The fitness center in the “gymnasium” at the top of Alumni Gym has opened (press release). Photos show a room far busier than when it was a forgotten space on campus.

Dartmouth Life reports on Professor Spicer’s discovery that architect Jens Larson based Sanborn House’s Wren Room on the salon at Bolton House, Linconshire (1685-1686, William Winde).

[Update 05.17.2006: Rod Miller made this attribution in his 1998 dissertation on Jens Larson, p. 28.]

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.

Architect Bill McDonough ‘72 had a piece in The Green Magazine (Winter 2005), Dartmouth’s environmental magazine. The entire issue focuses on sustainable design.

Baker Library has a variety of “twins” at other colleges, libraries that also look like Independence Hall, but its most unexpected sibling is the Maison Internationale at the City University of Paris (basic information), designed by the same architect, Jens Larson.

Although it is all chateau and no Philadelphia, it still has the flanking wings and the long reading room, as seen in an article in Label France magazine and interior photos.

Even the arcade joining the wings, a feature that was contemplated but not built at Baker, is very “Larson” and calls to mind the arcade joining Baker to Sanborn House.

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.