Dartmo.

The Class of 1953 Commons project, a renovation of Thayer Dining Hall (The Dartmouth, The Dartmouth), has finished.

Dartmouth Now has an article on the dedication with a flash (!?) slideshow of photos on Flickr. Bruner/Cott also has an image of the main dining room, and a first-floor plan appears on the DDS portion of the college website.

The building’s interior is hard to recognize. The photos show crisp white walls and sunlight replacing the cramped spaces and dim lighting of Thayer’s last renovation, which occurred in the 1980s. The main dining room, the site of Full Fare in the early 1990s and later Food Court, retains its original wooden roof trusses but abandons the painted flower ceiling panels. The south side dining room (Food Court of the early 1990s) is cool and sophisticated. The building now offers dining on the second floor, probably where the miniature convenience store called Topside once was, and perhaps where DDS offices once were.

Outside, the new stair is clad in granite. Irrespective of the changes in the menu, it looks like a nicer place to eat in.

An article in The Dartmouth today credits Bruner Cott with the design of the ongoing Class of 1953 Commons renovation of Thayer Dining Hall.

The identity of the designer of this project has been the object of some curiosity. Initially, Bruner Cott designed a new dining hall to be called the Class of 1953 Commons (pdf) as part of the McLaughlin Cluster. Once food service was available at the north end of campus, the school would have been free to demolish the historic Thayer Dining Hall and replace it with a new dining facility by Kieran Timberlake (see planning document pdf).

The downturn and other factors caused Dartmouth to drop both dining halls and to settle for renovating Thayer, renaming it ’53 Commons. The answer to the question of which firm would get the job has not been answered publicly until recently. (Bruner Cott’s site also lists this project and has a rendering of the main dining room.)

The article is illustrated with a photo depicting nearly the view shown above.

• 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.]

Hidden in a story about Fahey-McLane in The Dartmouth is this information:

As part of the renovations, the booths and platforms were removed from Homeplate, increasing the dining capacity of the space, according to students who had used the renovated facility.

[...]

Construction will continue until the estimated completion date in Fall 2011, according to a June update.

A later story has a photo of the new Homeplate. It’s hard to remember what it looked like with the risers in place.

[Update 10.19.2010: The Mirror has more details about what's moving where.]

The photo accompanying the press release on the recent pre-renovation dedication shows that the word THAYER has been replaced with the words CLASS OF 1953 COMMONS over the door of the building. (The inverted display of the Dartmouth flag is understood to indicate a beverage emergency.)

One of the biggest problems with Thayer seems to be that building’s kitchen gets extremely hot. The Dartmouth reported recently that a 250-ton air conditioning unit will be placed on the building’s roof in the upcoming renovation. Reed Construction Data lists Kieran Timberlake as the architects but seems to describe the earlier full-replacement project, notwithstanding the mere $500,000 cost projection.

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 White River Junction railroad station is for sale. The sale site has photos and plans. The building is an approximate contemporary and formal cousin of Thayer Dining Hall, by the same firm, and can seem like an outpost of the campus for students arriving by rail.

The temporary dining hall to substitute for Thayer while it is being replaced will stand near Alumni Gym, The Dartmouth reports. The areas near the tennis courts on either side seem to be good candidates.

Several major projects, including ’53 Commons, the Thayer Dining Hall replacement, and the Visual Arts Center, have been delayed, The Dartmouth reports.

Kieran Timberlake has already shown preliminary designs for the Thayer replacement. The Dartmouth quoted Associate Provost Mary Gorman as noting that the building will be taller than Thayer — tall enough to see over the trees in the cemetery and into Vermont — and will have a nice outdoor space in front of it.

Thayer currently seats 700, according to The Dartmouth. The news release of November 10 regarding the Trustees’ meeting stated that the replacement for Thayer Dining Hall “will have seating for 750 diners and a large performance space.”

Unless the new dining hall does more than Thayer did to create a usable basement or second level or expands significantly into the parking lot behind the building, it seems likely that South Fairbanks (at least) will have to be moved. One assumes it will be moved rather than demolished, since the architects are “green” and would not consign a useful structure to the landfill for merely aesthetic reasons, especially when it is a historic building.

Here’s hoping that the century-old fraternity house designed by Charles Rich is moved to Mass Row (between North Mass and Hitchcock) or is permitted to become part of the new dining hall. Neither approach should be out of reach for a skilled designer.

The latest project schedule (pdf) provides for the construction of an interim dining hall to take up slack while Thayer is being replaced. This idea was mentioned more than a year ago in The Dartmouth.

It is not clear whether the building itself will be temporary, although the short construction time suggests that it will be. The more temporary it is, the more interesting its siting might be…

The Trustees recently discussed updates to Lo-Yi Chan‘s 2001 master plan and the designs for the Visual Arts Center, the Life Sciences Building, the Class of 1953 Commons, and the New Thayer Dining Hall (press release).

Peter Bohlin, whose firm is designing the Life Sciences Building, designed the Vermont Institute of Natural Science Nature Center not far from Hanover in Queechee, Vermont (pdf).

The Philadelphia firm of Kieran Timberlake is designing Dartmouth’s new replacement for Thayer Dining Hall. Mr. Timberlake lectured at Dartmouth in 2004 (see also Penn bio; Penn Gazette article).

Rather than retain the frontispiece or conduct a sustainable rehab (as at Yale Law Dining Hall), the school will replace the building entirely between 2008 to 2010.

What will the replacement look like? It is sure to display Kieran Timberlake’s signature glass wall with the Mondrian mullions somewhere, as its dining hall at Middlebury does (another image; see also Levine Hall at Penn). This technique could be a great way to bring light into the north side of the new dining hall and give a view of the trees in the cemetery.

The front on Mass Row, in contast, is where one expects to see some of the solidity of the firm’s other Middlebury buildings (they look appealingly substantial in photos) — not the minimalist experimentation of the Marks Science Center in Brooklyn or Cook House at Cornell.

Although photos suggest that the firm’s best dining rooms are the
historic ones it has renovated, the main dining room is likely to be
an informal one.

The OPDC’s November 2006 update of its Construction Maps page has a map showing the footprint of the Thayer Dining Hall replacement.

The map suggests that the new building while occupy about the same site as the old, without threatening South Fairbanks Hall.

Many thanks to the Review for mentioning this site in an interview. A few points will always get jumbled over the phone, and this might be a good opportunity to clarify them for the record:

• “National Historic Registry” should read “National Register of Historic Places” and “the register.”
• “There are state and federal tax breaks” should read “There are state and federal tax breaks for renovations. . . . In addition, anything that gets on the list has to have the owner’s permission to get listed.”
• “There are state and federal tax breaks . . . largest in terms of commercial properties but still significant for even a home owner. But the real reason for a college to apply is that it is a blue ribbon” should read “Now, if you’re a college or university that’s not a homeowner and not a business, the real reason to be on the list is because it’s a seal of approval. It’s a blue ribbon. . . . Those tax breaks only come when you renovate your building, generally.”
• “Clement will be supplanted by a new visual arts building designed by McCado and Silveti–a very academic, theoretical type firm–to go on that site” should read “The firm of Machado and Silvetti – big names, a very theoretical, academic-oriented firm – are designing a new visual arts building to go on that site.”
• “Loews–that notoriously hard to find movie theatre–will, I think be moved next to the site on Lebanon Street” should read “Loew’s Auditorium will move from the Hood into this new building, and I have a feeling it will be placed on the street, on Lebanon Street, so that it will become more of a public movie theater.”
• “If you go to Oxford you will typically see a dining hall in the vicinity of the chapel” should read “If you go to Oxford, you will typically see a dining hall in the same ‘range’ ([i.e.] the same building) as the chapel.”
• “I don’t think it should necessarily be torn down or replaced, but it should be amended” should read “I don’t think it’s a terrible building, and I don’t think it should be torn down: I think it should be improved. . . . That said, I think Dartmouth is pretty fortunate to have Murdough and the Choates as their potentially worst buildings.”
• “I suppose the Fairchild center gets a lot of censure, and it is incongruous. But it is cool. And it was meant to be presentable. I don’t think it’s completely convincing. But at least it is presentable” should read “It is incongruous, but at the same time, when you look at it, you can tell . . . there was a sense of style there – there was a lot of skill put into it. It’s very cool and modern — cool in the sense of being refined, you know, the steel and glass, the thin skin. . .”
• “You could make a good argument for making use of the Crosby house (which is the name of the older part), and getting rid of the rest; it makes good use of that space” should read “[Y]ou’ve got all that land south of the building, between Blunt and Parkhurst, basically a vacant lot. . . . . You could make a good argument for a building there that would use the old Crosby House (which is the old part of Blunt), get rid of the rest, and make much better use of that space.”
• “Essentially it was built as a hotel, as part of the town” should read “[T]he Lodge . . . was built . . . effectively as part of the town, as a motel, and then used for a school purpose.”
• “Wheelock set it out back in the 1730s” should read “It’s one of those things that Wheelock set out back in the early 1770s.”
• “The only unfortunate thing is that it blocks access to the grad school . . . I think this is what lead Larsen to propose a large causeway to connect Thayer dining hall area with the graduate part of the campus” should read “The only unfortunate thing about it is that it kind of blocks easy access to the graduate schools. I think there was a plan by Larson in the 1920s that proposed a very long, high causeway or bridge that would have gone from Thayer Dining Hall, basically, across to the Engineering School.”
• “Yes, I hope some of that area is preserved, in particular the buildings . . . should be preserved” should read “although I hope, certainly, that they preserve at least one of those if they do use their sites.”
• “South Fairbanks being the first building designed and built by Charles Rich 1875″ should read “He designed it in 1892 . . . [but] Beta , . . . did not build it until around 1903 [after the school had built several buildings designed by Rich].”

The D has a letter to the editor confirming that the demolition of Thayer Hall is not expected to endanger Humphrey’s “Eleazar Wheelock” murals.

The Office of Planning, Design & Construction has revealed an unusual schedule of all the buildings and other construction projects to be completed on campus through October, 2010. This comes with a larger version of the master plan than has been available in the past. The documents state that:

-Bradley-Gerry demolition will end during September, 2007.

-The Life Sciences Building, which will stand east of Vail/Remsen, will be built starting early during 2007, with design starting soon. No architect seems to have been announced yet.

-Design for the dining hall to replace Thayer Hall will begin this summer. No architect has been announced for this project either, although Centerbrook was involved in the master planning for the student center area.

The D, talking to Dean Redman, has put a date on the Thayer Dining Hall demolition: it will come down by 2010. The article states that the school has not selected an architect for the replacement.

One might offer a thumbnail preservation plan for the school to undertake before demolishing the building:

1. hire a Cultural Resource Management consultant to document the building to HABS standards. This is a widespread practice that has been conventional for decades in government;
2. remove and preserve the painted leather wallcoverings from the Tyndall Lounge, the Robert Burns painting The Dartmouth College Case (1962) from the main dining room, and the murals Eleazar Wheelock (1937-1939) by noted American illustrator Walter Beach Humphrey from the Hovey Grill. This is a chance to get the controversial murals out of an everyday setting and into a gallery or storage (although it might be used as a reason to demolish them — it probably depends on how they were created);
3. remove and preserve some notable architectural element, such as one of the roof trusses from the main dining hall. People have been suggesting for a hundred years that the school systematically collect architectural artifacts from the buildings it demolishes, and if there is no room for a permanent collection, some things from Thayer might at least go in the future dining hall.