It is not a “look at me” building, but it is not a shrinking violet either. It needs to be straightforward to live up to the outsized role it has been given in campus-making. A building has been needed here for 50 years, and it almost seems a matter of happenstance that an energy institute is the occupant of this one.

The long, shallow brick range with its steeply-pitched gable makes one think of Centerbrook Architects, maybe that firm’s UConn Chemistry Building.

The flat-roofed glass frontispiece is a bit like the Rauner jewel box. The frontispiece is itself fronted by a minimalist and possibly “High Tech”-style quadristyle temple front, if you could call it that. Again there is no gable, just a flat roof that protrudes to the sides as a set of “wings”; a bit Deco, a bit nautical, a bit like James Stirling’s No. 1 Poultry in London of 1997 (Wikipedia).

The use of the white-painted steel design language, in this building, seems to indicate connections and bridges, and it references nicely the Koetter Kim bridge built in 2006 to connect Murdough and Thayer:

The most remarkable of the new images is the interior view. That cantilevered, glassed-in second-floor corridor visible on the left is the existing black jetty of Murdough:

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.

What happened to the Irving Institute? The architects are off the project.

Posted on 23.06.2018 by Regisseur

In November of 2016, KPMB Architects of Toronto were announced as designers of the new Irving Institute building at a crucial site at the west end of Tuck Mall. The college’s project page stated that schematic design would begin during November of 2016 and that construction would begin in June of 2018.

During the summer and fall of 2017, KPMB architect John Peterson was “currently working on the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society at Dartmouth College” (Wayback archived page).

At some point, contractor Transsolar stated on its “in progress” page that the building’s completion date was 2020 and that Le Messurier would be the structural engineer, vanZelm the HVAC contractor, and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates the landscape architect (the firm handled the landscape angle of the BBB master plan).

A year into the project, KPMB showed its latest design to the Board of Trustees. The Office of Communications stated on November 5, 2017, that “The board heard an update from KPMB Architects, designers of the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society building. […] Board members approved funding $6.5 million to complete the design phase, with a specific focus on modifications to the building’s exterior.”

One might speculate that “modifications to the building’s exterior” is code for “more Neo-Georgian, less Modernist” or “more masonry, less glass.” The Irving Institute will both screen the view of the Murdough Center from Tuck Mall and provide, for the first time on this site, a sympathetic response to Baker Tower.

Then something happened. There is no news on the Institute’s news page.

Architect Peterson is listed as “currently working on” facade improvements for Robertson Hall at Princeton University. The Irving Institute page lists no architect at all for the building and says that the project is still in the schematic design phase, with the construction schedule to be determined.

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.

New images of Thayer/CS building

Posted on 14.01.2018 by Regisseur

Rob Wolfe, “Other College Initiatives Under Examination,” Valley News (3 December 2017):

Mills also said at the meeting that officials were looking into establishing a public-private partnership to build a new biomass power plant, “essentially funding (the plant) without using our capital.”
Dartmouth’s 119-year-old power plant in the center of town currently burns No. 6 fuel oil, which is incompatible with college plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050.
Officials have said that a new biomass plant would not fit in the footprint of the current fuel oil plant off East Wheelock Street, but where that facility would go — assuming it’s ever commissioned — is still up in the air.
From the same article:

Public-private partnerships also may allow the school to build new graduate student housing, Mills said at the meeting. Graduate students living in college-owned apartments off North Park Street recently were displaced by an unusually large undergraduate first-year class, he noted, and this could help alleviate an existing space crunch.
Excellent photos and a thorough article on the new Ravine Lodge: Jim Collins, “Welcome to the Woods,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (January-February 2018).
A Valley News article on the College Park/Shattuck petition.
A college news release of November 5, 2017:

The board heard an update from KPMB Architects, designers of the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society building. The College intends for the building to be a hub of collaboration for students and faculty as Dartmouth works to produce the next generation of human-centered energy experts. Board members approved funding $6.5 million to complete the design phase, with a specific focus on modifications to the building’s exterior. The funding comes from gifts and capital renewal reserves.
Other capital projects were discussed, including ongoing renovations to Dana Hall and the Hood Museum of Art, site investigation work for additional undergraduate student housing, and preliminary design proposals for an enhanced rowing training facility.
New images of the Thayer School/Computer Science Building are out. These add detail to the images already released. It is hard to tell without a plan, but the Busytown sectional view seems to be looking west through a north-south slice?
The Valley News reports on a big new downtown addition to the rear of the Bridgman Building, designed by UK Architects.
A conceptual site plan of Kendal’s suburban 40-apartment expansion on the Rivercrest property.

Planning the western part of campus

Posted on 17.11.2016 by Regisseur

In September the college released a framework plan for potential construction around the professional schools (news release, story in The D). The plan, by Beyer Blinder Belle, elaborates on that firm’s earlier master plan for the campus.

The plan shows several future buildings. One is the upcoming Thayer School/Computer Science building, on the site of the Thayer parking lot (new images released). Another is the Irving Institute building in front of the Murdough Center (some details released). The designer of the Irving Institute is KPMB Architects, a Canadian firm: the school’s press release notes that each of the firm’s three partners is a member or officer of the Order of Canada. The plan also shows the demolition of the final two River Cluster dormitories, although the school has not selected a site for the replacement beds yet.

It is good to hear that the planning involves the “consideration of the aesthetics of future buildings and improvements to signage.” The future buildings depicted in the plan image do seem to perpetuate the oddly suburban bias noted in the original BBB master plan, however.

Lisa Hogarty, at the time the Vice President of Campus Planning (The D), said that “This plan creates a route from the Green to the river and adds new community green space.” The new route to the River is shown in the illustration and includes a ped-bike bridge over the cemetery. The “new community green space” is presumably an improvement of the existing “Whittemore Green” behind Thayer School. Some work has been done here, but it still feels a bit like leftover space, the grassy area in the middle of the asphalt turnaround.

A better image of the future Engineering/CS building

Posted on 01.10.2016 by Regisseur

OPDC has a project page for the new Thayer School building with an image from this point of view (Google Street View).

The building will occupy the Thayer parking lot and connect to MacLean by a two-level glass bridge. Wilson Architects is designing the building (MacLean is by Koetter, Kim).

Breweries, Fullington Farm demo, suspension railways, etc.

Posted on 18.09.2016 by Regisseur

The Valley News reports that the Norwich Historic Preservation Commission was named the Commission of the Year by the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions.
Prolific N.H. beer blogger Adam Chandler posts a short but positive review of a new brewery in WRJ, the River Roost. It’s less than a quarter-mile down South Main from the original Catamount Brewery, sadly missed. (Some friends and I built a website for Catamount as a class project in the Spring of 1995, but I don’t think we ever showed it to the company. And it’s good to see the venerable Seven Barrel Brewery still going; we ate there five times the first week it was open.)
It is interesting that the new plaque at Memorial Field (Flickr photo), which kinda quotes Richard Hovey’s line “The hill-winds know their name,” honors alums who: (a) [have] “served,” (b) “are serving,” or (c) “will serve their country.” Although it’s not clear why “have served” is not sufficient to cover everyone, especially since the only names known to the hill winds are those of alums who have striven, fought, and died, the implicit inclusion of international students in their home countries is a nice touch. (It almost reminds one of the memorial at New College, Oxford, to the German members who died in WWI; Trinity College, Oxford, created its own memorial listing the German and Austrian members who gave their lives “for their country” in that war just last year.)
ORL (as of last spring?) is now organizing its dorm info pages according to House Communities instead of the old clusters. Thus we have West true to purple, South in black, etc. Each page presents one of the nice Burakian aerials.

There are still apparently no authentic pages by the House members themselves, not even rogue pages — although the Houses do have members. Let’s get with it, people!
The Valley News reported on Dartmouth’s demolition of the Fullington Farmhouse north of town. Here’s how it looked in context (view south toward town):
Sheldon Pennoyer Architects, PLLC of Concord designed the new Dartmouth Coach bus terminal in Lebanon, on the site of the Cadillac dealership on Labombard Road. Construction is by North Branch. See also the Valley News.
Beekeeping at the Orgo Farm is the subject of a news item.
The Dartmouth has a story on a recent celebration of the history of Dartmouth Broadcasting.
Courtyard Café employees will be driving a new food truck “to support programs and activities associated with the House systems” according to the Campus Services newsletter (pdf). The truck will accept only DBA payments (sounds good) and will be available only on nights other than Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (??).
The medical and other waste that the college and hospital buried at Rennie Farm years ago continues to cause problems (Valley News overview, cleanup announcement).
Neighbors continue to object to the plans for an athletic fieldhouse behind Thompson Arena. As reported by the Valley News, neighbors withdrew their zoning challenge during June but the controversy continues.
Back in 2009 Dartmouth Engineer Magazine published an interesting article called “Thayer in the Landscape” that depicted engineering projects by alumni around the world.
According to the Mac website Six Colors, the least popular emoji depicts a suspension railway. While passing through Wuppertal, Germany, this summer, I observed that city’s suspension railway, and boy is it fantastic. Wuppertal is a long city in the valley of the winding Wupper River, and the route of the elevated railway is established by the river itself rather than by the street network. The track is hung beneath pairs of great 19th-century metal legs that straddle the river. Here is a Street View showing the track along the river:

Here is a view with a train coming along the river:

The stations (old and new) also must straddle the river and essentially take the form of bridges.

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[Update 09.18.2016: Tuck School expansion item removed for use in future post.]

End Tuck Mall Now!

Posted on 16.09.2016 by Regisseur

The website of the new Irving Institute has a page called “Creating the Institute” that says:

The Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society will be housed in a new building on the west end of campus, between the Tuck School of Business and Thayer School of Engineering.

Further down, the page says that “Its physical location in front of the Murdough Center adds a prominent new facade to Tuck Drive.”

How about that? Perhaps Baker Library will finally have an appropriate formal counterpart to terminate the Tuck Mall axis, something this website has been demanding — stridently! — for more than 20 years (pdf).

A task force plans to select an architect and begin construction during June of 2018.

New faculty houses, etc.

Posted on 11.08.2016 by Regisseur

Fascinating and unexpected historic New Hampshire mica mine for sale: Eagle Tribune.
Bora (formerly Boora) Architects have put up a couple new images and larger versions of their old ones for the Hopkins Center expansion. The new porte-cochere, which would tear down Harrison’s stone wall and put up a transparent box with a glass “curtain” wall, is striking for the literalism of its opening-up of the Hop. The new reference to the project as “unbuilt” is troubling.
The Valley News reports on a Cambodian food truck that serves Hanover.
Big Green Alert reports on the plaque honoring Kathy Slattery Phillips in the new press box at Memorial Field.
Dartmouth Now reports that the board of trustees, at its Commencement meeting,

affirmed plans to proceed with the renovation and expansion of the Hood Museum of Art. The trustees also voted to approve $10 million for construction of the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge and $22 million to build a new indoor athletics practice facility. Each of these projects will be funded through private gifts to Dartmouth.
One of the goals of the current Thayer School fundraising campaign (Dartmouth Now):

Construct a 180,000-square-foot building, which will nearly double the school’s total floor space. The building, to be located directly south of the MacLean Engineering Sciences Center, will provide more space for classroom teaching and experiential learning, with an emphasis on Thayer’s growing efforts in design and research priorities in energy technology and engineering-in-medicine.
The Town of Orford celebrated the 250th anniversary of its founding with a reading of its charter on the East Common (Here in Hanover).
The Rauner Library Blog reports on a time capsule from 1977 that contained a can of Miller High Life. The can was kept in the archives but had to be drained recently.
Thanks to the U.Va. School of Architecture for including the Campus Guide in its 2016 Alumni Exhibit, on university living-learning environments.
The Valley News has a story on the Hartford Christian Camp. It sounds like a lovely place, and the kind of summertime experience that was common a century ago. In Charlottesville, Virginia, a similar camp has been incorporated into the city and its surviving cottages have become year-round houses:
U.Va. has a collection of campus then/now photos.
The Dartmouth has an article on the school’s architecture studio.
Big Green Alert reports on the new FieldTurf at Memorial Field.
Volunteers in Meriden are digitizing the E.H. Baynes slide archive, the Valley News reports. Baynes was the conservationist and traveling lecturer who, at a talk in Webster Hall during the early 1900s, suggested that Dartmouth students raise money to save the bison and adopt the animal as their mascot.
Green Building Advisor has a detailed look at the construction of the four new modular houses being installed for faculty as part of the “house communities” plan. The school has a video update on the construction. Big Green Alert has earlier and later photos of the tensile “community” building that now stands by Davis Varsity House.
It is common these days for sportswear companies to design team uniforms, logos, and mascots. For the British team at the 2016 Olympics, Adidas worked with both the College of Arms (England) and the Lord Lyon King of Arms (Scotland) to create a coat of arms that would be conferred by a dual grant (College of Arms news).

More on the viaduct

Posted on 19.05.2016 by Regisseur

This extension of Hanover’s historic street grid will carry Cemetery Lane across the Dartmouth Cemetery.

Generally

It is hard to resist calling it a bridge “to Thayer School.” If a Thayer parking deck ever goes in, visitors to campus will park there, and so this really will be a bridge “to the college.” The Thayer end of the viaduct will be the gateway to the college:

One could even imagine a brick tower, or a towering gate, at that spot, serving as both an entranceway and a landmark:

Old Town bridge tower, Prague, Meacham photo

Old Town bridge tower, Charles Bridge, Prague

Grove Street Cemetery gate, New Haven, Meacham photo

Grove Street Cemetery gate, New Haven, Ct.

The Egyptian mode would be especially appropriate here, since the viaduct crosses a cemetery and Dartmouth has a sort of Egyptian thing going on (Sphinx, the Brace Commons pyramid, Amarna). The college motto would be a good thing to put above the gateway, because the visitor will be entering a wilderness of sorts, up in the trees.

Then this will be the new welcome for visitors after they come through the cemetery:

Not bad, but obviously a back entrance at the moment.

The footings

The footings will probably be minimalist, even spidery, to avoid landing in graves. (Incidentally, do they have a plan for what to do when they find unmarked graves?)

If the footings are bulked up and built of masonry, they could really announce themselves and interact with existing monuments (see this article on graves under the bridge at Montmartre in Paris for an idea). The bridge piers could even be rendered as obelisks and given plaques or inscriptions — as cenotaphs — although that would become hokey very quickly.

The structure

The deck should be wide enough for bicyclists and pedestrians to pass. There might be a need for rules about bikes.

The designers could do a nice elegant truss, not just a set of steel girders like Bartlett Hall’s rear stair (Street View).
Could the school get a set of beautiful green trusses from a historic rail or highway bridge that is being replaced somewhere in the Northeast? The trusses could be placed end-to-end and the decks hung off the sides; this could be a little museum of engineering.

Or the viaduct could refer to the ski jump, built by the Boston Bridge Company: see this simple profile drawing, in a Rauner Blog post on the ski jump.

This does not seem like the place to use a state-park style boardwalk bridge. The site seems to demand something permanent and monumental in form if not in scale. It would be better to err on the side of the depressing than the cheerful.

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[Update 08.06.2016: It turns out that Robert Fletcher, who singlehandedly brought Gen. Thayer’s idea for a school into being (Lee Michaelides, “In the Beginning,” Dartmouth Engineer Magazine), is buried in the Cemetery.]

Dartmo.

The Buildings of Dartmouth College

Category Archives: Thayer School