Dartmo.

The Valley News has a story on the recovery and restoration of the game ball from the 1903 Harvard-Dartmouth game. The game was especially notable because it marked Dartmouth’s first victory over Harvard and served as the dedication of Harvard’s new Stadium. The Library of Congress has links to a remarkable panoramic photo of the game.

The Stadium is the first major reinforced-concrete building in the country. When Dartmouth students held pep rallies under banners reading “On to the Stadium,” they were not referring to a site in Hanover: the were referring to the Stadium.

Floren Varsity House will be dedicated today.

The OPDC has exterior photos of Floren, and the Big Green Alert Blog has the first photos of the completed interior. The smart classroom mentioned in the blog and on the project page is presumably for team training sessions, not Dartmouth academic classes.

The OPDC has posted photos of the progress on the new Varsity House (one of the photos shows Memorial Field in the context of the campus), the Montgomery House renovation (check the pondside facade), and the Soccer Field (with the turf in place and grandstand going in).

Most notable are the photos of the landscaping between Berry and Maynard Street, or Berry Row. See the substantial walkway that organizes the whole project, for example.

A large photo of Floren appeared on the cover of the Sports Weekly, and Big Green Alert Blog noted that many of the major spaces within the building have been named.

The Big Green Alert Blog has photos of the Floren Varsity House and reports that the building is ahead of schedule.

Some more shots of the progress on Floren, mostly interiors, are available from the Big Green Athletics.

The Floren Varsity House is proceeding ahead of schedule. The OPDC has recent interior views, as does the varsity athletics site. The article in The Dartmouth quotes OPDC Project Manager Mary Bourque:

Although other alternatives were originally considered, brick was selected to integrate with the surrounding buildings. Careful consideration was given to the view of Floren Varsity House from within Memorial Stadium.

Perhaps this explains the substitution of renderings of a brick-skinned building for the original green-paneled design on the school’s website during 2005.

Bruce Wood at the football-focused Big Geen Alert Blog has posted photos of Floren Varsity House while the curtains were pulled back to show the building to visiting recruits. The building looks taut. Its form seems to have more in common with Berry Gym than Alumni Gym, although it will be sheathed in brick.

Plans for the Floren Varsity House from May and July, 2006 are available at the athletics website, postdating the November 2005 plans available on the project page. The Trustees reviewed ongoing projects at their most recent meeting (press release). An aerial view of the Varsity House is available at the Memorial Field renovation page.

The New York Times examines the decline in Ivy football attendance that accompanied the shift from NCAA Division IA to Division IAA.

That decline is one of the reasons why Princeton recently demolished Palmer Stadium (Henry J. Hardenburgh, 1914) and replaced it with the lower-capacity Princeton Stadium (Rafael Viñoly, 1998), and why Dartmouth recently replaced some of Memorial Field’s seating with the Floren Varsity House (Centerbrook, 2006).

(The Times notes that Ivy schools’ teams “were perennial national champions from 1869 to 1939.” That should read “from 1874 to 1939,” since 1874 was the first time college football was ever played in the U.S. (Harvard v. McGill). The game that teams played for several years following 1869 was soccer. The confusion might come from Hickok Sports, which lists pre-1874 soccer games at the head of a line of football champions, or from the Rutgers University football page, which still claims that the 1869 game makes Rutgers the home of college football, although the very same webpage acknowledges that the game was played under rules “adopted from those of the London Football Association,” i.e. soccer. The first game of college football ever played between two U.S. teams was the Harvard-Yale game of 1875.)

Dartmouth has named the new Varsity House for Douglas C. Floren ’63 and family (news release | The Dartmouth).

Photos from the Office of Planning, Design and Construction show the Varsity House in relation to the gym and, on August 31, with its steel frame completed.

Centerbrook has a New Varsity House page up with information already available elsewhere.

Varsity House construction photos are available, including several depicting the dismantling of part of the East Stands at Memorial Field.

Maps now label the old Davis Varsity House as “Davis Field House.” A dedicatory plaque inside the building also seems to use that name, so perhaps the “Varsity” part has been inaccurate all along.

The first perspective rendering of the Varsity House is available.

The building’s information page states that “[t]he facility is designed in a simple, contemporary style but highlights traditional Dartmouth elements with its brick exterior and white windows.” It may be a bit minimalist for the school’s taste.

The Athletic Department has photos of the field renovation.

Bruce Wood reports at Green Alert on town zoning approval for the Varsity House, noting the speed of the project and the fact that it will dismantle and reassemble the upper rows of the existing bleachers rather than demolish the whole structure — which seems very frugal.

The plans indicate that the football locker rooms will be located in the building, alongside the east side of the field. This probably means that both teams now will emerge from the visitors’ stands before each half.

Construction on the new Varsity House started February 22, and detailed information on the latest addition to Dartmouth’s 113-year-old athletic park appeared on line last week.

The building has a project page that includes several November 2005 renderings that now depict the building in red brick, like the Gym, rather than in the green panels implied by the last rendering released.

This early design dated June 10, 2005 will not be built.

The Park Street facade, which will become the right field wall for Red Rolfe Field, is visible for the first time, and the site plan appears to indicate that Rolfe gets a new foul pole.

The third level plan indicates that it will contain mostly offices, with the prime spots overlooking the field held by a meeting room, a conference room, and a sort of lounge — a big room with comfortable chairs, not the row of skyboxes one might have expected.

Contrary to previous speculation here, the existing east stands will not be demolished, only partially disassembled and reinstalled to the south, in front of Leverone.