Dartmo.

A new group called DADA – Dartmouth Alumni in Design and Architecture has formed, and it’s holding an exhibition of work by alums from June 11 through June 19.

(Via Sue.)

• New Balance has put Dartmouth’s current midcentury coat of arms on the tongue of a pair of shoes in its Ivy League Collection (via the Big Green Alert Blog; there’s an article in The Dartmouth).
• Rauner’s blog has notable items on Cane Rush, Foley House, “the Glutton’s Spoon,” and the practice of “horning.”
• The Valley News has an article on the renovation of the 1890 Wilder Church. The church had a lot of Dartmouth associations early on and is another benefaction of Charles T. Wilder, donor of Dartmouth’s physics lab.
• Plan N.H. is the state’s “smart growth” group, and it gave a 2009 Merit Award to the South Block project.
• There is a photo of the Zantop Memorial Garden in Dartmouth’s Flickr photostream (story in The Dartmouth, dedication program). It looks like the garden finally resolves the former awkwardness of the slope in front of Richardson Hall: never a proper stone-walled terrace, but too extreme to plant with grass and try to ignore.
• The last remnant of Campion’s various long-lived stores on Main Street closed last fall (The Dartmouth, Valley News).
  
• The Dartmouth reports that the [flower-] painted panels in the ceiling of Thayer’s main dining room contained asbestos and are being removed.

[Update 01.22.2011: Links to shoe and horning articles added.]

The Six South Street Hotel has announced that it will open in February. See the exterior photo of the building under construction in September, two interior construction photos on the hotel’s blog, and an article in The Dartmouth.

[Update 01.22.2011: Link to article added.]

A Valley News article reports President Kim’s suggestion that Dartmouth host a national institute of the science of the delivery of health care. One imagines that it would accompany or expand upon the existing Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. That institute is scheduled to occupy the postponed future Koop Medical Science Complex at the south end of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (map).

If not located at the hospital, however, such an institute would make an excellent candidate for placement north of the medical school, even on the golf course. It would not require parking for patients; it would benefit from its proximity to downtown — walkable if not convenient enough for a student function — and yet it would be indisputably part of the college.

To allay the concerns expressed here last year, this building and any other buildings on the site should be made to follow the form of the town, not the campus. A grid of streets with sidewalks and buildings, rather than a network of curving driveways with lawns, would promote density while acknowledging that the college does not expect students to walk this far from the Green on a regular basis. The buildings would harmonize with the campus without pretending to be a part of it — much more South Block than McLaughlin Cluster.

The Institute for Security, Technology, and Society could move to the site, along with other administrative offices now at remote locations, such as the offices in the bank building on Main Street and the Development Office, which is in Centerra.

The perfect completion of such a plan would involve the Hanover Country Club House. The club has wanted a larger and more convenient clubhouse for several years. A new east-west connector street at the north end of this expansion project, crossing the south end of the golf course between Lyme Road to Rope Ferry Road, could provide an excellent site for such a building. The clubhouse would occupy the north side of this street, looking up the stretch of greensward; the south side of the street would be a densely-built wall representing the end of the urban development of Hanover. Compare the fascinating conditions of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

In Hanover, the clubhouse would stand on the north side of the northern cross-street, whichever was built:

Example of town-form development

[Update 02.06.2010: Map added.]

[Update 09.25.2010: With all this talk of buildings, it never occurred to me that the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science would be mostly on-line.]

The office building at 4 Currier Place, designed by Truex Cullins (project page) for the Dartmouth Real Estate office (rental page) is nearing completion. Guy C. Denechaud’s article in the Valley Business Journal notes that Dartmouth has not put this much office space on the market in years.

The Valley News article on President Wright’s retirement focuses on the South Block project as the most substantial sign of the College’s influence on the Town, and notes its success. The article also mentions that President Emeritus Wright will have an office in South Block.

The Dartmouth reports that Olympia’s planned “boutique” hotel will not be built but that the project has been handed off to another developer.

The Dartmouth reports on the completion of this large project, and Willy Black comments positively in the CV Spectator.

Construction on the hotel going in south of the Post Office (north of Umpleby’s on South Street) will begin in 2009. The building will have an underground garage.

Dartmouth’s Real Estate Office is finishing 68 South Main, the most prominent building in the South Block project. Its neighbor, the frame building in the drawing, is number 72.

The latest rendering of the hotel planned for South Street is an improvement over the plainer, more prefab first version.

“The Chimneys,” Ledyard Bank’s building at 2 Maple Street, is finished.

The Valley News recently noted that Dartmouth’s real estate office is planning to build a commercial building on Currier Place, which marks the eastern edge of the South Block project.

In an article on an unrelated topic, The Dartmouth published a photo of 68-72 South Main Street, which is the largest commercial building in South Block. The western (Main Street) facade occupies the right side of the photo.

The Dartmouth has reported and provided a brief on a three-level, 72-room hotel planned to open on South Street around 2010. It is not clear whether this is the Currier Street project above, but it does not seem to be. Olympia Development has a rendering of the hotel.

[Update 07.16.2008: These are two different projects. The Dartmouth Real Estate Office is building a commercial building at 4 Currier Street, diagonally opposite the northeast corner of the South Block.]

In general construction news, Guy C. Denechaud writes that “Projects Are Plentiful at Dartmouth College,” Valley Business Journal (April 7, 2008).

The Valley News reports that the fieldhouse at Burnham, called the Sports Pavilion, is open as the clubhouse for the soccer and lacrosse teams. The school will add an athletic trainers’ facility to the north side of the building in the future.

Alpha Theta is also working on repairs to comply with the Fuller Audit.

The Dartmouth reports that Bartlett Hall is being rehabilitated.

New Hampshire Hall’s exterior was photographed prior to the expansions that is under way now.

Vox notes that South Block will be completed this summer and has an updated perspective sketch of the corner building that will occupy the site of Big Green Cuts and Ramunto’s. Amazingly, seventy people will live within the block, which must be a dramatic increase from the population before the redevelopment.

The part of Hanover’s downtown that lies below South Street is changing rapidly.

A commercial building called The Chimneys (Randall T. Mudge & Associates, 2006-07) is being built at 2 Maple Street, behind the service station on South Main Street. Guy C. Denechaud wrote in an article in Valley Business Journal (April 6, 2007) that the main tenant of the three-level building will be the Ledyard National Bank‘s
investment offices. The building should open in December. (Thanks, Tim, for the information.)

It turns out the historic Gates House is gone, although some of its elements will be applied to a recreation near its site, designed by U.K. Architects.

The article in The Dartmouth on South Block progress points out that only parts of the building will be saved.

The bakery that will move into the building, Umpleby’s, is blogging about the construction and has posted photographs of the empty building site and the rear of the original house before dismantling; the ground-level framing of the replacement; the framing of the walls to the roofline; the completion of the basic form (it really follows the form of the original); and the completed building covered in Tyvek.

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

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.]

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

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