The Valley News has a story on an 1840s organ that ended up in a Wilder church (1890) and is now being restored. Wilder’s Congregational church (presuming that is the building) originally had very close ties to Dartmouth and Charles Wilder, donor of the funds for Wilder Hall.

The President’s House renovation is being “paid for by donors who want to take the cost — for which the college has received some criticism — out of the budget, and off the list of items raised whenever spending cuts are mentioned” according to the Valley News. The Dartmouth also has the story.

The Dartmouth noted that the frame of the Life Sciences building was topped out in mid-December.

The early-2000s “decompression” of dormitory rooms has begun to seem a bit luxurious. The college might increase income by expanding the entering class by about 50 students (The Dartmouth), a move that might require turning some doubles back into triples and so on.

Tuck Today has two glossy features related to its new buildings: Jeff Moag, “Dedicated to the Future,” and Christopher Percy Collier, “What Lies Beneath.” The architects (Goody Clancy) have photos of the buildings.

Collier’s article “It Takes a Village” in Tuck Today is about Sachem Village, the grad/professional student housing site in Lebanon. It mentions the predecessor of Wigwam Circle, the postwar temporary housing group behind Thayer School. It is also worth noting that Dartmouth built another group of similar portable buildings for married students next to the high school, called Sachem Village.

Daniel Stewart Fraser of Dan & Whit’s in Norwich (“If we don’t have it, you don’t need it”) has died at 96. The Valley News has a story.

Bevy King in West Leb is expanding (Valley News).

The college radio station turned 50 in 2008 and has a photographic history on line. One of the photos from the 1990s shows Brett Haber, now the sports director for the CBS station in Washington, D.C. Brett, this is as good a time as any to apologize for throwing out your ski boots while cleaning the attic of Sigma Nu in 1992.

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.

Thanks to Alex Hanson for the mention in “In Hanover, Architects Note A 19th-Century Sensibility,” Valley News (22 November 2008).

The Lamb & Rich monograph page has become a separate blog. Posts related to that project will no longer appear here.

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.

A nice trailer for the film project Monadnock: The Mountain That Stands Alone.

Trumbull-Nelson’s Constructive Images, in explaining that Omer & Bob’s outdoor shop has moved out of Hanover, notes that there were about five ski shops in town in 1986, and none now. I haven’t been in the Mountain Goat to tell whether it’s an exception.

Why so many Ledyard books recently?

• Bill Gifford, Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer (2007).
  
• Edward G. Gray, The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler (Yale University Press, 2007).
• James Zug, American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World (Basic Books, 2005).
• See also James Zug, ed., Last Voyage of Captain Cook: The Collected Writings of John Ledyard (National Geographic Adventure Classics, 2005).

A review I haven’t read in JAH compares them.