Dartmo.

The explosion of online universities makes the contemplation of the future American college campus an interesting and fruitful proposition.

The variety of online institutions is impressive. One the one hand, there is the vast and partly-physical University of Phoenix, whose Peter Eisenman/Populous University of Phoenix Stadium was not actually made for intercollegiate athletics. On the other hand, there is the little “Yorktown University,” which runs courses for high-school students and grants credits for “life experiences” from a rented office above a Denver tanning salon. (The founder’s “Today in History” calendar doesn’t suggest that an intellectual environment prevails even there, since it credits Joseph Conrad with the authorship of The Red Badge of Courage — by Stephen Crane.) The costs saved by avoiding a physical campus would seem to allow these virtual schools to take considerable business away from traditional colleges.

It is also popular to say that the traditional college will not vanish entirely. Some students who value the old-fashioned ways will always exist, and “there will always be a Harvard.” I would go one step further: in line with the rule, attributed to Ferry Porsche, that the last car ever built will be a sports car, one could predict that the last university to survive will be a “real” one, not an online institution.

Real-world schools are developing their grounds more intensely and planning them more thoughtfully than they have in decades. Along with the maturation of the “virtual” university, any school that has a spatial presence and a sense of place seems to be making its physical campus even more of a selling point. The standards for campus design continue to rise, and university planners these days are expressly incorporating the neo-traditional principles of the New Urbanism (see also the Congress for the New Urbanism; some argue that it was only university planners that kept these principles alive for the city during the Dark Ages of Modernist planning).

Fascinating plans, for example, continue to come out of the office Michael Dennis & Associates, famous for its Classical and traditionalist Carnegie Mellon plan, a plan that is just as notable for the fact that much of it actually got built. The firm’s 2004 master plan for Texas A&M (under Projects, also depicted at the school’s master planning site) is worth viewing and comparing to what exists today [pdf]. No one knows how much pressure A&M is feeling from online competitors, but it is clear that its campaign to reclaim vast expanses of empty space is much more than simply “beautification.”

Dartmouth Heating Plant

The trend these days seems to be for colleges to drop coal (and probably oil, which is what powers Dartmouth’s plant) and go with natural gas, as at Cornell, or biomass, as at Middlebury.

From a planning standpoint alone, a new heating plant would be beneficial for Dartmouth. It would allow the Studio Art department to colonize the well-worn but supremely adaptable old heating plant. Assuming that a steam plant works as well at one end of the line as the other, Dartmouth could build an up-to-date replacement in what might be called the development zone north of the Life Sciences Center, an area that arguably should be developed densely and like a town, not like a campus.

Dartmouth is pragmatic enough that it might do a new heating plant as a metal shed. But because this is a gateway to campus, and for art’s sake, Dartmouth should have an interesting architect do it. No need to cite the great power plants through history, just look at this chiller plant at Chicago:

• Architectural Record.

• A.I.A. Chicago.

This is not to say that Hanover needs a building that looks like one by Murphy/Jahn, only that the utilitarian parts of campus could stand to be invested with some artistry.

The Dartmouth reports that the freestanding Class of 1953 Commons and the Thayer Dining Hall replacement, projects that have been on hold for about a year and a half, have both been canceled. The funds raised for 53 Commons will fund the renovation of the original Thayer Hall instead.

Dartmouth has frequently wrestled with the question of whether to have a single main dining hall or a widely-scattered group of two or more dining halls. Commons in College Hall was the only dining hall from 1901 to 1937, when Thayer Dining Hall opened. But Thayer was just across the street from Commons, and connected by a tunnel — the centrality remained.

Thayer Dining Hall

About ten years ago, Dartmouth decided to put a new dining hall at the north end of campus as the centerpiece of a group of new dormitories and a polar counterpart to Thayer (see the North Campus Master Plan). Moore Ruble Yudell with Bruner/Cott designed the building, which was to be called the Class of 1953 Dining Commons and can be seen in a series of sketches from the spring of 2007.

Detail of photo of model of 53 Commons, designed by Moore Ruble Yudell with Bruner/Cott, from 1953 Commons Sketches

This building and a temporary dining hall were to relieve pressure from Thayer so that Thayer could be demolished and replaced by a building designed by Kieran Timberlake. Known in the collegiate context for spare stone dormitories and a glass-walled dining hall at Middlebury, Kieran Timberlake considered renovating Thayer in its Basis of Design (November 3, 2006). The firm’s final proposal involved the complete replacement of Thayer with a new building set back from Mass Row.

Detail of planning alternate 1a from Kieran Timberlake Basis of Design

The firm produced preliminary designs (The Dartmouth) before Dartmouth put the project on hold in the spring or summer of 2008.

Some concern over what appeared to be the Thayer Replacement’s poor preservation practice was expressed here. So although one wishes the circumstances were otherwise, it is good to see that Thayer will survive. No mention has been made of who will handle the renovation, but judging from their stylish renovations of Davenport and Pierson Colleges at Yale, Kieran Timberlake could produce a very interesting design.

[Update 01.17.2010: Both the article in the D and the press release note that Thayer will be renamed the Class of 1953 Commons. The release also emphasizes the preservation aspect and notes that work will begin this summer and end in 2011.]

The Planning Board’s hearing of the VAC plans was delayed, and the Valley News gave the sense that some town residents wanted the Board to step outside its role and begin acting as an architectural review commission. But approval was not seriously in doubt when the hearing did take place (The Dartmouth, Valley News).

Town residents’ opposition seems to be consistently varied: some say the building is too urban, some not urban enough (or is inconsistent with the new-urbanist town plan). Some say it is too modern, some say it is not modern (or original) enough. The most interesting quote in the VN story is the criticism that the building is “a shameless copy of architecture that has existed in this country for decades.” Those words are usually used against traditional styles such as neo-Georgian (sometimes “pseudo-Georgian”) architecture as seen in buildings like Brewster Hall, which is being demolished for the Visual Arts Center.

The Dartmouth reports on the $2.8m renovation of the President’s House on Webster Avenue. President-Elect Kim and his family will live at 6 Rope Ferry Road house until the work ends. The project is not on the OPDC’s projects page or the capital projects schedule (pdf).

Here’s a thought: since the house’s location on Webster Avenue has always been a drawback, why not use the house for some appropriate institute, or sell it for use as a new Edgerton House? It would be close to Aquinas House and the Roth Center. A new President’s House could be built on Choate Road in place of Brown Hall. Its public face on the road would respect the other large houses there, while its academic face would look directly down the Mass Row axis. It would be quieter and yet more connected to the College.

The Dartmouth reports that Linda Snyder, Harvard’s associate dean for physical resources and planning, is the new (and first) Chief Facilities Officer at Dartmouth. This position is novel because Snyder will head not only the Office of Planning, Design & Construction (formerly the Facilities Planning Office) but also the [Department of] Facilities[,] Operations & Management (formerly Buildings & Grounds).

Dartmouth’s new Senior Vice President and Strategic Advisor, Steven Kadish, received a Master of City Planning degree from MIT in 1982 according to the news release.

Engineer Richard D. Kimball and his firm helped design Dartmouth’s Heating Plant and original network of steam pipes in the mid-1890s. It turns out that RDK Engineers is still around and claims that its project at Dartmouth was the first underground steam distribution system in the country.

The 2001 Arts Center Infrastructure Analysis (pdf) by Rogers Marvel with Ove Arup suggests that the heat plant eventually move to Dewey Field, north of the Medical School.  That would allow the Hood Museum or other arts functions to take over the old plant building.

Although Dartmouth’s proposed acquisition of the high school would have deprived the town of an important element, it would have given the College a large tract of land very close to the campus. Part of the property was already in the form of sports fields, and the high school itself always seemed like it could make a good rugby clubhouse. The swap did not go through.

An unreleased proposal from a few years ago shows that someone was at least thinking of using the property for a new baseball field (putting something like Biondi Park there would have allowed Centerbrook to expand Alumni Gym) and, more interestingly, for faculty or graduate student housing. The ranks of buildings were to stand next to St. Denis Church.

Excerpt of plan from Bagnoli presentation

The plan appears in a 2007 presentation (pdf) by architect David Bagnoli of the Washington, D.C. firm of Cunningham | Quill and might have been created by that firm.

What is most remarkable about this plan is that it nearly replicates a housing development that once stood on the same site, the wartime Sachem Village (it was the precursor to the present Sachem Village). A nice aerial of this original Sachem Village appears on page 90 of Frank Barrett’s latest book, Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover.

Thumbnail of portion of page 90 in Early Dartmouth College and Downtown Hanover

References to these still-vague proposals appear in Dartmouth’s recent master plans:

• The Hanover Bypass: A new interchange for Interstate 91 south of Norwich would send a new bridge across the Connecticut, leading to a road through the woods to Route 120 near the DHMC. This would allow hospital and Lebanon traffic to avoid the corner of Main and Wheelock. Dartmouth and the hospital own most of the land along the route, which lies in Lebanon, and seem likely to favor a bypass. The Town of Lebanon does not appear to favor it.
• The Bartlett Hall Addition: An extension to the east, at least, toward the Sphinx, would occupy a site with plenty of room, some of it a vacant lot left by Culver Hall. The road could be eliminated or moved eastward. Bartlett is extremely distinctive and picturesque, and any addition would have to answer the question of style right away.
• College Park Gates: this idea is from Saucier & Flynn’s landscape master plan. The College Park once had a design language of its own, although it is difficult to tell whether it was more Victorian iron curlicues or Victorian bark-covered sticks, as in the Adirondacks. At any rate, College Park does not seem like a red-brick Georgian place. The plan also suggests bringing College Park down to Wheelock Street, at least by reference. It would be nice to connect the Sphinx, which seems like an island, to the park itself.

[Update 10.10.2008: Replaced Route 10A with Route 120.]

The designs for Memorial Field’s West Stand or the replacement for Thayer Dining Hall have not been revealed, but a few smaller items of interest have come out over the past few months:

• Construction of the ’78 Life Science Center began in early September, notes the OPDC, after the Occom Pond Neighborhood Association’s appeal of Hanover’s zoning permission was dismissed (press release). A webcam shows the site when it’s light out.
• The reconstruction of Rolfe Field and the construction of the surrounding Biondi Park have been delayed by site conditions, quoted Jim Hunter of Clark Construction Company: “Dartmouth is just so old that you never know what you’re going to
  find underneath the ground.” When students were digging trenches in the area during World War I, they found an old house foundation.

• Moore Ruble Yudell has a page up for the North Campus master plan. It is under work > campus > planning > north campus on the firm’s website.
• A huge amount of effort has gone into building a sprawling housing development near the hospital at Gile Hill, and into making it not seem like affordable housing (site map). The project was designed by Gossens Bachman Architects of Montpelier, designers of the Rock of Ages Corporation Visitor Center and of a design for the Vermont Granite Museum.

Over the last decade, Dartmouth’s planners have concluded that the College must expand northward onto the Golf Course relatively soon. See, for example, the 2001 Master Plan, page 11 (pdf).

The latest 2001 plan tentatively suggests a location for the new road that would be required to make this expansion possible. The road would run from the Medical School/Dewey Field, cut through Dewey Hill, and head to the northwest to provide building sites on the very edge of — or actually on top of — the 17th hole of the Golf Course.

Rough compilation of maps suggesting route of golf course road north of Medical School, with potential building sites indicated by solid red dots; Baker at lower left

The buildings on this road would lie beyond the 10-minute walking radius that Dartmouth takes for granted as defining its pedestrian campus. The road, which would traverse fairly steep slopes, seems likely to go nowhere and to lack a connection to either Rope Ferry or Lyme Road. Because this development would focus on a paved thoroughfare instead of an architectural space, as all of Dartmouth’s most successful expansions do, it seems likely to be suburban in character — more Centerra than Tuck Mall.

Such an expansion would only seem inevitable if one were to begin with the premise that the existing campus is “full.” That premise cannot be accurate. Dartmouth should do everything possible to prevent it from becoming accurate. There are still plenty of places to add to existing buildings or erect new ones near the center of campus. Many of these sites contained buildings in the past or have been the subjects of building proposals dating to the 1920s:

Unsolicited master plan showing approximate sites to be built upon in preference to Golf Course; the only demolition required is in the Choates

Dartmouth should replicate existing densities before it expands in ways that are suburban, needlessly university-like, or simply cause the College to spread too far from the Green.

[Update 02.06.2010: Although campuslike development beyond the walking radius should be avoided, townlike development is desirable.]

The Planning arm of the OPDC has expanded its Web content lately. Now there are historic maps and aerial photos available. The College Planner, Joanna Whitcomb, even has a blog.

Most interesting is the very extensive file of planning documents of the last decade. There are some remarkable items here:

Machado & Silvetti’s 2006 presentation on the Visual Arts Center to the Board of Trustees (pdf);

Kieran Timberlake’s 2006 Basis of Design for the Thayer Dining Hall Replacement (pdf) (good news: at least at the time of that presentation, the demolition of South Fairbanks was not part of the proposal; instead the architects presented a clever plan to close the south end of Mass Row and loop vehicles from Wheelock Street behind the church and back to the street);

Saucier & Flynn’s 2007 Landscape Master Plan (pdfs) (interesting proposal to establish a public square or plaza between Leverone and Thompson)

Centerbrook’s SLI study (pdf) (including intersting things reported but not shown on line in the late 1990s, such as an idea for a building to join Collis, Robinson, and Thayer; and the big building idea that led to Floren);

Photos of a model of the ’53 Commons pdf) emphasizing the glassy tower;

Dartmouth’s 2002 Master Plan (pdf (which mentions the idea of building a regional conference center, probably not in town; the Trustees’ long-held goal of demolishing the entire River Cluster; the one-time consideration of building an off-site commissary to serve all dining halls; the idea of putting a parking garage on the lot next to Cummings; and, strangest of all, the rejection of a proposal to move Thayer School to Lyme Road!).

The Dartmouth has an article on the completion of the construction of the landscape between Berry Library and Maynard Street following a design by Richard Burck Associates (select Works in Progress). The set of grass-topped concrete terraces originally specified was replaced by a less-formal grassy bowl.

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.

As the irregular grassy plot in front of the River Cluster becomes better defined and and is transformed into a front door to the Tuck School (through the school’s Whittemore Hall), the space needs a name.

Landscape architects Saucier & Flynn have mentioned “Whittemore Green” in town planning meetings (pdf).

The campus map released in February now shows Fahey-McLane and other new campus projects, as well as the new commercial buildings of the South Block, below South Street.

Harvard’s campus map, probably because it is not required to show accessible entrances and parking lots, seems to have a bit more visual appeal.

Princeton has a master plan that is very well illustrated with maps. Unlike many master plans, it gets right to the details and shows specific sites for future buildings, at least those planned for the near future.

A major theme of campus planning in the early twentieth century seems to be the redevelopment by a college or university of a large discontiguous tract. Whether for purposes that are mostly or partly non-academic, the common characteristic is the form: a treelined urban grid, not an academic campus of connected grassy spaces. The South Block project in Hanover (purchased 1998, redeveloped 2005-2007) is one example. Penn has its parcel, Columbia is pursuing its huge work north of its campus (see Plan NYC; pdf map), Yale just purchased a suburban pharmaceutical research park, and Harvard is beginning its Allston redevelopment (map; aerial rendering; Globe article). Allston might be the largest of the group, and it is meant to be “sustainable.”

[Update 11.17.2007: An August article by Jeff Stahl in Urban Land (pdf) covers this trend.]

Dartmouth’s steam tunnel continues to stretch northward. A thumbnail sketch:

• From Heating Plant along the Green to the Berry site (mid-1990s)
• From Berry site up Berry Row to Moore (around 1998)
• From Moore, tap into historic hospital tunnel network to reach Kellogg Auditorium and adjoining chiller plant (early 2000s?)
• From Kellogg, run northward behind Medical School to future Life Sciences Building site (2007).