In general construction news, Guy C. Denechaud writes that “Projects Are Plentiful at Dartmouth College,” Valley Business Journal (April 7, 2008).

The Valley News reports that the fieldhouse at Burnham, called the Sports Pavilion, is open as the clubhouse for the soccer and lacrosse teams. The school will add an athletic trainers’ facility to the north side of the building in the future.

Alpha Theta is also working on repairs to comply with the Fuller Audit.

The Dartmouth reports that Bartlett Hall is being rehabilitated.

New Hampshire Hall’s exterior was photographed prior to the expansions that is under way now.

Yale is preparing to build a new residential college, and the Yale Alumni Magazine has an article called “Your Dream College Here” (March/April 2008). Many students and alumni appear to oppose any new college as a threat to Yale’s sense of community (even though that community, for most, seems to derive from loyalty to one’s own residential college) or on the basis of the particular site chosen for this complex.

The University of Durham, rebranded in 2005 as Durham University, is probably the third-oldest university in England (1832) and has a multi-sport competition with the Oxbridge schools called the Doxbridge Tournament. The university comprises a federation of residential colleges in the center of the city, including one in the ancient castle itself, possibly the most fantastic site for a college anywhere in the world. The nominal head of the university is its Chancellor, Bill Bryson, a former Hanover-area resident.

The College’s real estate arm has posted news of its large New-Urbanist housing redevelopment up by the Rugby Clubhouse and Pat & Tony’s. It will take the name of the prior housing tract of the early 1960s, Rivercrest.

According to a list by City-Data.com, the cities over 5,000 people with the highest percentage of people walking to work are (predictably) small places centered around a military base, a college, or some combination of the two:

1. West Point, N.Y. (pop. 7,138): 57.7%
2. Air Force Academy, Colo. (pop. 7,526): 56.3%
3. Fort Gordon, Ga. (pop. 7,754): 53.0%
4. Twentynine Palms Base, Cal. (housing, pop. 8,413): 48.0%
5. Lackland AFB, Tex. (pop. 7,123): 47.4%
6. Hanover, N.H. (pop. 8,162): 47.2%

The list lends support to the general sense that city planning conducted by a relatively authoritarian central body creates superior places.

In some ways it is surprising to see Hanover on the list, since the story of Dartmouth’s growth over the last 30 years is that of faculty moving out, the “Hanoverizing” of Lyme and Norwich, the creation of school-supported suburbs such as Centerra and Grasse Road, and so on.

(Other tidbits from the website’s lists: The towns in the four zip codes with the lowest crime are named Sleepy Hollow, Pleasantville, Economy, and Prospect. The city over 50,000 with the lowest average temperature is Anchorage, at 34.3 degrees F, which handily beats Duluth and Fargo and a surprising number of cities in Arizona. It is probably a quirk of the zip code divisions in Fairbanks that prevents that city from appearing on the list.)

The most notable announcement in the OPDC’s recent spate of updates (the changes include a map-based reorganization of the Projects Page) is the news that Fleck & Lewis Architects are designing the New Hampshire Hall renovation. The project page has a full set of plans and four detailed elevation drawings.

Instead of inserting a fire stair within a column of former bedrooms, the architects will put a symmetrical pair of subsidiary one-bay wings at the ends of the building and devote each to a new stair and entrance. These wings will reproduce or even elaborate on the circle-square motif of the original building’s gables.

Although it is unfortunate that the project includes the demolition of the building’s historic windows, the overall project appears sensitive to the character of the hall and continues the theme of its sympathetic 1985 Hilgenhurst rear addition.

The demolition and replacement of all but the brick arcade screen of Memorial Field’s main or West Stand will be designed by Fleck & Lewis Architects. The completed building will seat 4,736 people, a number almost certainly smaller than its original capacity.

Buchanan Hall, the shy Modernist Tuck School building on Tuck Mall, will be renovated by Fleck & Lewis Architects, the OPDC has announced. The building started as a student dormitory but now will be converted into a center for Executive Education. The upper levels of the four-level building will contain housing, while faculty and administrative offices and lounges for executives will occupy the ground level.

[02.03.2008 correction: the four- (not three-) level building was not converted to offices with the completion of Whittemore.]

Engineering Ventures of Burlington is working on a Satellite Parking Facility for about 400 cars on the suburban Route 10A east of Hanover.

New details about the museum’s storage building are available from the OPDC. Although it is still not clear where the building will stand, it will be designed by Maine’s Harriman Associates.

OPDC has posted two watercolor views of the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Building: a view of the north facade, marking a dramatic entrance to Dartmouth, and one of the south facade facing the Medical School’s courtyard.

Dartmouth Life reports that Hitchcock is open again after its extensive renovation.

Dartmouth Sports’ page for the new Floren Varsity House links to a tour of the building.

One of Floren’s rooms contains an impressive display and timeline depicting the history of Dartmouth football. The sign for the football locker room, however, seems a bit out of place. One is not sure what to think of the inclusion of an academic center study space just for athletes. It does save time over walking to Baker, where athletes are free to study in their own cliques anyway, and it seems unlikely to be used for instruction or “tutoring.”

The College might publish a coffee-table book in 2009 with all of the Winter Carnival posters in commemoration of the Dartmouth Outing
Club’s Centennial, according to The Dartmouth, citing Archivist Peter Carini.

So “Indians” is a relatively recent nickname of the 1918-1925 period, and “Green,” at least as adjective, may be as early as the 1860s, when the color was selected. When did “the Big Green” emerge as a complete nickname?

The words “big Green” began appearing in the New York Times by 1911, but only as adjectives describing nouns such as “team,” “line,” “eleven,” “players,” “machine,” “skaters,” “five,” etc. The phrase applied not just to football but all sports, apparently. The most frequent use was “the big Green team” (1911), but “the big Green line” (1911) also was popular. Writers also used “Hanoverians” and many other terms. A September 9, 1916 article from the Fort Wayne News wrote stated that it was “necessary to uphold the fame of the ‘Big Green’ team”; the Atlanta Constitution wrote in a November 20, 1921 headline that “Dartmouth’s Big Green Machine Arrives Early.” This use of “big Green” as an adjective continued into the 1940s.

When was “Big Green” used as a noun phrase on its own? In the shorthand phrasing of newspaper headlines, it appeared by 1916. A November 11, 1916 article in the Times uses the headline “Big Green Practices Here,” for example. The first line of the article, however, used the earlier form when it stated that “The big Green team from Dartmouth arrived here yesterday . . .”

The first use of “Big Green” as we know it today might be in the Times of October 28, 1923, where the article stated that “the Big Green began its march for its first touchdown.” The following football seasons of the early 1920s saw many such uses: “the Big Green, passed [. . .] its way through a stubborn Chicago team here today” (Decatur Review (November 14, 1925)), etc.

The Class of 1978 Life Sciences Building is taking the place of Strasenburgh Hall, a cramped Medical School office building. Strasenburgh was built as a dormitory, and for that reason it was the only building on the School’s “original” (1950-1980) campus not designed by SBRA: the dormitory, like its Tuck School counterpart Buchanan Hall, was designed by the consulting architects of the College, Campbell Aldrich & Nulty.

Dartmouth Medicine magazine (Winter 2006) has an article by Jennifer Durgin on Strasenburgh’s past, and it includes an excellent aerial photo of the medical campus. Strasenburgh’s small scale and busy faceting made it one of the least unappealing buildings of the group.

More obscure than its involvement in Rivercrest is Wolff Lyon’s plan for the redevelopment of Sachem Village, the grad student housing development south of town.

The Real Estate Office has a Phase II page showing the community center (it looks like a church) and linking to the remarkably New-Urbanist plan (pdf). Trumbull Nelson has been erecting the multistory modular buildings, many of them trucked down from Quebec. The whole village is heated by a central plant that burns biomass.

The Dartmouth reports that the College and the Hospital will begin their complete redevelopment of Rivercrest. The old late-1950s housing development out by Kendal was the conceptual if not actual heir of the World War II shipyard housing used in Wigwam Circle, by the River Cluster. Although the project has sometimes gone by the name “Dresden Village,” it looks as if it will keep “Rivercrest.” Almost 300 people will live there, the Valley News reports.

The plan is one developed by Wolff Lyon Architects in 2004 (previous post). The Real Estate Office has a page that will provide a site plan and other information.

Edward Gray’s article “American Arriviste” in Humanities 28:6 (November/December 2007) is about John Ledyard.

Jens Larson’s main or western stand at Memorial Field is a concrete grandstand screened by a brick facade overlooking Lebanon Street. The Big Green Alert Blog reports that the previously-announced Memorial Field project (construction to begin October 2008, occupancy September 2009, according to the schedule pdf) is more than just a renovation of the structure: the school will demolish the entire concrete stand and replace it with a new one, leaving the brick facade in place.

This project will make the stand more accessible, more comfortable, and less capacious. The likely drop in seating capacity, continuing the trend of the Floren-motivated shrinking of the East Stand, might be desirable. The green-paneled press box, which seems to be from the 1950s and is the latest in a series of expanding press boxes, also will be replaced. The replacement could be a harmonious brick design that responds to Floren, and if Centerbrook has a hand in the project, this result seems especially likely.

Memorial Field’s original West Stand as viewed from the head of the field, by Davis Field House. The distinction between the concrete stand and the applied brick facade or screen is evident. The replacement press box will probably be much wider.

The stand’s center bay contains the only “interior” and the only portion past the street front that is worth saving. This vaulted passage is the site of the memorial element of Memorial Field.

The concrete stand itself is utilitarian and not in the best condition.