Dartmo.

Bing’s current aerial view of the Upper Valley is much newer than Google’s — only a couple of months old — and has much better detail.

In various parts of this view, the Inn addition is beginning and the Softball Park is visible. Parker Apartments at 2 North Park are gone. The VAC is roofed and the LSC’s pathways are finished, looking like the runways of an airport.

There’s a forlorn little roundabout alongside the desolate grounds of Rivercrest. Rivercrest looks like a cemetery.

Centerbrook’s page for its master plan for the Hood suggests that the existing connector to Wilson Hall could be preserved, and it shows the new addition as rising behind the connector.

The addition will obscure most of the front of the Hood Annex, but it will be largely hidden from the Green. In this conceptual plan, at least, the addition is given a signpost in the form of a sort of Joseph Hoffmann ziggurat.

This plan is only a general guide, but it suggests that the preservation of the Wilson Hall entrance is a lost cause. The second and third images on the page show the entire entry below the arch — the stairs, vestibule, door, fenestration, and inscribed granite lintel — demolished and replaced with glazing.

Wilson Hall’s front door will become the Hood Museum’s new principal entry and be transformed by large glass windows to convey transparency and engage passersby on the busy campus green.

A Romanesque building is not the best place to look for transparency… Perhaps a projecting pavilion supporting prominent signage would be just as good, and would also preserve the building’s most distinctive elements. Living with an obtrusive but well-designed entrance and ramp structure outside the building would be a small price to pay to retain the experience of passing through the building’s substantial doorway, with its surfaces of oak, brick, granite, sandstone, and glass.

This master plan led to the Basis for Design for the expansion, and that document will lead to the designs that Williams and Tsien are now beginning. Little more than the general siting of the addition is likely to carry over from the master plan.

More details on that Basis for Design from Art New England (pdf), published a while back:

We intend to go back to the original skin of the building by tearing out the offices and dropped ceiling and returning the Picture Gallery to its original state.

Hood Director Matthew Taylor is referring to Wilson Hall. That link is found in the Hood’s comprehensive page of links about the selection of Williams and Tsien.

Alumna Emily Singer Yen has posted an impressive portfolio that includes a set of 2010 designs for what appears to be a large addition to the Ledyard Canoe Club.

This is not simply a student project: the designer “[c]ollaborated and interned with the selected architect to prepare schematic designs for preliminary State and Town permitting meetings[.]” Back in 2010 Ledyard was raising money for the addition, and in February of 2011 the “rebuild” was said to be going ahead.

Back in March the board approved a 2013 budget that includes funds for “campus-wide master planning.”

This is good news. There was some concern that insufficient attention was being paid to the master plan; Dartmouth likes to update its master plan every ten years or so, and the 2002 plan by Lo-Yi Chan and Gordon DeWitt (pdf) is ready for refreshing.

The process should be especially interesting this time around. The word is that the esteemed Mr. Chan is advising on the project and that the scope of the plan will encompass not only the campus proper but also those properties that the college owns near by.

The announcement of the selection of a firm to carry out the project should be interesting. Based simply on the school’s recent plans and its experience with the North Campus plan of 2001, one might guess that Moore Ruble Yudell and Centerbrook are likely candidates. Michael Dennis & Associates have also been doing interesting work recently. Robert A.M. Stern has been involved in work at Dartmouth for more than a decade. Who knows?

The publicity around the Inn expansion constantly emphasizes the building’s “historic” nature. The label seems to come from the Inn’s inclusion in 2011 in the Historic Hotels of America, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

How does a hotel get into the program?

To be nominated and selected for membership into this prestigious program, a hotel must be at least 50 years old, listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places or recognized as having historic significance.

The nomination form states that “Properties must be a minimum age of 75 years” under the blank for “Year originally built.”

The main block of the Inn will not be 50 years old until 2016. The Inn is not listed on the National Register, and one doubts that any historian has determined the building to be eligible for listing. (If the dates on the main block and the subsidiary wing were swapped, that would be another story.) Nor does anyone, including the National Trust, appear to have recognized the Inn as having historic significance. The phrase “historic significance” refers to the fact that the building was “home to, or on the grounds of, a former home of famous persons or [a] significant location for an event in history.” This HHA definition is in line with one of the criteria for National Register eligibility.

What, then, did the Inn tell the National Trust in its application? Some clues might lie in the text of the HHA page provided for the Inn:

• General Ebenezer Brewster, whose home occupied the present site of the Inn, founded the Dartmouth Hotel in 1780 but later [it] burned to the ground and was replaced two years later on the same site by the Wheelock Hotel.

As corrected, this sentence is adequate as an anecdote, although it makes one wonder who would care about something occurring “two years later” than an unspecified date.

To be a bit more accurate, the page might say that the inn established by Brewster was usually called Brewster’s Tavern. Around 1813, Brewster’s son replaced the building with a completely different building called the Dartmouth Hotel. That building burned in 1887 and was replaced in 1889 with a completely different building called the Wheelock Hotel. That building was demolished in the 1960s and is no longer standing:

To continue:

• From 1901-1903, Dartmouth College carried out extensive renovations to the facility, which was then renamed the Hanover Inn.

This sentence could be worded better, but it is correct. What is not clear is why anyone would care about those renovations, since the renovated building no longer exists.

• An east wing was added in 1924, followed in 1939 by an exterior expansion.

And that east wing is the oldest part of the Inn. The 1939 information is interesting but irrelevant.

• In 1968 a west wing was added.

Another, more accurate way to put it would be to say that “in 1968, the historic 1889 Hanover Inn was completely demolished, leaving only the 1924 east wing.” The main block of the Inn today, the building standing on the corner, is not “a west wing” attached to something greater than itself: it is the Inn.

• Before Dartmouth College became co-ed, the fourth floor of the Hanover Inn was a single women’s dormitory. The Inn provided chaperones for the single female guests.

These statements probably have some basis in fact. First, if the school was yet not co-ed, why were women living in a dormitory? Because they were Carnival visitors, in town for a few days each year. Second, if they were college-aged, why bother describing them (twice) as “single”? It cannot be meant to distinguish them from the veterans’ wives living in married students’ housing after WWII, since those women were not segregated by gender. Third, the statement about the chaperones is interesting, if true. But considering that Carnival dates at the Inn were not staying in a temporarily-cleared dormitory, and thus were paying for their rooms, the Inn must have found it cost-effective to station a few women in the halls to mind the furnishings.

• The Hanover Inn is the oldest continuous[ly-operated] business in the state of New Hampshire.

That might be true, if the various hotels dating back to Brewster are considered as a single business. One might prefer Tuttle Farm, which has been operating since 1632 and apparently has been owned by just one family.

The Valley News reports on growth at the ever-expanding DHMC.

(There is also a great low-angle aerial view of DHMC on Dartmouth’s Flickr stream.)

The Heater Road building (a prior post) is nearing completion. About 200 people will move there from the main DHMC complex.

Then DHMC can perform a $16.6m renovation on one of its existing buildings to add critical-care beds. (And “DHMC’s mail services are being moved off the Lebanon campus and into a former U.S. Postal Service building in Centerra Park.”)

Finally, during their March meeting the trustees voted to approve a capital budget that includes “design funding for the Williamson Translational Research Building on the medical school’s Lebanon, N.H. campus” (The Dartmouth). The press release states:

The building will house programs concerned with adapting laboratory discoveries to use in patient care, with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary problem solving in areas including neuroscience, cardiovascular science, and immunology/infectious diseases, among others.

Dartmouth recently announced that it has “initiated a renovation and expansion project for the Hopkins Center and will be selecting an architect in the coming year.” Because the Hop is so large, loved, and important, this is sure to be an interesting project.

On the occasion of the Hopkins Center’s 50th anniversary, the alumni magazine has published a photo essay on the Hop of today and collected reminiscences.

Reading Jonah Lehrer’s New Yorker article mentioning the Pixar building and how Steve Jobs concentrated the restrooms in one place as a way of forcing interaction among employees reminds one of the Hinman Boxes and their placement in the Hopkins Center with the specific intention of exposing students to the arts.[¹]

The Black family’s gift for the Visual Arts Center includes the funding of an artwork by Ellsworth Kelly that will be attached to the east facade of Spaulding Auditorium this year (The Dartmouth). See this Street View for the likely site.

The publicity around the Hood expansion and the arts center refers to “Dartmouth’s new Arts District.” It seems that neither “Hopland” nor “SoWhee” has taken hold.

There is the challenge of adding to a notable building by a big-name architect, Wallace Harrison. The various firms doing careful insertions in and around the Harrison-planned Lincoln Center, including Tod Williams Billie Tsien, would be worth considering (Lincoln Center page, Times Topics).

Two recent master plans have proposed that the college graft a variety of additions onto the sides of the Hop:

• The 2001 Rogers Marvel arts center master plan (pdf, see also additional information from the firm and Chad Smith, Architect).
• The 2001 Brook McIlroy Downtown Hanover Vision plan, specifically the Spaulding Auditorium proposal.

It will be interesting to see where the new additions will go and how they will look. Will the Hop’s studio range really be demolished and replaced, as the Rogers Marvel plan proposes? Will the blank wall on Lebanon Street really get a row of shops, as the Brook McIlroy plan proposes? Will a northern addition expand the Hop proper toward the Green, alongside the original and iconic Moore Theatre? Stay tuned.

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The softball team opened its new ballpark with a win over Penn on the 6th (Dartmouth Sports, Sports Weekly, Valley News, Dartmouth Now).

The new softball park is two fields back from the Food Co-Op, in the southeast corner of the rapidly-filling Chase Fields complex. It is smaller than but very similar to Biondi Park, the recent baseball park, and it looks impressive in the photo in the Dartmouth Sports post.

The Valley News reports that the project’s first phase will finish by June, “even as the price of the project has skyrocketed and town officials say the college may have underestimated the scope of the work.” Google’s Street View sort of shows where the addition is going. The Town’s Flickr stream has a mid-1960s photo that shows a clean Scout driving in the foreground and the original 1880s Inn being demolished in the background. The Inn’s 1923 wing, also visible, still stands.

Images of selective demolition are on line from contractor Dectam, including photos of some guest rooms without walls, only bathtubs; a team of workers going after the exterior concrete pavers; and the demolition of the lobby plaza area wall.

Dana Lowe, a subcontractor on the project, died on March 13th after a construction accident involving a crane and a scissor-lift (The Dartmouth).

From the April 23 press release (pdf):

November 2012: The Minary Conference Center opens, encompassing a grand ballroom with 3,933 square feet of meeting and event space capable of accommodating up to 330 people. The area also includes three executive meeting rooms.

The previous Minary Center was a 1928 house on Squam Lake that William S. Paley gave the college in 1970 honor of John Minary ’29. The college used it as a conference center until it sold the property in 2010.

Further details of the Inn’s novel features:

The November grand opening will introduce a new fitness center for Inn guests, 14 additional guest rooms including an oversized suite overlooking Main Street, for a total of 108 rooms. The Inn’s new signature restaurant, currently being designed by one of New England’s best-known chefs, will open, serving lunch and dinner in a prime location—at the corner of Main and Wheelock Streets. The smaller dining space will transition to serving breakfast only and will be available as additional reception space and for private events following the opening of the larger restaurant.

Although Dartmouth probably deserves criticism for what appears to be a failure to maintain Larson’s faculty apartment house at 2 North Park Street, the college might be working to redeem itself by building a quality replacement: a new sorority house designed by Haynes & Garthwaite of Norwich. The article in The Dartmouth has a photo of the house under construction.

The article notes that Alpha Phi was originally meant to occupy the historic house at 26 East Wheelock, next door to KKG (see Dartmouth Life, October 2008). Town zoning prohibited that change of use, and putting the sorority closer to the Green would seem to be better for the group and better for the campus.

The Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory on Lyme Road is not only the state’s largest industrial facility, it also represents the U.S. Army’s only presence in New Hampshire.

For the last half-century, Dartmouth has owned most of the land underlying the laboratory, and the Corps of Engineers has paid essentially nothing to use it. Now that the original $1 lease signed in 1962 has ended (The Dartmouth), the college has decided to sell the property to the Corps for $18.6m (Valley News).

Finances aside, the loss of control over this property creates a danger that some unappealing future development could move in if CRREL were to leave: one presumes that Dartmouth has retained a right of first refusal for any future sale. At least this sale removes a potential site on which the Tuck School could (obviously unwisely) build a new campus.

At the end of last month Dartmouth has named its new visual arts building The Black Family Visual Arts Center (Dartmouth Now, The Dartmouth). The name honors Leon ’73 and Debra Black, who donated $48 million to the project.

The photo accompanying the article in The Dartmouth shows the building before its Norwegian slate exterior was attached. The Planner’s blog had a post in January about the slate going up. See also before and after Street Views of Brewster and Clement halls, the buildings that were demolished to make room for the arts center.

Dartmouth is putting into effect that Centerbrook master plan noted here on the 4th.

The college took proposals from four firms and today announced the selection of Tod Williams Billie Tsien as the architects for the project (Office of Public Affairs Press Release, Times ArtsBeat).

The project will add museum space behind Wilson Hall, renovate Wilson itself, and turn Wilson’s great arched entrance into the main entrance for the whole Hood Museum complex.

It is difficult to emphasize too much the importance of Wilson’s arch. When Dartmouth published some of Robert Frost’s reminiscences about how he decided, in Wilson Library, to become a poet, it titled the pamphlet “Under That Arch” (American Memory).

Luckily the granite lintel bearing Wilson’s name is not very prominent and can be left in place. A new glass entrance pavilion projecting from the arch or attached to the front of the building will be able to display Hood’s name. The firm’s David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center (image) suggests one approach the firm could use.

During 1996 I spent about a month living in a Williams/Tsien building at U.Va. (Hereford College, 1992). I had some reservations about the overall project, a residential college on the back of a hill far from the center of campus (map). Because it is sited on a slope, it has trouble enclosing the sort of meaningful outdoor spaces you would expect: it is an arrangement of objects in a park. But I was impressed by the cool and serious Modernism of the individual buildings and their willingness to adopt a monumental scale when required (images from Tinmanic’s Flickr photostream and Wikipedia) . I liked the use of what I assume are local brick and slate on the exterior, and although the cinderblock interior was not ideal for a dormitory, it had a sternness that would be appropriate for a museum.

The firm’s work is serious and purposeful rather than frivolous, and in small doses it could create an exciting tension with Wilson’s Romanesque arches, the Hood’s Postmodern whimsy, and the Hop’s Modernist Expressionism.

Dartmouth has changed the name of its medical school[¹] from the Dartmouth Medical School to the Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Dr. Seuss, as Dartmouth’s most famous “doctor” [of philosophy], would seem to be as good a namesake as any.

Now the medical school fits the pattern established by Dartmouth’s two later professional schools. The current names of the three institutions seem to be:

• The Tuck School (the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College)
• Thayer School (the Thayer School of Engineering)
• The Geisel School (the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth).

The Medical School has a long tradition of changing its name, and it sometimes goes by several names at once. An 1897 note titled “Name of the School” reads:

The name of the Medical Department seems to have changed several times. In 1806 the broadside list of students is headed: “Catalogue of the Medical Students and Students of College who attended the Medical Lectures at Dartmouth University” (as far back as Sept. 20, 1782, the Trustees passed a resolution styling the College a University); that of 1811, “Catalogue … of the Dartmouth Medical Theatre;” that of 1814, “Catalogue … of the Medical Institution at Dartmouth University;” that of 1817, “Catalogue … of the Dartmouth Medical Institution.” At some time between this date and 1824 the name “New Hampshire Medical Institution” began to be used and was retained until 1880 though the official title has always been the “Medical Department of Dartmouth College.”[²]

The name “the Medical Department,” which is not explained by the note, was in use at least by 1812.[³] Other examples include “the Medical College” (1871,[⁴] 1880,[⁵] 1883[⁶]), “the Dartmouth Medical College” (1868,[⁷] 1895,[⁸] 1897[⁹]), “the Medical School of New Hampshire” (1893[¹⁰]), “the Medical Institution at Hanover” (1893[¹¹]), “the Medical School” (1809[¹²]), and of course “the Dartmouth Medical School” (1880,[¹³] 1897,[¹⁴]).

This would seem to be a good time to change the 1950s (?) shield again,[¹⁵] and it looks as if the school has already thought of that.

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[Update 04.05.2012: Caduceus corrected to Aesculapius.]

[Update 04.19.2012: Suppositional name "The Geisel School of Medicine" shortened to "The Geisel School."]

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This announcement did not get much publicity when it was published almost a year ago, but it is noteworthy: Centerbrook has completed its master plan for the Hood Museum, and the plan contains a proposal to convert the adjoining Wilson Hall into museum space.

Wilson Hall was built as the college library and picture gallery. Its attic level, with iron trusses supporting a steeply-pitched roof, was designed for the display of paintings.

After the Butterfield Museum was demolished and Baker Library was built behind it, Wilson Hall became the home of the College Museum.

Charles Moore and the architects of Centerbrook placed their Hood Museum below Wilson Hall during the early 1980s, connecting the two buildings with a whimsically-busy enclosed staircase. The firm also renovated Wilson itself for the use of the Film and Television Studies Department.

The main entrance to the Hood, of course, was hidden from the view of passers-by. Visitors have to pass through the gate and walk up a broad ramp off to the side.

Now Centerbrook proposes to demolish (presumably) the Wilson connector and replace it with a new three-level addition. New galleries, offices, and classrooms could then go into Wilson and the addition, and Wilson’s presently shadowy entry arch could become the entrance to the whole museum complex:

With some improvements for access to the handicapped, Wilson Hall’s front door will become the Hood Museum’s new principal entry and be transformed by large glass windows to convey transparency and engage passersby on the busy campus green.

Although the large glass windows are a bit worrisome, the overall plan sounds like an excellent one. Will the Hood’s original ramp-entrance remain, or will it too be altered?

[Update 04.05.2012: Wilson portrait gallery image added.]

I. King Arthur Café.

Several weeks ago, this post was set to mention Norwich’s King Arthur Flour with a link to this Google blog post about the company. Since then, Google’s promotion of the article has become controversial. Let’s hope this ends up boosting business for King Arthur, which runs the café located off the catalogue room in Baker Library (King Arthur blog, The Dartmouth, Dartbeat).

II. Potential Baker alterations.

The Dartmouth reports that the Undergraduate Deans Office moved out of Parkhurst and into the library over the summer. The new offices appear to be temporary, with a large suite in Baker or elsewhere in the works:

These changes follow announcements made by College President Jim Yong Kim in May 2010 that the College would implement a new student advising structure beginning Fall 2011. The revamped advising structure would be modeled after a hospital triage system centralizing all relevant offices in one location where students could have their advising needs diagnosed, he said.

The deans are in Baker temporarily and will announce a new location in the spring (The Dartmouth).

III. The weathervane and the reference desk.

Ask Dartmouth has a post on Baker Tower’s weather vane. The big Berry reference desk recently was replaced with a new one of a different design (The Dartmouth).

IV. Comparing Baker and Berry.

VSBA designed major additions to two Larson buildings at Dartmouth. The first was the Thayer School addition, which was fairly popular and well-regarded when it opened. The Trustees praised it, probably thinking of the front part:

But the Thayer School addition also had a large rear component, a basic laboratory loft:

The firm’s second major project was the Berry Library and Carson Hall addition to the Baker Library complex. Expected to carry over the classical pavilion from the front of the Thayer project, the firm instead replicated the loft from the rear:

Haynes & Garthwaite designed the recent renovation of the President’s House on Webster Avenue.

In the long term, wouldn’t that building make a great center for student religious life (a new Edgerton House, for example) or a headquarters for an academic institute (a new home for the ISTS)? Either function would be able to handle the noise of Webster Avenue better than a college president can. Land is available to the west to add two more houses if more space is needed.

The president, in turn, could be installed in a new house in the residential neighborhood on Choate Road, near the Dean’s House. Purpose-built for fundraising, the President’s House could share the former Choates dormitory site with some appropriate new student housing.

This map, based on the official campus map (pdf), shows Edgerton House, the President’s House, and the site proposed for the new President’s House in red. The new President’s House would anchor the northern terminus of the Great Mass Row Axis, also in red. Some of the other student religious centers are shown in blue.

Other possible sites for a new President’s House include the Dragon area, considered during the 1920s before the Webster Avenue site was selected; the south end of Occom Pond; the northwest corner of Rope Ferry and Clement Roads, a marvelous and prominent site that cries out for a building; and the northeast corner of Rope Ferry and Maynard.