Previous | Next
Notes toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
C
-CABINS 1913-
The Dartmouth Outing Club has built a number of cabins and now runs a total of eleven cabins and nine shelters (D.A.M. [April 1994]: 33). Among these are Alder Brook (in the Grant), one room; Peaks (in the Grant), two rooms; Stoddard II (in the Grant), built in 1988 on the site of cabin that burned in 1987, one room; Richie Smith Cabin at Agassiz (on Moosilauke Brook), one room; Armington (on Armington Lake), one room; Billings (near Randolph), a summer cottage with three bedrooms; Great Bear III (near Warren), built in 1990; Harris (seven miles from Hanover), two rooms, closed around 1992; Hinman (on Reservoir Pond), one room; John Rand (near the Ravine Lodge), built in 1983 in honor of John Rand '38, one room (D.O.C.); Moose Mountain, 1913, first cabin of the D.O.C. (R.N. Hill, 284), built with donation of $600 by Franklin P. Shumway and other Boston alumni, dedicated to President Nichols in 1913 (Quint, 244). See also Tom Dent Cabin.
DR. E.H. CARLETON HOUSE 1897 (PI LAMBDA PHI [II])
Dr. E.H. Carleton built his house as the first building on the Ridge at 4 Occom Ridge, and he continued to own it at least through 1931. The building was still in private hands in 1950; by 1961 Pi Lambda Phi, founded 1924 (R.N. Hill, 234) owned the house. The fraternity folded in 1971 (Baird's) and the house returned to private hands at some time.
CARPENTER HALL 1929 (SHERMAN ART LIBRARY)
The Fine Arts building houses the Art History Department and Sherman Art Library, as well as the Anthropology Department, and adjoins Baker Library to the east. The building cost $290,000 (Richardson 1931, 775); Frank P. Carpenter of Manchester, N.H. is the donor after whom the building is named (Widmayer 1977, 117). Carpenter's gift was $305,000 (Widmayer 1977, 117). Jens Frederick Larson was the designer. The College dedicated the building in June of 1929 (Widmayer 1977, 117). The reading room of the library contains a fireplace with an Italian Renaissance mantle. An addition of stacks for the Sherman Art Library filled in the small courtyard next to Baker at some time, and the building underwent remodelings in 1962 and 1985 (Facilities).
CARPENTER'S SHOP* 1879? (by 1913)
The College's carpenter's shop stood north of Culver and east of the Fayerweathers; by 1913 tennis courts had replaced it (J.K. Lord 1913, 452).
CARPENTER'S SHOP* (II) 1887 (c.1916)
The Agricultural College carpenter's shop measured 30 by 30 and stood behind Conant Hall near Crosby Street. In 1888 the school added fifty feet to the length of the building. The building contained a boiler, an engine and other machinery. The Legislature granted the school $4,500 to fund the building (Hall, 1941, 53, 54). Dartmouth bought the building in 1892 with the other state school buildings, and it appears on 1894 Sanborn maps as "Repair Shop." An ell to the southeast appears by 1899, and the building was presumably demolished to make way for the 1916 Storehouse.
CARSON HALL c.2002
V.S.B.A. designed this 33,000 sq. ft. academic wing to attach to the west end of the existing Berry Library before either was built. The hall bears the name of Judy and Russ Carson '65, his parents Alice and Samuel Carson '34 Tu'35, and daughter Cecily '95. The view of the building's front (north) facade takes advantage of the removal of Kiewit and Bradley-Gerry Halls. Carson houses the history department in offices and classrooms, including two amphitheater classrooms on the lower and ground floors, as well as the top three floors. The first floor houses the academic computing department formerly located in Kiewit. The building is slated to cost $125,000 (Dartmouth Life February 1999, 5).
CARTER BLOCK* 18XX (1937?) (PSI UPSILON HALL [II])
The third block below the corner on the east side of Main Street was numbered 6 in 1893 and 16-20 in 1931. The building held the hall of Psi Upsilon by 1893 and at least through 1905 after that organization had moved from the Tontine and before it moved to its house on Wheelock Street. The Lang Building of 1937 now occupies the site.
CASQUE AND GAUNTLET HOUSE (II) 1823 (DR. SAMUEL ALDEN HOUSE)
Dr. Samuel Alden built the house at 1 South Main Street on a lot that originally encompassed two acres, with frontages of sixteen rods on Main Street and twenty westward. The College granted this lot in 1771 to Captain Aaron Storrs of Lebanon, Conn. and expected him to build an inn. Storrs built a two-story house flush with street and called it Storrs Tavern. Through various owners the property came in 1799 to Dr. Samuel Alden (J.K. Lord 1928, 32), who built today's C&G House behind the tavern and moved his family out the back door and into the front door of the new building. He moved the old tavern down the street to his garden at 6 West Wheelock, where it eventually became the Delta Kappa Epsilon House. Alden also built the house at 21 North Main Street. When Alden died in 1842 Joseph Emerson bought the house, later putting a tar concrete walk around the house in 1886 and providing an example of how to cope with mud that the entire town followed (J.K. Lord 1928, 74). Emerson sold the house in 1888 and "Shorty" Purmont ran it as a boarding club for students; Purmont sold it to Susan Brown of the Shurtleff-Brown House; she sold it to the Casque and Gauntlet Society in 1893. The society had previously met in the next house to the south, the former Graves Store. The society replaced the older gambrel-roofed section to the rear in 1915 with an addition designed by founding member Fred Wesley Wentworth. The house became a "Hostess House" in W.W.II (Navy at Dartmouth 1944) when the College took it over and allowed C.O.S.O. to run it as a home for visiting wives of soldiers. "One of the few links that South Main Street still has from the early years of the nineteenth century, this handsome brick building continues to maintain an impressive watch over the Hanover Inn corner. This fine building exhibits a style of architecture quite typical of the Federal or Adam period, with its crisp classical lines and four chimneys. There was a time when Main Street had numerous structures of this period gracing the village with their substantial and dignified appearance, however, several catastrophic fires and the march of time have forever altered that" (H.H.S.).
-CENTERRA RESOURCE PARK 1990s
A College affiliate runs real estate development located on Rt. 120 opposite the road to the Medical Center. In1996 the strip mall housed, in several buildings, the Postal Service, U.P.N.E., the Hitchcock Clinic, Fluent Inc., Geographic Data Technology and the State of New Hampshire (DAM, Sep 96 p.5). By 1998 the Hanover-Lebanon District Court, the Food Co-Op, a hotel and a fitness club were among the occupants of the site.
-CENTRAL STORES 1980s
The warehouse stands on the east side of Rt. 120, near Centerra.
CHANDLER HALL* 1835 (1936) (CHANDLER BUILDING) (THE ACADEMY) (MOOR HALL [III]) (PHI ZETA MU [I])
The two-story hall of brick stood between what are now Blunt and Parkhurst Halls. Five windows long and three wide, with a peaked roof, the hall had classical detailing including four brick pilasters and a pediment on each end, and a short white steeple on the east end, presumably holding a bell. The building replaced the wooden Moor Hall of 1791 on this site and also took the name Moor Hall or the Academy; Moor's Charity School, the 1754 Connecticut foundation of Eleazar Wheelock that gave rise to Dartmouth, occupied the building until its discontinuation in 1849 after 12 years of financial loss (J.K. Lord 1913, 230).
The Chandler School of Science and the Arts, funded by the will of Abiel Chandler of Boston, occupied the building during its entire separate existence between 1852 and 1893, when it was incorporated into the College (Emerson 1900). The School's activities took place her as well, including the meetings of one of its fraternities, Phi Zeta Mu, up to 1868 (Aegis 1893, 67). A bequest of Frank Willis Daniels of 1868 allowed the College to remodel the building into Chandler Hall in 1852 (Emerson 1900) for the instruction of mathematics, graphics and engineering. In 1871 the building underwent a remodeling, possibly when it gained its Victorian appearance and dormered mansard roof and lost its steeple. The greatest changes came in 1898 after the College bought the building for $6,000 (Richardson 1932, 735): Charles Rich designed a taller and wider mansarded cube-shaped addition to the rear, bringing the building right up to the street now known at Massachusetts Row. A one-window connecting section joined the old to the new, and a portico on the building's sides allowed it to match the width of the new section. A porch also sheltered the front entrance. The hall still housed mathematics and graphics in 1905. After an organizational meeting in South Fayerweather, the first official meeting of the D.O.C. took place in Chandler on 10 January 1910 (Putnam, ix).
The College demolished the building in 1936 (R.N. Hill, 71), probably because it was not in keeping with the appearance of its neighbors.
CHAPEL* (IV) 1790 (1879) (COLLEGE CHAPEL)
The College's first Chapel stood to the south of Dartmouth Hall where Thornton is today, though the chapel stood enough ahead of the front line of Dartmouth Hall to create a sort of quadrangle in front of the building (J.K. Lord 1928, 25). The chapel measured 50 feet long and 36 wide with a hipped roof peaked in the center (Chase, 581) which formed a perfect whispering gallery. See the plan in Chase (Chase, 581). The building was "never profaned by a stove." Governor Gilman held his inauguration here in 1795 (Chase in Tucker, 376). Forty yoke of oxen moved the building in May of 1828 to make room for Thornton (Chase, 582). The new location was the west side of the Green on the north end of the Shurtleff-Brown lot, roughly where Parkhurst is today. The College Church on Wentworth Street used the building as a vestry (Crosby, 33). The building moved again in 1833 or 1840 (Chase, 582), this time to the north corner of Main and Elm, in back of the then-J.S. Lang House or later Elm House [b], today the site of Kiewit. Here it became a barn (Chase, 582), long the property of E.D. Carpenter (Hapgood, 15).
CHAPEL OF OUR SAVIOUR* 1958 (1974) (LUTHERAN CHURCH)
E.H. & M.K. Hunter, architects of Bradley-Gerry, designed the Lutheran church on Summer Street. The building 's foundation contains blocks from "the old haunted house on the River Road" [West Wheelock Street?] (Williams, 220).
CHAPEL OF OUR SAVIOUR (II) 1974 (LUTHERAN CHURCH)
Banwell Architects replaced the original church.
CHASE FIELD >1892 (ATHLETIC FIELD [IV])
The field lies southeast of campus behind Thompson Arena and forms part of the old 65-acre Chase Farm that the state originally bought for the Agricultural College in about 1869, with 18 acres added in 1873 (Richardson 1932, 540). N.H. College added a barn in 1875 (Richardson 1932, 540), possibly the field house? The College used the field for trench practice in W.W.I (Clark, 22). The College bought the land in 1921, with other land, for $30,000 (Richardson 1932, 775). The old Field House was removed and became Jigger Pender's barn (McCarter, 54). The lower fields, behind Thompson itself, are set up for football and the upper field is a rugby pitch. WDCR keeps its transmitter on the field and inaugurated it on 4 March 1958 (Widmayer 1991, 122).
CHASE HOUSE 1930
Jens Frederick Larson designed the dormitory that connects to Tuck Hall, which the College named for alumnus Salmon P. Chase, who like Woodbury was Secretary of the Treasury (Richardson 1932, 776). The hall held 63 in 19 singles, 18 doubles and 2 triples in 1961 (Office of the Bursar); the building originally had handball courts in the basement.
CHI GAMMA EPSILON HOUSE 1937 (KAPPA SIGMA HOUSE [III])
The Kappa Sigma Fraternity, founded in 1905 (R.N. Hill, 235), built the house at 7 Webster Avenue in 1937 to replace their 1915 building. The fraternity became Chi Gamma Epsilon in 1980 (Baird's).
CHI HEOROT HOUSE c.1929 (CHI PHI HOUSE [II])
The organization, which began locally in 1898 as Alpha Alpha Omega and became a Chi Phi chapter in 1902 (Richardson 1932, 732), built the house at 11 East Wheelock of brick between 1928 and 1931 to replace the frame Chi Phi House of 1795, now known as Unity House. The organization became Chi Heorot in 1987 (Baird's), a local society named after the Beowulvian mead-hall of Hrothgar. W.H. Trumbull built the house (Pictorial, 1931).
-CHILD CARE CENTER 199X
The day-care center stands off Lyme Road.
CHILLED WATER FACILITY 1998
The facility stands north of Maynard Street on the old Hospital site.
CHOATE HOUSE 1786 (LEEDS HOUSE) (RIPLEY HOUSE) (PROFESSOR LANG HOUSE)
The Rev. Sylvanus Ripley had the house built on the Green two lots west of today's Webster Hall. The house was the long-time residence of Mills Olcott and Rufus Choate was married here (Emerson 1900). The house was once a tavern of George Foot (J.K. Lord 1928, 26). Owners added two wings and a porch in the early 19th Century (Barrett, Town of Hanover Calendar [date unknown]). Professor Lang owned the house by 1855 and Professor Leeds between 1861 and 1910, giving it the name of Leeds House at the time (Larson). The College bought the house in 1910, modernized it in 1920 and moved it in 1927 to 27A North Main Street, adjacent the Clement Greenhouse and on a site that the Sigma Nu House (I) formerly occupied. Across a grassy court the house faced Webster Cottage, also built by Ripley, for the first time. In 1928 the building was the headquarters of the department of citizenship (Richardson 1932, 110). The College moved the house again to make way for Kiewit around 1966, this time to 34 North Main Street, the corner of Choate Road and Main Street. This site had formerly held the old Moor's Academy building/Clark dining hall, East Hall. The house has served as the Faculty Club, and the College remodeled it in 1982 (Facilities); in the mid-1990s the house became the temporarily home of part of the math department. According to Barrett the house is a fine example of late Georgian style with two chimneys and hipped roof popular in the Colonial and early Federal periods, and the interior still features much of its original trim and detailing including window sash and fireplaces (Barrett, Town of Hanover Calendar [date unknown]).
CHOATE ROAD 1917
The road runs from North Main Street to Clement Road and bears the name of alumnus and renowned orator Senator Rufus Choate (J.K. Lord 1928, 69).
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SOCIETY 1839 (STOCKBRIDGE ASSOCIATION) (PRECINCT HALL [I])
The one-story brick building stands on the southwest corner of School and West Wheelock Streets, across School Street from the Sigma Delta Sorority, and earlier served as the Precinct Hall. Townspeople founded the Stockbridge Association in 1894 and purchased the building with funds from John Paige around that time; it was a local boys ' club that Miss Theodosia Stockbridge ran from 1855 to the time she left Hanover in 1867, by which time 155 boys had been in her classes (J.K. Lord 1928, 291). The Christian Science Society purchased the hall in 1960 (Williams, 219).
CLEMENT GREENHOUSE* 1927-1928 (ca. 1964)
The College built the greenhouse for the Department of Botany at 27 North Main Street (R.N. Hill, 307), where it formed the back of a court with Choate House and Webster Cottage. The building originally cost $46,000 (Richardson 1932, 775) and bore the name of its donor, Orson C. Clement of Corinth, Vermont (Widmayer 1977, 121). Though the greenhouse co-existed with Bradley-Gerry after that building rose in 1961, the College razed it ca. 1964 to make room for Kiewit of 1966. The College later applied the Clement name to a part of the Heat Plant later called the Hood Annex and finally fixed it on the Studio Art department studio building on Lebanon Street, the former Rogers Garage. A dedication plaque from Clement occupies a wall of the Murdough Greenhouse on fifth floor of Gilman and has since the building was completed in1964 (Skog).
CLEMENT HALL 1914; 1920s; by 1944 (ROGERS GARAGE) (part demolished)
Samuel Rogers built what is now the east-west studio range of Clement Hall in 1914 as the first auto garage in Hanover. The garage stands on the northern part of two lots that contained pre-1884 houses at 18 and 20 Lebanon Street. Rogers had arrived in town in 1904 to be chief engineer at Dartmouth, and later acquired a Reo agency that he housed in this building. One of his daughters married Manning Moody, who joined the business in 1928, remaining until at least 1961 (Stebbins 1961, 124). The west end of the building once bore a north-south range that the firm added at some time between 1914 and 1927; this wing grew nearly to the street with a 1931 showroom addition that took the place of the pre-1884 house at 18 Lebanon Street. Wells & Hudson designed this range to include an auto ramp leading to the second story. Between 1927 and 1944 the firm added another north-south range was added to the east side, which remains. The College records a remodeling in 1950 (Facilities), though it is not clear whether the College owned the building by then. A parking lot pushed out the second 19th-century house on this part of Lebanon Street by 1962.
By 1966 the firm had moved to Route 120 in Lebanon to become Hillcrest, later Damar, Motors (Barrett, 1997 Town of Hanover calendar). The College renamed the building Clement, possibly c.1985. Orson C. Clement of Corinth, Vermont, donated the original Clement Greenhouse on Main Street and is the namesake for this building. The College remodeled the garage in 1988 to hold studios for sculpture and painting, the College Editor and other offices. The sculpture studio still goes by the name "Rogers."
CLEMENT ROAD 1916
Road connecting Occom Ridge to Rope Ferry Road (J.K. Lord 1928, 69).
COHEN HALL 1956-1958
Cohen is a dormitory in the Choate Road Cluster and stands on the former playing field of the Clark School, which Dartmouth purchased in 1953 (Widmayer 1991, 94). Cohen opened in the Fall of 1958 (Widmayer 1991, 108) and bears the name of William Cohen of 1879 (ORL). The building shares its lounge with Bissell Hall. By 1961, Cohen held 75 in eight or nine-man suites including 27 singles and 24 doubles (Office of the Bursar), and by 1990 it held 72 in 30 singles and 21 doubles (ORL). Finnish P.M. Paavo Lipponen lived in suite 103 during his year at Dartmouth, 1960-61 (DAM, April 1996) and IBM executive Louis Gerstner '63 lived in 103A his first year (Jacob).
The Choates were the first major buildings of the Dickey reign and were the first Modernist buildings on the campus. The College began construction in the Summer of 1956, using funding from the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Administration to help pay the total cost of $1.5 million (Widmayer 1991, 136). Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty designed the dormitory group. Each pair of dormitories shares connects to a separate second-floor lounge, below which is a ground -level faculty apartment, called "a new concept of dormitory life as recommended by the Commission on Campus Life". Each dormitory originally contained eight-man suites, each with a living room (Widmayer 1991, 107). In 1970 the Choates became a "semi-autonomous living unit" housing two faculty members and 75 women transfer students (From Dartmouth 1970, 34).
COBRA HALL ca. 1898-1915 (HILLEL HOUSE [II])
The College owns the house at 13 Summer Street and devoted it to Dartmouth Hillel before the Roth Center for Jewish Life was ready in 1998. Cobra, the 1979 women's senior society, now occupies the house and is the first such society to do so. Summer Street was laid out around the turn of the century and this house built facing it by 1915.
COLBY HOUSE* 1875 (196X)
Fredrick Chase had the house built on the north side of Elm Street at no. 2 for his sister-in-law, Mrs. Walter W. Chase, from whose estate it passed to Professor James F. Colby in 1897 (J.K. Lord 1928, 55). Colby rented the house to R.D. Stores in 1928 and still owned it in 1931. The College bought the building and presumably demolished it to make way for Bradley-Gerry: its site became part of the of the Gerry south lawn.
COLLEGE BARN* (I)1771 (17XX)
The College built the barn of 28 by 32 feet in the Summer of 1771, though its location is not clear.
COLLEGE BARN* (II) 1772 (18XX)
The College built the barn of 55 by 40 feet (R.N. Hill, 35) in July of 1772 (Chase, 257) on the vestry lot at the corner of Main and Wentworth Streets (J.K. Lord 1928, 50), or possibly in the yard north of the lot, or the northwest part of the Green (Chase, 257), land that the College granted in 1788 to Stephen Hopkins. Hopkins sold to Asa Holden, who sold to David Fogg within two years, who sold six years later to Samuel Gordon Mackery, who kept an apothecary in a house there. The Church of Christ later built the on the corner, which places it on or just south of the site of this building.
COLLEGE CHURCH* (I) 1796 (1931) (WHITE CHURCH [I]) (CHURCH OF CHRIST AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE)
The Congregational Church stood at the northeast corner of Wentworth and Main Streets at 17 North Main Street, where the congregation had built the structure at a cost of 1500 pounds (Richardson 1932, 226). The College held its chapel in its own buildings, eventually including Rollins Chapel; this was Hanover's church. One source gives the builder as Colonel David Curtis and the construction date of 1794-5 (Roth, 150). Workers pulled down fifty feet of the building's unsafe spire in 1827, though the square tower remained until a remodeling in 1838, at which time new pews also replaced the earlier square ones. After the congregation built the vestry in 1841, students referred to the building as "the cow and the calf." Some also referred to the church as "the Barn" (Quint, 179). The congregation installed an organ in 1852; vestibules, aisle carpets and a furnace in 1869, and an addition lengthening the building eleven feet in 1877 (perhaps confused with the 1889 addition).
In the summer of 1889 Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White designed a new and more Colonial interior for the church that required moving the north wall out twelve feet for the new organ (Williams, 216). This was one of the first Colonial Revival projects of the firm in an ecclesiastical building and heralded the advent of the style in Hanover. White repeated the tower's Palladian window in an arcade that stood before the flat wall of the sanctuary, allowing for a recessed choir. The pews grew wider and acquired cushions at this time (Quint, 179), and the church in its final form seated about 1200 (Williams, 216). The congregation gave White an album showing photographs of the chancel before and after the work in gratitude (Roth, 391n76). The remodeling led to disputes when the congregation limited College use of their now-improved church (Richardson 1932, 639).
Commencements took place in the church from 1795 to 1907, when the ceremony moved to the new Webster Hall. In 1817, Commencement took place only after students occupied the building overnight to prevent the University from using it. Students and townspeople did not always regard the building well: The Dartmouth wrote that it was "of that severely American order of architecture which somebody says is a combination of the 'pointed Ironic and open Cathartic'" (Richardson 1932, 574). In the 1920s President Hopkins hoped to reveal Sanborn Hall behind the church by moving the structure to Dartmouth Row to replace the misfit Rollins Chapel (Widmayer 1977, 123), and Jens Larson drawings to this effect exist in the College Archives. The building burned in 1931 however, and the congregation moved to the new White Church it built on College Street while the College bought the old property. The site is now a vacant lot in front of Sanborn Hall. See also Vestry.
COLLEGE DISTRICT
Governor Wentworth proposed Dartmouth be enclosed by a three-mile College District, into which unwholesome inhabitants were to be prevented from entering. The Town sanctioned the zoning over the next 25 years but the legislature did not (Smith, 63).
When Hanover seceded from New Hampshire and became Dresden, capitol of New Connecticut in the 1780s, Dresden was composed of the College District and part of Lebanon Township.
COLLEGE GAS WORKS* by 1884 (1898)
The gasworks supplied gas for lighting and heating to the College (and the town?), It stood south and slightly east of Wilson Hall, a site that the heating plant now occupies and for whose construction the College demolished it. In 1884 the gasworks was a one-story house-sized building oriented north-south, with what is probably a chimney stack in the rear (Sanborn maps). By 1889 an east-west ell had replaced the smallest southernmost addition. The original gas mains that Professor Dimond devised, presumably for this works, were of wood and consequently leaked, killing a number of trees along their route.
COLLEGE HALL* (I) 1770 (1789) (COMMONS [II]) (CHAPEL [II]) (THE COLLEGE [II])
The College Hall was one of the two original academic buildings of Dartmouth. Wheelock first had his workers build the hall as a temporary home for himself, and its first location was behind today's Russell Sage Hall. Wheelock wrote in his A plain and faithfull Narrative of 1771:
With 30,40, and sometimes 50 labourers, appointed to their respective departments, I betook myself to a campaign. I set some to digging a well, and others to build a house for myself and family, of 40 by 32 feet, and one story high, and others to build a house for my students of 80 by 32, and two stories high. They had so near finished my house, that by advice of principal workmen, I sent for my family and students, but when they had dug one well of 63 feet, and another of 40, and found no prospect of water, and had found it therefore necessary to remove the buildings, I sent to stop my family, and try'd for water in six several places, between 40 and 70 rods, and found supply for both buildings--I took my house down and removed it about 70 rods. (Wheelock, in Brown, 17).
The permanent site of the Hall was on the southeast corner of the Green on an east-west axis approximately in line with the north wall of Reed, a few yards west of edge of the Green and north of Old College. Wheelock moved his family into the house on 29 October 1770. Unlike the log hut it was a frame house and stood one story high. Chase writes that the structure began as a storehouse (Chase, 268). Wheelock kept his study in the attic and rain often leaked onto papers as he wrote.
When workers completed his Mansion House in 1773 and Wheelock could move out, he had them add a thirty-foot kitchen section behind the east end and the building and it became College Hall, encompassing both a Commons and a chapel or meetinghouse and therefore similar to Oxbridge prototypes with chapel and hall connected. The eastern end of the building the commons with its kitchen, and the western two-thirds of the building became a large meeting room. The south doorway of this hall gave onto a center aisle dividing the seats for students on the left from those of the town on the right. A basswood plank platform for the speaker faced down the aisle (R.N. Hill, 36). A freehand plan of the building appears in the 1928 history by Chase (Chase, 270) and a similar though drafted ground plan can be found in Smith of 1878 (Smith, 57).
The Committees of Safety for the surrounding towns met in College Hall in 1776 to raise men for the defense of the area in the Revolution (Chase, 359). College Hall is likely the place where the two literary societies began meeting in 1783 and 1786. Most importantly, this is the College Hall of many "political agitations," the place in which the College Party was founded and from which it declared in 1778 that Hanover and fifteen other river towns had seceded to the state of New Connecticut. A northern town was apparently using the name Dartmouth, so the town named itself Dresden. The new state needed a press, and it established one in College Hall, creating the first newspaper in this part of the country, the Dresden Mercury of 1779. The press was apparently the same one that had been the first to arrive in the English Colonies in 1639 and is now at Montpelier. After much intrigue in 1779, Dresden seemed to be in neither New Hampshire nor Vermont, and delegates went to Congress to press for a new state in the Upper Valley (Richardson 1932, 180). The Republic of Vermont then admitted Dresden in 1781 though it later went back to New Hampshire where it stayed (R.N. Hill, 50) since legislation established Vermont as being on the other side of the river in 1787.
Students devised a "nocturnal visitation" on 3 December 1789 and demolished the building to express their anger at the slow progress of Dartmouth Hall (Brown, 40); by then the building was badly rotted:
On New-Years eve, the year was eighty-nine
All clad in black, a Dartmouth college crew
With crow-bar, sledge, and pick ax did combine
To level with the dust their antique hall,
In hopes the President would build a new:
Yes, yes, said they, the ancient pile shall fall
And laugh no longer at yon cobler's stall.
(Frenau in Brown, 40)
Above is the first stanza of a poem by Philip Freneau, "Poet of the American Revolution," titled "On the Demolition of Dartmouth College." The students admitted their offense in a round-robin letter, with the circle of signatures revealing no ringleader, and paid for the building (Chase, 581). If any of the foundation survived earlier gradings of the Green, it or its eastern end surely did not survive the 1993 Steam Tunnel trench. See also Old College.
COLLEGE PARK 1879 (DARTMOUTH PARK)
In 1868 Judge Joel Parker, 1811, gave 15,000 seedling trees from Angers, France to shade the Park (Richardson 1821, 524) and they were well-grown by 1900 (Emerson 1900). The College formally laid out the hilltop park of about 30 acres in 1879, though students did the work of developing it, including building "rustic summer houses and bridges" (Richardson 1932, 621). Seniors in the class of 1882 laid out the Bema in 1882, including a half-artificial grotto on the north side (Richardson 1932, 621). The Park "will be held so far as possible as a reservation" (Emerson 1900); the cast-iron gazebos and bridges do not survive. An 1860-70 plan for landscaping the area survives in the FO&M archives.
COLLEGE STORE HOUSE* by 1899 (by 1922) (LIVERY STABLE) (WHEELOCK LIVERY)
The large storehouse stood behind the Tontine Block, where the Wheelock Hotel, precursor to the Hanover Inn, used it as a livery stable.
COLLEGE STREET* 177X (NORTH COLLEGE STREET)
The street runs from the Lyme Road south to Lebanon Street. The College closed off south portion of the street, between Wheelock and Lebanon Streets, around 1962 when it used part of the right-of-way to build the Hopkins Center; in return the College resurfaced and altered Crosby Street. The two gateways of the Hood Museum further remove the street from vehicular use while emphasizing its status as a pathway. Maps traditonally named the street merely "College Street" even when it did meet South College Street, which runs southward from Lebanon Street.
COLLEGE YARD 1790 (THE YARD)
The College called the open space in front of Dartmouth Hall the College Yard by the first decade of the 20th century (Emerson 1900). Groundskeepers had fenced the area was and planted it with elms, differentiating it from the then-unfenced Green below. The Yard no longer goes by any name.
COLLIS CENTER 1901-1902 (COLLEGE HALL [II]) (COMMONS [V])
The College built this student center on the site of the Balch House which had partly burned in 1900 and which the College had bought immediately afterward (J.K. Lord 1928, 47). Architect Charles Rich designed the building to contain the club rooms of the "College Club," an organization of which all students were members, along with bedrooms and small dining halls for alumni (Emerson 1911, 53), The building cost $120,000 (Quint, 204). The building also contained rooms for students and held 40 when built (Richardson 1932, 677) though offices gradually took over. To compensate for the Alumni Office moving into the Crosby/Blunt dormitory, the College re-converted the top two floors of then-College to dormitory use in the Summer of 1949 (Widmayer 1991, 56). Commons, the dining hall, was the required eating place of freshmen from 1919 (Richardson 1932, 783), hence its name, Freshman Commons. Freshman Commons moved in 1951 to Thayer Hall across the street (Widmayer 1991, 69), to which College Hall connects by underground tunnel. Beginning in 1918 the College used Commons as an army mess hall with the rooms as barracks (R.N. Hill, 241). During W.W.II, College was the Navy Unit HQ and one of the two mess halls, with Thayer as the other (Navy 1944). ). The Tucker Foundation arrived at College in 1951 (Graham 1990, 45) and left in 1993.
The College remodeled the building in 1920 (Widmayer 1977, 50), in 1957 (R.N. Hill, 332), or 1959 (Facilities). Workers did over Commons in the 1930s to make it more hospitable (Widmayer 1977, 218) and added a mezzanine level when the College renamed the room Common Ground as part of the first Collis Center, which opened in 1979. By then the balcony at the south end of the room that had once housed string quartets during mealtimes was gone. The Collis Center in College Hall had a kitchen in the northeast corner of Commons, with diners leaving what is now the lounge and re-entering Common Ground in order to eat; the old first-floor club rooms of College Hall itself housed the Tucker Foundation and other offices. In 1993 architects Tony Atkins and Associates removed the mezzanine and extensively remodeled the whole to transform it into the Collis Center. The dining area moved to the old first-floor rooms, the kitchen to the basement, and the information desk to the opposite side of the entry foyer from where the first Collis Center had placed it. A large atrium now opens opened between the rear of ex-College Hall and the west wall of Commons, lighting the stairs leading to the basement. Charles '37 and Ellen Colli, donors of the first renovation, gave the $5.5 million for the 1993 work, which also includes game rooms in and the Lone Pine Tavern in the basement.
The basement held a pub after the Second World War that students nicknamed The Bathroom because of the white tile still on its walls from the days when cooking for Commons took place there (Heussler, 61). The basement also housed the LPG-30 computer when it first arrived in Hanover in September 1959 before it moved to Gerry Hall (Widmayer 1991, 146).
On the exterior, the granite stairs leading to the front are all that remain of the old Balch House. The building no longer the balustrade that originally ran along the roof edge.
COMMONS HALL* 1791 (1826) (KINSMAN COMMONS) (COMMONS [III])
Colonel Aaron Kinsman had the privately-run dining commons built on land he bought in 1790 from Eleazar Wheelock Jr., who received it from his father. Wheelock reserved a road of one rod in width which he dedicated as "a common pass way forever" leading to his house on the ridge roughly where North Fayerweather is today, or Princeton House (J.K. Lord 1928, 57). The Commons stood facing eastward onto the road, on the site that Rollins Chapel now occupies. Chase described the hall as "a large, uncouth building" (Chase, 552). Since c.1773 the College had satisfied the need for a dining commons with Old College on the Green; when workers finished Dartmouth Hall in 1790-1 (J.K. Lord 1928, 25) and especially after students destroyed Old College in 1789, the dining function went to Kinsman. In 1793 the College abandoned the commons idea because of problems with Kinsman, and for twelve years no College-affiliated commons existed, with dining taking place in Princeton House for two years. In 1795 Josiah Dunham opened Hanover's first bookstore "at the sign of Sterne's head" on the first floor of the building, and he also ran the village paper (J.K. Lord 1928, 26/9). In 1808 the College bought the hall and installed a large dining room which could seat 150 in the eastern part of the building (Chase, 554). The building and its food were quite unpopular with students. The building made way in 1822 (Crosby, 18) or 1826 when the College built Wentworth Hall just to the south.
CHANNING COX HALL 1976
The College apartments for students stand next to Maxwell and south of the Thayer School. They held 72 in 70 singles and a double in 1990, with each apartment having a living room, bath, kitchen and four bedrooms. The complex included the French and Spanish apartments in 1990 and ORL considered it to be a part of the River Cluster (ORL).
CONNECTICUT RIVER (WILDER LAKE)
The river runs southward along Hanover's and Dartmouth's western edge. Its west bank also forms the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. Most recently dammed below Hanover at Wilder in 1950, the River Connecticut is now a placid lake at Hanover; in the past it was both a vital transportation route and a force of nature. The towns of Hanover and Norwich were first surveyed by men walking up the frozen river in winter; by the 1770s flatboatmen were transporting goods between towns (Waterman, 28). In Hanover the boatmen poled their craft to a landing where the Ledyard Bridge now stands. annual log drives saw sixty-foot-wide rafts of logs floating downstream. The Connecticut River Valley Steamship Company tried to make a regular passenger run in the 1830s beginning with the John Ledyard but failed (Waterman, 32). Governor Wentworth gave the Trustees the monopoly on ferry rights for the river at Hanover in 1772 after a ferry had already been operating for two years at the site of the current bridge; one continued at this site and the College granted another operater rights for the Rope Ferry from the mouth of the Vale of Tempe across to Norwich. A third ferry operated farther north below the mouth of the Pompanoosuc (Waterman, 34). Ferries continued to be the best way across until the first bridge in 1797, a toll bridge.
CRANE HOUSE* 1771 or 72 (1887)
Dr. John Crane had the house built south of the Green (J.K. Lord 1928, 131), just east of the Inn, roughly on the site that the Zahm Garden occupies today. Crane was the College physician and accompanied Wheelock on his first trip to Hanover in 1770. Crane was in partnership with Moses Chase (J.K. Lord 1928, 24). Mrs. Chase owned the house by 1855 and it burned in 1887 in the Main Street Fire.
CROSBY STREET by 1884
The street connects East Wheelock Street to Lebanon Street; it ran alongside Memorial Field in a straight line until the College resurfaced and widened it in return for the Town closing off South College Street for the Hopkins Center in the early 1960s (Widmayer 1991, 181). The corner at Lebanon Street probably took on its wide suburban dimension at this time.
CRREL 1958-1960
The Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory of the U.S. Army stands on the former Record Farm on Lyme Road where the College made land available (Widmayer 1991, 100). The building has undergone several expansions.
CULVER HALL* 1870 (1929) (GRANGE [I])
The chemistry building faced directly down Crosby Street, standing between South Fayerweather and the Sphinx where now an access road runs. by Edward Dow of Concord designed the building (Richardson 1932) and would later design U.N.H. buildings in Durham; the Hon. David Culver of Lyme and his wife furnished some of the funding (Emerson 1900) The Agricultural College was the building's first occupant, with the State of New Hampshire and Dartmouth both funding part of the expense. Dartmouth was to pay the State half the building's cost if the institutions should separate. A plowing contest on the College Farm across the street dedicated the building, which many considered the largest and finest building the College had built, and the finest public edifice in New Hampshire (Richardson 1932, 539). Culver contained a laboratory on the first floor, with mineral cabinets on the second and third floors (Emerson 1900). The building housed College departments temporarily; the Grange organization met here from its refounding in 1886 before moving to Rosey Jekes (J.K. Lord 1928, 290). At the time the Agricultural College moved to Durham in 1892, and the building was unpopular functionally and stylistically. Charles Rich proposed modifications that would bring it up to date in the Colonial style, but the College did not undertake them. The mineral cabinets moved to the Butterfield Museum in 1895 (Emerson 1900); the building later housed the department of Art in 1921 (Richardson 1932) though the department later abandoned the building. Culver fell into disrepair and the College demolished it in 1929.
HORACE CUMMINGS MEMORIAL (HALL) 1939 (THAYER ADDITION)
In June of 1938 President Hopkins urged the Trustees to contemplate building new buildings for physics, modern languages and a $200,000 building for the engineering school; only the third one came to pass (Widmayer 1977, 220). Jens Larson designed this main building of the Thayer School of Engineering, which the School named for Horace S. Cummings, 1862 after his widow donated the funds. The building was ready by September 1929 (Widmayer 1977, 218). The School remodeled the building in 1945-46 when it added two new wings for electrical and mechanical engineering to the rear, ready for the fall of 1947 (Widmayer 1991, 25). Other renovations took place in 1976 (Facilities) and 1979 when the College added the Thayer Fluids Lab (Facilities). Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates designed the 1989 Thayer Addition: this project filled in the light court to create the Great Hall, as well as adding a new projecting entrance to the front and laboratory and office space at the rear.
CURRIER BLOCK 1887 (PUKWANA CLUB HALL [II]) (CHI TAU HALL) (PHI DELTA THETA HALL [II])
the northern half has a ten-window facade and flat roofline, since raised. That section was numbered 18 in 1893 and 32-36 in 1931. The building held the Phi Delta Theta Hall from at least 1893-1898; and Chi Tau and the Pukwana Club, precursor of Sigma Nu, in 1905.
CUTTER HALL/SHABAZZ 1938 (AFRO-AMERICAN SOCIETY [III])
Jens Larson designed this Clark School dormitory on the site of a large barn that was extant by 1904 but was demolished at some time between 1912 and 1922 according to Sanborn maps. The College purchased the building in the fall of 1953 from the Cardigan Mountain School which had bought it from the Clark School in the spring. The College renamed the dormitory for Mr. Cutter, 1903, a Trustee from 1933-51 (Widmayer 1991, 94). The building held 44 students and a faculty resident in 1961 (9 doubles, 22 singles, 1 quad), while in 1990 it held 27 in 27 single rooms with the "eight larger rooms... assigned by an internal priority system" (ORL). The hall has housed the Afro-American Society since 1970 (From Dartmouth 1970) including offices, a library and a multipurpose room on the first floor (ORL). The Shabazz Center in the building features a large mural of Malcolm X, and the Society renamed the building Shabazz in the late 1980s. The College added a faculty residence as an ell to the south end of the building in the style of the adjacent Webster Cottage c.1997. The handicapped access upgrades also took place in 1997 (Scherman).
D
DANA BIOMEDICAL LIBRARY 1963-1964
The Medical School built this library (R.N. Hill) with a grant from the Charles A. Dana Foundation; the School added a fourth floor in 1972-3 (From Dartmouth 1972, 3).
DARTMOUTH CEMETERY 1771 (BURYING GROUND)
The "burying ground for the use of the college and the inhabitants of this vicinity" lies behind today's Massachusetts Row. The Trustees first sequestered the steeply-ravined space in 1774 (J.K. Lord 1928, 293). The first burial in the cemetery was John Maltby, a Bermuda minister and stepson of Eleazar Wheelock, who died 30 September 1771 (Richardson 1932, 110). Dr. Perkins and Mr. Olcott raised funds by subscription to build a fence around the cemetery in 1833; the Dartmouth Cemetery Association formed in 1845; that organization added a new section in the mid-1800s on land it bought from Alpheus Crosby (J.K. Lord 1928, 199), possibly the western part of the ground (From Dartmouth 1973-4, 7). The "new part" across the ravine to the north came later, possibly in 1876 (Bartlett), and later additions also include land in the ravines and to the east. The association, presumably, built the tomb and hearse house in 1851 and purchased a hearse. In 1882 a bridge spanned the ravine from north of present-day Gile Hall to the older part of the Cemetery in the south, ending near a small fountain; this bridge was gone by the 1920s (Bartlett, 98). According to Lord the bridge came in 1884 and workers removed it when it became unsafe (J.K. Lord 1928, 299). Subscriptions of about 1910 funded the gate at the entrance to Sanborn Lane near Thaye Hall.
The cemetery held over 1,200 graves in 1912 (J.K. Lord 1928, 299) and roughly that number in 1970. Notable tombs include Eleazar Wheelock's of 1779, which bears the inscription "Here rests the body/ of/ Eleazar Wheelock S.T.D./ founder, and first president/ of/ Dartmouth College and Moor's Charity School/ By the Gospel he subdued the ferocity/ of the savage and to the civilized he/ opened new paths of science./ Traveler/ go if you can and deserve/ the sublime reward of such merit." John Wheelock had this marble slab made to replace the original slate one, which is now in storage. Presidents John Wheelock, Francis Brown, Nathan Lord, Asa Dodge Smith, Samuel Bartlett and William Jewett Tucker also lie here. Gravestones of the first thirty years are generally plain slabs of poor quality stone from East Lebanon quarries, with soapstone from Vermont coming later and coarse Vermont marble that allowed clear inscriptions following after 1800 (Bartlett). Today Hanover residents are buried in the cemetery south of town across Mink Brook.
DARTMOUTH HALL* (I) 1784-1791 (1904) (THE COLLEGE [III]) (LIBRARY [IV]) (CHAPEL [III])
As the main and first permanent building of the College, students called the multipurpose Dartmouth Hall "the College" until the late 1820s (Richardson, 251). Eleazar Wheelock originally envisioned the building in 1770 though it would remain in a state of planning for a dozen years. Wheelock obtained the plans for the building from Comfort Sever (Chase, 271); the two met in 1772 while taking the waters at Lebanon Springs, New York where Wheelock requested Sever to prepare a set of designs. Wheelock persuaded the Trustees on 9 June 1773 to begin construction (Bridenbaugh, 151). This vision of the building seems a likely model for the building that appears on the College Seal of 1773, if the designer of the Seal in Boston used any model at all. College patron Governor Wentworth also asked Wheelock to obtain designs from Peter Harrison, preeminent architect of 18th-century New England and designer of the Redwood Library in Providence, even making a hasty sketch of what he thought the College needed that Wheelock could present to Harrison. Wheelock however favored Sever, for religious reasons Bridenbaugh believes, and Harrison seems to have sent no plans; though Graham writes that Harrison did create plans that the Trustees in England failed to return (Graham 1990, 16).
When Dartmouth Hall was eventually built after the Revolutionary War it was only some master-carpenter's crude imitation of Robert Smith's Nassau Hall at Princeton or his College Edifice at Providence. Had it been erected after a design drawn by Peter Harrison, Dartmouth College would have been fortunate in the possession of the outstanding example of pre-revolutionary American college architecture. Who can say, it might even have inaugurated a new style of collegiate building.
(Bridenbaugh, 153)
At this time Wheelock intended to build the College of brick or stone "in the most plain, decent and cheapest Manner, after the dorick Order" (Wheelock in Brown, 19) and asked the English Trust to send glass and nails. The layout of the building follows that earlier Colonial college structures, as well as common Georgian designs for institutions of all sorts, including prisons. The presumed Sever drawings do not survive, though an elevation and plan laying out a similar but more elaborate stone building that another designer created do survive in the College Archives; some sources mention William Gamble as an architect (Chase, 271).
Wheelock broke ground for the hall on the Hill in 1773 based on some plan he had selected, though he then had to reduce his ambition and aim to construct only one-third of the total building at first. War and a lack of support from the Trust in England delayed the project past Wheelock's death in 1779, leaving it to his son to revive the project (Chase, 279). Construction began in earnest in 1784, with the College intending a building slightly reduced in size from Eleazar Wheelock's original plan but otherwise basically the (Chase, 576). In 1784 the state authorized a lottery to raise money, and though it failed (Chase, 575) construction went ahead slowly. Workers built the building of wood because the College did not have enough money for brick or stone.
With dimensions of 175 by 52 feet (R.N. Hill, 52), the building had 15' timbers and a 50' roof chord. The longitudonal sills of Etna pine were fifteen inches square and 75 feet long (R.N. Hill, 52), immense dimensions for a wooden structure. Workers had framed enough of the building in 1787 that the College could hold Commencement inside, though no interior partitions existed (Chase, 576). The Trustees managed to raise some money for the building in surrounding towns (R.N. Hill, 52) and students helped force them to finish the building by demolishing College Hall on the Green in 1789. Chase estimated the total cost of Dartmouth Hall at 4500 pounds (Richardson 1932, 213).
Dartmouth housed nearly the entire College for four decades, including the library, museum, class or recitation rooms, offices, and dormitory space (Emerson 1900). The building originally had three halls running the narrow direction and a long hall running north and south, all of which had outside doors, making a total of eight entrances. The library divided the north and south wings of the second floor, while the museum performed that function on the top floor. The College chapel occupied the central part of the first floor from the time architect Ammi Young installed it in 1828 to 1885. In 1856 the College rearranged the room, placing the stage to the west instead of the traditional east and closing the central door; students now used the doors at the sides because the old central door had disturbed speakers and led to "rushes" at the end of sermons in which older students seated in the front trampled the younger ones at the back trying to get out (J.K. Lord 1913, 312). Student rooms occupied most of the rest of the building. In 1811 Benjamin Pierce, brother of Franklin, led students in using a cannon in the corridor to temporarily connect the two halves of the building (Baas, 13). A fire had also burned the central part of the building in 1798, when some called to save the library but John Wheelock called to save the "great bird" or the zebra that were part of the collection of natural curiosities. A tornado unroofed the south end of the hall in 1802 (Richardson 1932, 277); otherwise most changes reflect the shifting of the institution itself.
Nathan Smith's 1797 Medical School installed itself in the north end of the building (R.N. Hill, 54) in Room 6 in 1799, and in 1803 it took over an adjacent room, holding both until 1811 (Graham 1990, 182). The United Fraternity had a room above the north entry and the Social Friends obtained one at the south entry slightly later, both in the late 18th century. The literary societies and the Philological Society used reading rooms in the hall after 1827 (Smith 141); at one time a Society Hall for the literary societies occupied a space at the south end of the building (J.K. Lord 1913, 285). Daniel Webster roomed in Room 6 at the north end of the first floor in his sophomore year, 1798-9 (Richardson 1932, 280). In the 1870s the building contained a North Latin Room and South Greek Room, as well as a Senior Room on the second floor (Bartlett). By 1900 the southern wing held Latin and French and the northern held Greek and German, with the third floor remaining a dormitory (Emerson 1900). By this time students referred to the upper floor hallway as "Bed Bug Alley."
On the exterior, the first major changes took place in the major renovation in 1823 when the College installed the green shutters and the clock. This clock changed several times over the years. The 1828 bell cracked in 1867 (J.K. Lord 1913, 222). The bellman, a student paid to ring the bell in the cupola, in the 1820s occupied a room reserved for him on the middle room on the east side of the third floor (J.K. Lord 1913, 210). Hill mentions the building having six bells over the years (R.N. Hill, 229). Students often dropped the clapper of the College Bell in the River, and the belfry occasionally featured John Wheelock's prized zebra. Workers rebuilt the belfry in 1848, and the current cupola is a replica of this version (J.K. Lord 1913, 285). The hedge surrounding the building disappeared during the Tucker era (J.K. Lord 1913, 500). In 1898 the building was listed at 25 College Street.
Administrators during the Smith and Bartlett eras did not always hold Dartmouth Hall in the highest esteem, since it was old-fashioned, cramped and a firetrap. President Tucker's Building Committee around 1893 asked architect Charles Rich to plan to remove the building altogether, move it back, or enlarge it with an ell (J.K. Lord 1913, 489). Many students at the turn of the century however expressed their reverence for the hall in poem and song, decrying the suggestion that the College tear down the old building. Faulty wiring caused Dartmouth Hall to burn to the ground in February of 1904. Charles Rich used a blown-up photograph of the building to design a replacement that would mimic the appearance of the old in a more permanent material while housing only office and classroom functions. The hall appears on U.S. stamp Scott #1380, the 1969 six-cent Dartmouth College Case Sesquicentennial that features Daniel Webster (Scott).
DARTMOUTH HALL (II) 1905-1906; 1935
Charles Alonzo Rich designed the specialized classroom and office building built of brick after the Dartmouth Hall fire. The building cost $101,700 (R.N. Hill, 299). Lord Dartmouth laid the cornerstone, to which the College affixed a plaque made of the melted College Bell. This version of the building is about six feet wider than the original, apparently closer to what Wheelock had planned (Graham 1990, 18) and of better proportion than what existed--the upper floor windows are much smaller than those of the original, though that building's windows did also reduce in size as they rose. Two of the front windows come from the original hall and have plaques below describing them. The front door hardware is also original (Graham 1990, 20). Rich designed the building without a chapel (Richardson 1932, 681). In 1918 the College mortgaged Dartmouth Hall and the rest of Dartmouth Row to provide security on the books as it was taking out construction loans (Widmayer 1977, 49).
The original building had had a chapel in the center; just such a large central room reappeared in the hall in the form of no. 105 when Jens F. Larsen remodeled the building after a fire of 25 April 1935 caused extensive damage. The cupola also perished in the fire; the rebuilding included much concrete in a complete fireproofing of the building and cost $211,871 (Widmayer 1977, 189). The College also remodeled the building in 1972 (Facilities) when it removed the last of the fixed iron desks. The hall now houses classrooms and several language departments, with no. 105 serving as a "smart classroom" and model for electronic infrastructure.
-DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK MEDICAL CENTER 1991 (HOSPITAL [III]) (NEW HOSPITAL)
The large postmodern iteration of the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, with its main hall built in the form of a shopping mall, stands in a wooded preserve in suburban Lebanon, south of Hanover. Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott of Boston designed the total complex to house not only the Medical Center but the Medical School; the College bought the old hospital in Hanover in 1989 and began taking over neaby Medical School buildings in the early 1990s. The elevator lobby of the new hospital contains the marble fireplace from the Rotunda of the old hospital, and a collage of plaques removed from the old building dominates the entrance lobby.
THE DARTMOUTH HOTEL (a)* 1813 (1887) (INN [II]) (THE DARTMOUTH)
The second hotel on the corner of Main and Wheelock Streets (J.K. Lord 1928, 26) followed the Brewster Tavern and was the precursor to The Wheelock, which became the Hanover Inn. The three-story red-brick building had a hipped roof with a balustrade above the eaves; five large white Doric columns marked the entrance on the west side of the building. A balcony stood on the north side. Owner Mr. Frary had the dormers added above the portico. President Monroe addressed a crowd from the upper balcony in 1817 (Richardson, 360). The building went through several owners in the early 19th century, one of whom enlargedit in 1857. The building also grew to the north and south in 1867; the departure of the portico in 1875 did not improve the appearance of the Hotel. The building burned in the Main Street Fire of 1887 (J.K. Lord 1928, 44).
DARTMOUTH NATIONAL BANK* (I) 1870 (around 1911) (THETA DELTA CHI HALL [I])
The two-story brick building with a mansard stood at 6 North Main Street, just south of Sanborn Hall (J.K. Lord 1928, 47) on what is today the lawn in front of Collis. The Bank built the structuer on the site of the Comfort Sever House, which moved to 16 Wheelock Street. The building cost $8,000 and for many years held the offices of the College Treasurer on the second floor (Richardson 1932, 577); the treasurer had been in the Sever house at the same location. The treasurer moved out in 1911 to the new Parkhurst Hall (J.K. Lord 1913, 387). The President's office also occupied the building, though by the early part of the century it was located in Wilson Hall. According to maps of 1893, 1896 and 1898, the building also held the meeting hall of Theta Delta Chi. The Bank built a new building in conjunction with the Dartmouth Savings Bank at the corner of Lebanon and Main that the ex-Shawmut Bank Building now encompasses; the College bought this building and demolished it to build Robinson Hall of 1913.
DARTMOUTH OUTING CLUB HOUSE 1928
The house stands at the north end of Occom Pond and has one room that opens onto the pond for ice skating. The class of 1900 donated the house rather than give something more effete such as a Literary Club (Widmayer 1977, 122).
DARTMOUTH SAVINGS BANK* 1913 (1928)
The bank stands on the original site of Jabez Bingham's 1772 house and later store (J.K. Lord 1928, 24,38) which moved in 1833. Brewster's Tavern had also occupied a part of this site, moving here from the Inn corner in 1813 (J.M. Lord, 128). The immediate precursor to the Bank building was the house at the corner, numbered 40 in 1905. The ex-Shawmut Bank Building is a later enlargement of the original bank.
-DARTMOUTH SKIWAY 1957
The downhill ski area occupies two mountainsides with several lifts, including a 1993 quad lift that consists of thirteen towers on Winslow Mountain and carries 1800 skiers per minute (DAM Winter 1993, 10). The first trail, Worden's Schuss, bears the name of Don Worden, 1940 and began operation in 1955. By the end of 1956 the College had finished the other four original trails , which were Gauntlet; Sachem, now John Meck; Lyme Drop; and Green Pastures, now an alternate finish to Worden's. The Skiway formally opened in 1957 (Hooke, 268), and the College dedicated Holt's Ledge on 19 January 1957 with a poma lift. The Brundage Lodge was ready one month later (Widmayer 1991, 106) and carries the name of Peter Brundage '45 (R.N. Hill, 332).
-DAVID'S HOUSE 1994
Randall T. Mudge & Associates designed the 11,250-square-foot home near the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. The neo-Victorian home-away-from-home houses families while their children are being treated at the hospital (Trumbull-Nelson [www.t-n.com]).
DAVIS FIELD HOUSE 1926
Jens Larson designed the varsity house for sports teams, whose cost of $138,000 Howard Clark Davis '06 of Boston paid for (Richardson 1932, 774). Davis also funded Davis Rink on the opposite end of Alumni Gymnasium to which the Field House connects. The College remodeled the building in 1989.
DAVIS ICE RINK* 1929 (c. 1984) (ICE RINK [II])
Howard Clark Davis, 1906 gave $60,500 of the $69,000 cost of the original unheated ice rink (Richardson 1932, 774). Jens Larson designed the building, which the College remodeled in 1953 for artificial ice (From Dartmouth Spring 1973, 34). The hockey team moved to Thompson Arena two decades later and the College demolished the building to use its site for the Berry Sports Arena in the early 1980s.
DAVISON BLOCK (SOUTH PART) 1893
The five-window brick building connects on the south to the Bridgman Block (West). The block occupies the site of the Green Store (Stebbins 1961, 114), now at 3 Pleasant Street and bore the number 5 South Main Street in 1893. The Hanover Camera Shop occupied the entire shopfront by the late 1980s.
DAVISON BLOCK (NORTH PART) 1903 (PHI KAPPA PSI HALL [I], PHI GAMMA DELTA HALL [I])
The block stands just below Casque & Gauntlet on South Main Street and . connects at the south to the 1893 Davison Block. The building occupies the site of the Graves House and carried the number 7-17 in 1931. The block, or its southern part, held the halls of Phi Kappa Psi and Phi Gamma Delta before that organization moved to West Wheelock Street at some time between 1898 and 1905. The Dirt Cowboy Cafe on the corner and Murphy's Tavern occupied the shopfront by the mid-1990s.
DEAN'S HOUSE after 1917 (AQUINAS HOUSE [I])
The house stands at 9 Choate Road and was built at some time after 1917. J.P. Richardson owned the building by 1928 and continued to live there in 1931; Aquinas House occupied the building in 1956 and 1961; now the College owns the building and offers it for the use of the Dean of the College.
DELTA DELTA DELTA HOUSE (II) 1898 (RIDGE HOUSE) (COLLEGE APARTMENT) (ALPHA PHI ALPHA HOUSE [II])
College architect Charles Rich of the firm Lamb & Rich designed the Ridge House or College Apartment at 1, 3 Occom Ridge (Chase, 332). The building is a duplex and at one time held Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, an organization founded in 1972 in one half. From 1989 half of the building held substance-free housing, with rooms for nine people in three doubles and three singles (ORL). The Delta Delta Delta Sorority occupied the building c.1992 and the College, which still owns the house, united the two halves c.1994.
DELTA GAMMA HOUSE* 1876 (ca. 2000) (PRESIDENT'S HOUSE [IV]) (GRADUATE CLUB [I]) (NORTH LAB) (DARTHOLM)
Professor Arthur S. Hardy had this house built at 43 College Street, north of the site of the Foster House which had burned in 1855. President William J. Tucker later moved into the house during his presidency of 1893-1909, enlarging it for presidential functions. This is presumably when the large social room to the west side of the house was added. Around the turn of the century the house was known as "Dartholm" and appears as such on postcards. A barn to the north of the house, roughly where the parking lot lies today, appears on Sanborn maps by 1905 and still stood in 1944. The College bought the house from Tucker in 1909 and used it as the permanent President's House until 1927, when the current President's House became available and the house became the Graduate Club (Larson). The nearby Medical School occupied the building, and by 1950 it appears on maps s North Lab, and again in 1961. The College began renting the building to the Delta Gamma Sorority in 1990 (Aegis 1990), though the local descendant of that organization folded and moved out late in 1998 after the College decided to renovate the building to remove traces of chemicals that dated to its days as a laboratory. By this time the building had lost the numerous porches and wooden details that appear in photographs from the first decade of the 20th century. The College demolished the building ca. 2000.
DELTA KAPPA EPSILON HOUSE* (V) 1772 (197X) (CAPTAIN AARON STORRS'S TAVERN)
Captain Aaron Storrs had the house built built by as his Tavern on the southwest corner of Main and Wheelock Streets. The lot originally measured two acres, with sixteen rods fronting on Main Street and twenty on the west, all of which the College granted to Storrs, who came from Lebanon, N.H. in 1771. Storrs's Tavern was one of the first two-story houses on the Plain; the other was Woodward's house, which workers raised the same day but which later burned. The house stood flush with Main Street and was four feet inside the line to the north. This building, or one to the south, became the first store in Hanover in 1773 when Storrs bought the stock of the College general store (Chase, 266). Storrs transferred this land and House after 1787, probably in settlement of a debt, to Samuel Parkman of Boston, who conveyed it in 1793 to Rufus Graves '91 (J.K. Lord 1928, 31). Graves built a store on the site of today's Davison Block and sold the property to Dr. Samuel Alden in 1799 (J.K. Lord 1928, 32). Alden used the house as a drug store, extending the house to the south and changing the hipped to a pitched roof. Alden built a brick house behind this one in 1823, the Casque & Gauntlet House of today, and moved the old frame house to a spot in the northwest corner of his garden, today two doors down at 6 West Wheelock Street. Alden simply moved his furniture out the back door of one house and into the front of the other. For some time the house was the oldest in the village. The Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity bought the house in 1908 (J.K. Lord 1928, 65) and remodeled and enlarged it. The organization ended in 1970 (Baird's). The adjacent Howe Library, then located in the Wheelock Mansion House, bought the building and demolished it for a parking lot before moving to their new building on South Street. The lot now stands vacant, containing only a town garden and parking lot.
TOM DENT CABIN 1940
The D.O.C. cabin stands near the boating facilities south of Ledyard Bridge and bears the name of the longtime soccer and lacrosse coach (R.N. Hill, 286).
DEACON DEWEY HOUSE* (II) 1809 (BY 1931) (SIGMA ALPHA EPSILON HOUSE [II])
Deacon Benoni Dewey, a blacksmith from Springfield, Massachusetts, had the two-story house at 38 College Street built after he won $500 in a lottery in 1809. Dewey had bought the two-acre plot on which the house stood from College Librarian Bezaleel Woodward in 1782, and he occupied a small house on the site while keeping a tavern in the southern part of town, which he did between 1798 and 1809. The new house replaced the original one and also became home to the tavern. From 1816 to 1835 Dewey's son William W. "Corset Bill" Dewey ran the tavern as a temperance house, with the property also including a post and sign on the corner, a barn midway along Elm Street, and a large shed on College Street. Rufus Choate occupied the southwest chamber when a tutor at the College (J.K. Lord 1928, 55). Mr. Dewey occupied the house until 1857 when the College bought it as a site for the Chandler Scientific School. The College however found a better location for the school and sold the house in 1867 to Fredrick Chase. The barn to the north of the house that appears on maps of 1904 had disappeared by 1922. The Chase family occupied the house from 1874 to 1916; by at least 1905 Mrs. M.F. Chase appears as the owner of the house. The Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, founded as a local in 1903, bought the house (J.K. Lord 1928, 55) and replaced it at some time between 1928 and 1931 with the current brick Sigma Alpha Epsilon House (III).
DEWEY FIELD
The field lies north of the Medical School and was for a time the site of the Parking Garage.
LUKE DEWEY HOUSE*(I) c.1804? (c.1960)
Luke Dewey built the new house roughly on the site of Wheeler Hall. The house stood just south of an earlier house/tavern just north of the present Wheeler that Deacon John Payne had built after buying the land from Bezaleel Woodward in 1772; in 1796 Captain Stephen Kimball bought the land and later sold the south part of property, including the house, to blacksmiths Luke Dewey and Calvin Eaton in 1804. Dewey kept his smithy across the corduroy bridge that later became Elm Street. Dewey abandoned the house and Eaton dropped out of the partnership. Dewey again built a new house in 1832 to consolidate his smithing operation and the earlier house eventually became the carpentry shop of William Henry Burbeck; by 1860 it had moved to 52 College Street, J.K. Lord surmises, where Mrs. D.C. Wells had it remodeled in 1912. Today Gilman occupies the site.
LUKE DEWEY HOUSE* (II) 1832 (1918)
Luke Dewey had the stone and brick house built (J.K. Lord 1928, 60) between the present Wheeler and Steele Halls, facing Elm Street. The house stood on the land Deacon John Payne bought in 1772 from Bezaleel Woodward; Dewey abandoned the house on it and built another, and then this second one with his blacksmith's shop in the back. Dewey's son Amos gave up the shop in 1868. The College owned the house by 1905 when Dr. P. Bartlett occupied it. The building burned in 1918 (J.K. Lord 1928, 60).
DRAGON SOCIETY HALL* (III) 1931 (1996) (DRAGON TOMB)
The Dragon Society built the brick tomb on Elm Street north of Baker Library and west of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon House in 1931. The building had two levels, with one below ground, and measured five windows deep. A single door framed by a white-painted simple portico graced the front of the building, and the basement had a back door. Late in its life the tomb featured a large black satellite dish on its roof. The College moved the society in 1996 and demolished the building to make room for Berry Library.
DRAGON SOCIETY HALL (IV) 1995-1996
Hanover architects R.T. Mudge & Associates designed and North Branch construction of Henniker, N.H. built the one-story brick hall on the hill north of the Delta Gamma House (Dartmouth Alumni Magazine [September 1996]: 8). A central temple front marks the building's entrance and a symmetrical two-window wing stands on either side of the central pavilion. A rear protrusion contains the kitchen and entrance. The parking lot below the building was the site of a pre-1905 barn that still stood in 1944. The College built the hall to replace the tomb that it demolished for Berry Library on Elm Street; the pediment window, columns, door and casing, interior paneling and other details come from the previous tomb. The hall, along with the demolition of the old building, cost $475,000 (Dartmouth Life, February 1996).
Previous | Top | Next
|