Dartmo.

• A nice reproduction of the famous photo of the burning of Dartmouth Hall is on line. This view to the southwest shows the rear of Dartmouth Hall, not the front. The photo seems to have been taken a moment after a large explosion — a smoke column is blasted horizontally from the northeast corner of the building at the second-floor level. Many of the students nearby are sprinting away, and some are turning to look back at the building.

• The Band is getting rid of its old style of uniform, a green wool blazer over a white turtleneck, white pants, and white tennis shoes. That combination seems to have lasted about 45 years.

• In August, the Planning Board talked in hypothetical terms of several potential development projects on Lyme Road, such as a tennis club north of the Chieftain (pdf), a golf course and country club around the junction of Lyme Road and Old Lyme Road (pdf), and others (pdf).

• The official traditions page is irritating not just because of the punctuation, the capitalization of “the HOP,” or the use of sentences like “It’s far different than [sic] you’re imagining.” Nor is it because of the claim that Homecoming was established in 1884, when Dartmouth Night didn’t even exist with or without a bonfire until 1895. No, it’s the statement that the school’s chartered mission is “… education of Indian youth … and also to educate English and others.” The Charter contains the true mission, which is “the education & instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes … and also of English Youth and any others.”

• An early-1960s photo of the Hop excavation looking southwest from around Wilson Hall.

• Ask Dartmouth has put up some interesting posts lately, covering the Lone Pine, with a super photo of College Hill probably taken from the steeple of the College Church; the Hinman Mail Center (what it doesn’t say is that the student mailboxes are called Hinman Boxes, and until the mid-1990s the USPS tolerated the use of HB numbers in mailing addresses); the pendulum in Fairchild; and Sanborn Tea, still 10 cents a cup.

• Rauner Library’s blog has too many interesting posts to keep up with. See, for example, the post on the color Dartmouth Green.

• The Hanover Improvement Society has a smaller membership and larger ambition than one might expect.

• The New Hampshire Good Roads Association of 1904 is a remarkable survivor from the pre-auto era, when bicyclists were the interest group demanding that the highways be smooth.

• The bus stop study (pdf) recommends the removal of the curb cuts at Hanover Park (Google Street View). Bravo. That building would be so much more inviting if it did not pretend to have its own driveway.

• Dartmouth and the Mac: The Valley News article about Apple products in Hanover doesn’t focus on Dartmouth’s long-time maintenance of a Mac-centric campus. The college turned its Mac expectation into a requirement for all entering students in 1991. That seems fairly early until one reads about Drexel selecting Apple in 1983 and requiring Macs as soon as they appeared in 1984 (Drexel’s Steve Jobs memorial events).

• The unpaved paths on Whittemore Green should be applauded (Street View).

• The lively Congregational Church building in Wilder (Olcott), Vermont was designed in 1889 by Edward Goss. Following a renovation, it has become the Charles T. Wilder Center (U.K. Architects, Trumbull-Nelson, Lyme Properties). Charles Wilder was a mill owner who also gave buildings to Wellesley and Dartmouth.

• The Center for Cartoon Studies in WRJ is moving into a new headquarters (Valley News). The Center’s students occasionally create or display works at Dartmouth.

• National Geographic Traveler ranks the Dartmouth Winter Carnival sixth among world carnivals. That is pretty good, considering. The number one carnival is Anchorage’s Fur Rendezvous. (My high school band was scheduled to play the Rondy parade but pulled out when cold weather was forecast. Why not just wear warm clothing? Because this was the one time in three years when we could wear our official uniforms. Why not just play out the windows of a bus? Because the last time the band had tried that, spectators had pelted the bus with snowballs all the way down Fourth Avenue: if they were going to stand around and watch a parade when it was 20 below, the least the band could do was actually march.)

• Women’s Hockey won at Fenway (!) recently (Valley News). Fenway’s paint color was described as “Dartmouth Green” in 1934, and that color seems to have been used when the Green Monster was first painted in 1947. The shade used on the Green Monster does seem to have been lightened since.

• Dartmouth Now has a piece on “cabinhopping.”

• New notice of old projects: Centerbrook’s Wilder Lab addition; Lavallee/Brensinger’s Red Rolfe Field and DHMC Patient Training & Safety Center remodeling, and Red Rolfe Field; and Truex Cullins’s Buchanan Hall alterations.

Download

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

About the Book

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

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

About this Project

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

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

[Update 12.21.2010: Link to pdf posted.]

Governor Wentworth signed Dartmouth’s charter — really more like its letters patent — on December 13, 1769. President Kim has made the 250th anniversary of this event in 2019 a sort of goal or endpoint for a ten-year budget process, such as in his October 26 faculty address (Vox), his presentation to the board at its fall meeting (The Dartmouth), and his December 1 financial presentation (pdf).

Although it is early to plan for the actual event, Professor Fischel’s letter to the editor of The Dartmouth suggests a new term: “quartomillennial” instead of “semiquincentennial.”

Former Librarian of the College and Dean of Libraries Edward Connery Lathem of the Class of 1951 died on May 15th (Vox). I never got the opportunity to meet him, but I remember seeing him working in Rauner and noticing the respect he received from everyone.

Since 1983, according to Vox, Lathem also held the title of Usher of Dartmouth College, one of the offices established by the Charter but not filled at the time or at any time people could remember. Lathem also revived the office of Steward at the time. One hopes the Board will consider appointing a new Usher to succeed Lathem, and a new Steward if that office is not occupied.

Hopland altered slightly.

Charter pages altered slightly.

North Campus updated.

Since the N.H. Legislature gave it the authority to amend its own charter, the Board of Trustees has voted to enlarge its numbers by more than a third, adding six new members to the sixteen existing.

Text of Dartmouth’s Charter with notes posted.