Yale is preparing to build a new residential college, and the Yale Alumni Magazine has an article called “Your Dream College Here” (March/April 2008). Many students and alumni appear to oppose any new college as a threat to Yale’s sense of community (even though that community, for most, seems to derive from loyalty to one’s own residential college) or on the basis of the particular site chosen for this complex.

The University of Durham, rebranded in 2005 as Durham University, is probably the third-oldest university in England (1832) and has a multi-sport competition with the Oxbridge schools called the Doxbridge Tournament. The university comprises a federation of residential colleges in the center of the city, including one in the ancient castle itself, possibly the most fantastic site for a college anywhere in the world. The nominal head of the university is its Chancellor, Bill Bryson, a former Hanover-area resident.

The College’s real estate arm has posted news of its large New-Urbanist housing redevelopment up by the Rugby Clubhouse and Pat & Tony’s. It will take the name of the prior housing tract of the early 1960s, Rivercrest.

According to a list by City-Data.com, the cities over 5,000 people with the highest percentage of people walking to work are (predictably) small places centered around a military base, a college, or some combination of the two:

1. West Point, N.Y. (pop. 7,138): 57.7%
2. Air Force Academy, Colo. (pop. 7,526): 56.3%
3. Fort Gordon, Ga. (pop. 7,754): 53.0%
4. Twentynine Palms Base, Cal. (housing, pop. 8,413): 48.0%
5. Lackland AFB, Tex. (pop. 7,123): 47.4%
6. Hanover, N.H. (pop. 8,162): 47.2%

The list lends support to the general sense that city planning conducted by a relatively authoritarian central body creates superior places.

In some ways it is surprising to see Hanover on the list, since the story of Dartmouth’s growth over the last 30 years is that of faculty moving out, the “Hanoverizing” of Lyme and Norwich, the creation of school-supported suburbs such as Centerra and Grasse Road, and so on.

(Other tidbits from the website’s lists: The towns in the four zip codes with the lowest crime are named Sleepy Hollow, Pleasantville, Economy, and Prospect. The city over 50,000 with the lowest average temperature is Anchorage, at 34.3 degrees F, which handily beats Duluth and Fargo and a surprising number of cities in Arizona. It is probably a quirk of the zip code divisions in Fairbanks that prevents that city from appearing on the list.)

Engineering Ventures of Burlington is working on a Satellite Parking Facility for about 400 cars on the suburban Route 10A east of Hanover.

New details about the museum’s storage building are available from the OPDC. Although it is still not clear where the building will stand, it will be designed by Maine’s Harriman Associates.

ORW Landscape Architects & Planners of Norwich provide, among their transportation design examples, information about a project for Hanover: a set of street standards that fits with the Brook McIlroy plan.

The site includes drawings of a reworked south entrance into town (note the commercial building in the parking lot of Grand Union/CVS, as Brook McIlroy suggested); an eastern welcome by Memorial Field focused on a proposed corner tower and building on the very important site where the FO&M buildings are now; and two proposed street sections, one for Lebanon street with Brook McIlroy’s wide sidewalks for cafe seating.

The firm has also done a riverfront park design study, a trail plan, and a suburban development proposal in Lebanon, a proposal for corridor enchancements in Norwich, and a proposal for new buildings in downtown White River.

Dartmouth’s design office updated its complete list of projects in December (pdf). Renovations of New Hampshire Hall and the Inn are in the works, along with the creation or upgrading of a multipurpose sports field.

Dartmouth has also bought and is renovating the neighboring houses at 25 and 27 South Park Street and plans to rent each one to a sorority. Alpha Xi Delta will move from Webster Avenue, where it has rented the Beta Theta Pi House, and Alpha Phi will occupy a house for the first time, The Dartmouth reports. Both have been identified as designs of Jens Larson.

This is the front (west) facade of number 25.

This is number 27. To the right at number 29 is Fire & Skoal, also a Larson design.

The houses screen Thompson Arena.

The Hanover Country Club no longer uses its ski jump logo, and it seems to have adopted the pine from Dartmouth’s Bicentennial flag, as the Club’s home page indicates.

The jump was demolished in 1993, and there is a plaque on its site.

The Maloney Building, designed by U.K. Architects, has opened across from the Howe.

The Hanover High complex, including the adjacent middle school, has reopened after a major Banwell renovation. The mechanical contractor has images (High School, more) and the Valley News has a story. The town improved the high school as an alternative to swapping the building with Dartmouth and building a new school north of town.

A news release explains the elaborate remaking of a 1960s Lord & Burnham greenhouse donated by the Cold Regions lab next door.

H. Kieth Wagner Partnership, Landscape Architects, has images of the South Block landscaping — paving, ramps, benches, plantings, outdoor seating, and so on.

The article on elms in Dartmouth Life has an interesting tidbit about town-gown negotiation: the College takes over the care of each elm that the Town has planted on a street that runs through the campus when the tree reaches “a certain stature.”

The Dartmouth reports on the use of the tower of the Church of Christ (the White Church) for a cell antenna. Dartmouth leases space on Fairchild Tower accross the street, as well as on the Inn, the article states. The article does not mention Baker Tower, although it must be taller than any of those buildings. Perhaps the tower’s profile and Stanley Orcutt’s weathervane are not suited to hosting antennas.

The Real Estate Office has a thorough database of College-owned rental properties, most of them historic houses.

Trumbull-Nelson has several stories (more, more) on the Black Senior Center (Tennant/Wallace Architects, 2003). At the corner of Lebanon and South Park Streets, this is Hanover’s Flat-Iron Building.

UK Architects designed a replacement building for insurance agency Maloney Associates at 12 East South Street, across from the Howe.

Landscape architects Winston Associates announced during 2004 (Internet Archive page) that Dartmouth had selected Winston and Wolff-Lyon to plan a 200-unit Sand Hill neighborhood that would include an integrated parking/transit transfer center.

Sand Hill does not seem to be a prominent landmark in Hanover or Lebanon. A Parking Committee Recommendation describes Sand Hill as an undeveloped site with room for 450 parking spaces, while the OPDC parking spreadsheet (Excel file) indicates that 300 new parking spots are expected to open in the Sand Hill Lot during fiscal year 2007.

The Boulder-based firm of Wolff Lyon Architects, which developed some of the guidelines for the massive redevelopment of Denver’s Stapleton Airport as a town, worked with Boulder landscape architects Winston Associates to complete a master plan for Dartmouth’s total reconstruction of its suburban Rivercrest housing development, north of CRREL and south of Kendal. This project, also known as Dresden Village in planning documents, seems to be taking a while in the town’s regulatory process.

(More on the firm from Wellington in Breckenridge, Colo. Is it coincidence that the master planner for Kendal at Hanover, adjacent Rivercrest, is another Boulder firm, Architecture Incorporated?)

[01.25.2007 Update: Winston link added.]