Dartmo.

The Dartmouth has an interesting report on sports medicine at the college. First, it is intriguing that the sports medicine staffers fall under the direction of Health Services rather than the Athletic Department. Second, the Athletic Department is looking to have a training building built:

The Athletic Department and Health Services are currently considering the possibility of creating larger training rooms where the sports medicine staff can work together, which may be realized within the next two years, Galbraith said. This would ideally involve not just an expansion of the current training rooms inside Davis Varsity House, but the construction of an entirely new facility near Scully-Fahey Field — creating two “hubs” for the sports medicine program, Turco said.

Wouldn’t this be a natural function to combine with the indoor practice facility? Is that why the Scully-Fahey area is proposed? If not, one good place to put the training rooms would be the site next to Davis Varsity House:

Potential sites for a training building: west of Davis Varsity House, and near Scully-Fahey (based on a Bing aerial).

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[Update 09.08.2012: Even though the western (tennis court) site is right next to the gym, it is reserved by the 2002 master plan for academic uses because it is so close to the center of campus. That makes sense.]

That pdf from the Massachusetts Building Congress last month states that the construction of an Indoor Practice Facility is expected. Construction projects will total $900 million over the next five years, according to the materials.

Based on the Big Green Alert Blog report that “Dartmouth is pushing for a ‘hard-sided’ indoor practice facility” as opposed to an inflatable structure, this might be a proper fieldhouse. Chase Fields seems a likely site:

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to BGA fixed.]

The softball team opened its new ballpark with a win over Penn on the 6th (Dartmouth Sports, Sports Weekly, Valley News, Dartmouth Now).

The new softball park is two fields back from the Food Co-Op, in the southeast corner of the rapidly-filling Chase Fields complex. It is smaller than but very similar to Biondi Park, the recent baseball park, and it looks impressive in the photo in the Dartmouth Sports post.

The new softball diamond at Chase Fields is going ahead (Dartmouth Now, Valley News, Big Green Alert Blog).

As the image at Dartmouth Now shows, the new grandstand and dugout complex will be extremely similar to that of Red Rolfe Field (OPDC plans).

A graphical article based on research by Barbara Krieger in the July/August Alumni Magazine nicely covers a larger exhibit in the History Room in Baker. It is good to see the site for the amphitheater named as Murdough rather than the Bema, which is the site that that drawing is usually said to describe.

One or two quibbles: the 1931 courtyard Inn on page 53 was meant not not the Robinson Hall area but for the Spaulding Auditorium site, as is shown on the exhibit’s Dartmouth House Plot Plan. The gateway shown in the Larson drawing would have faced east, and Lebanon Street is depicted on the left of the drawing. (The main block of the current Inn was completed in 1967 rather than 1887.)

The focus on the Dartmouth Hall cupola is a bit of a wild goose chase. The plans depicted are by William Gamble and show a masonry building that was never built. Dartmouth Hall was built from some other plans, long since lost, that almost certainly showed a cupola. Those plans might or might not have been by Gamble and probably were not by Peter Harrison. (The cupola that Tucker admired was probably a somewhat different midcentury replacement for the original.)

Here is an image that did not make it into the article, a pre-Leverone proposal for a field house by Eggers & Higgins:

Wow. That is a view to the southeast from above the gym. South Park Street runs behind the field house, and the field in the upper right corner is the site of the later Leverone Field House.

The article quotes Eisenhower on “what a college ought to look like.” Conan O’Brien recently paraphrased this commentary while adding something of his own:

It’s absolutely beautiful here, though. It is the quintessential college cam-… American college campus. It does look like a movie set.

(Video, at 1:27.)

The Dartmouth reports that a new varsity softball field will be built in the southeast corner of Chase Field:

The Valley News story on the softball field includes an interesting tale about the standing but unused WDCR radio tower:

That transmitter became obsolete several years ago when construction of the nearby field hockey facility inadvertently destroyed in-ground coils needed for broadcast.

Since the accident, WDCR has broadcast exclusively on line. Information on the station’s fiftieth anniversary in 2008 is worth linking to again.