The archaeology of Faculty Row

Posted on 26.10.2022 by Regisseur

The Digging Dartmouth project for the spring, led by Anthropology Professor Jesse Casana, investigated traces of the Brown House, which stood south of Parkhurst (Dartmouth News video, The Dartmouth). The article in The Dartmouth provides this heartbreaking tidbit:

Casana felt inspired to investigate Dartmouth’s subterra after observing some not-very-archaeological excavation of the lawn outside his office in Silsby Hall. He noticed that as crews were digging trenches to lay pipes for the new Irving Institute, they had unwittingly unearthed the remains of the foundation of an 1850s-era household.

As always, Professor Casana’s work is to be praised and the college’s ongoing failure to investigate ahead of construction is to be disparaged.

More observations about the final strategic master plan

Posted on 14.09.2021 by Regisseur

The college released the final (November 2020) version of the master plan (pdf) in July of 2021 (Anna Merriman, “Dartmouth master plan calls for growth along Lyme Road,” Valley News (2 July 2021)). The plan is not getting enough press or enough praise, so here are some observations:

As noted earlier, the possibilities for growth in the central campus look great (page 38).
The north end opportunity sites are all super. Old Hospital Quad will be an incredible space 130 years in the making (pages 42-43). Fairchild Tower always did seem more than necessary for its purpose; it is really a signpost building (pages 44-45).
Putting student housing in Remsen-Vail might be touchy. If you wanted to reuse a dull Sixties building as housing, you should have done it with the DHMC tower. Remsen-Vail could be appropriately used for academic purposes, however (page 44).
Lyme Road development is inevitable, but it is not clear how realistic it is to show such development without parking lots (pages 46-47).
When it comes to the West End, the novelty in this plan is the meander of the Cemetery Bridge (Thayer Viaduct). It is more like a boardwalk on a nature trail and does not appear to be a suspension bridge at all — but won’t it be extremely difficult to put bridge footings in a cemetery? (Pages 48-49).
More on the West End: Again, the original Tuck School building here could make an amazing undergraduate dormitory, but one would hate to see Tuck School vanish into the suburbs (pages 48-49).
South End and Downtown: The athletics promenade between Lebanon St. and Thompson Arena is excellent and long overdue. It could be a fine linear work of landscape architecture. Annexing Davis Varsity House as a part of the “house community” for the Crosby Street swing space dorm could be a superb move. The reasoning behind the focus on wellness for an expanded McKenzie is not clear — couldn’t it be used for anything, including arts uses? — but it makes no difference as long as the building is saved. McKenzie might present a real opportunity to create a new building within the historic brick walls (pages 52-53).
Quibbles are minor and basically the same as before: Thayer School didn’t go from the old Experiment Station directly to the West End in 1939, it spent several years in Bissell Gymnasium (page 9); the reference to “Dart Hall” is kind of irritating (page 38); and it’s “Bema” not BEMA (page 41).

The map on pages 28 and 29 showing named landscape opportunities is an important document. Some offhand proposals for these spaces:

Name in Plan	Proposed Replacement
Riverfront Park	Leydard Park
West End Green	A tough one; this was the Wigwam Circle postwar housing area.
Tuck Green at the end of Tuck Mall	Tuck Circle
Dart Row Commons	Fayer Green? “Commons” is not really appropriate for an open space.
Maynard Yard	Old Hospital Yard. This really is a better name.
Life Sciences Lawn	Another tough one; there is very little historic context here.
North End Green in a strip of Dewey Field	Dewey Field. Another one that really is a better name.
Vox Lane	NHCAMA; New Hampshire something; or State College something? “Vox Lane” has always been arbitrary, which is disappointing in this richly historic precinct.
Park Street Gateway	Piazza Nervi. This is tougher to justify now that grass rather than hardscape is proposed for this space.

Dartmouth Unbuilding and other topics

Posted on 12.09.2021 by Regisseur

The smart brick rear ell of Wheelock House, a century-old two-story-above-basement book stacks addition built for the Howe Library, was demolished last month by the Eleazar Wheelock Society.
Commencement this year took place at Memorial Field for the first time since 1995. The stage was at the opposite end of the field this year. It would be interesting to learn whether the Commencement canopy is the same one that was first acquired for that 1995 ceremony and has been used every year since. Perhaps there have been different ones.
Frank J. Barrett’s new book is called Lost Hanover, New Hampshire (Amazon.com). Julia Robitaille has a Q and A with the author in The Dartmouth (2 July 2021).
The Dartmouth Indoor Practice Facility is now the Graham Indoor Practice Facility.
Photos of the CECS show it really taking shape. The Irving is also coming along. The Call to Lead has a page on new projects on campus that includes a West End video showing interior models of the two buildings (as well as close-ups of the globe finial following the removal of Baker’s weathervane).
DHMC Patient Tower, an appealingly midcentury hospital building by HDR (designers of The Williamson), is slated to stand at the north end of the hospital and join the main building between the bastions of the existing patient towers (Vermont Digger). The site is visible at the right of this iconic aerial.
At the trustees’ meeting in June, “[t]he board approved the expenditure of $2.89 million to advance designs for energy infrastructure projects and $1.65 million to support campus housing renewal design development. Board members also voted to allocate $6.9 million for information technology infrastructure work.”
The college website is being redesigned (Dartmouth News).
The IEEE has put up a plaque on the exterior of Collis (College Hall) to commemorate its importance as the site where BASIC was developed in the 1960s (Dartmouth News). The plaque would be better if it were actually written as a BASIC program, thus proving the simplicity of the language, but this is still good to see. (The BASIC highway marker, because of the limitations of the state’s marker program, is distant from the site where the event actually took place.)
Harvard Law School has replaced its old heraldic shield with a new shield in the form of a logo.

———–

[Update 09.13.2021: A reference to a “new” globe finial replacing the Baker weathervane has been corrected. The globe previously underpinned the weathervane and was left in place when the weathervane was removed.]

More changes downtown

Posted on 10.09.2021 by Regisseur

Mayor + Kennedy Architects designed a large rear addition with some novel elements for 23 South Main Street.
The Hanover Improvement Society (of Nugget fame) opened an ice cream shop in the former Morano Gelato on South Main Street last year (John Lippman, “Bottom Line: Nonprofit answers Hanover’s screams for ice cream,” Valley News (20 June 2020)).
The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen closed the gallery it maintained in a notable Modernist building on Lebanon Street in the summer of 2020 (Valley News (30 June 2020)).
In the summer of 2020, the college ended the lease of the Jewel of India Restaurant on its late Victorian frame house on Lebanon Street (see John Lippman, “Dartmouth College won’t renew lease for Jewel of India restaurant in June,” Valley News (24 January 2020); Emily Lu, “Jewel of India relocates and reopens for takeout on July 15,” The Dartmouth (10 July 2020)).

See also background information on Sargent Block at this site; the one-time college master plan for Sargent Block; and Lisa Prevost, “Colleges Invest So ‘What’s the Town Like?’ Gets an Upbeat Answer,” New York Times (25 February 2020).

The Dartmouth Archaeology Station

Posted on 08.07.2021 by Regisseur

The Valley News article on the archaeological dig at the Choate House site saves this important news until the very end:

The Dartmouth Archaeology Station, a new facility near the Ledyard Bridge in Norwich will have an exhibition and visitor space in the front, and Casana said there are plans for a dig community members can participate in during September 2021, National Archaeology Month.¹Jasmine Taudvin, “College dig reveals 19th century infection,” Valley News (6 June 2021).

How fantastic is that? It’s amazing, when you think about it. Dartmouth has never had the space or the self-regard necessary to maintain a museum dedicated to its own history, but this sounds like a good start.

The College History Room (opened in 1965 in the west end of Baker) is a special place but really could be called the College History Nook. The Historical Society (1961) has its collection of antiques in Webster Cottage, but it is not intended to interpret the history of the college. The best prior effort was probably the historical room in the college library (Wilson Hall), which was described around 1910 as containing the Civil-War era banners of the Dartmouth Grays and the Dartmouth Phalanx; Wheelock’s honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh; and invitations to commencement balls from a variety of periods.²Kenneth C. Kramer, “The Dartmouth College Archives,” Dartmouth College Library Bulletin (April 1994). President Nichols apparently wanted to save a door lock from Wentworth Hall to put into a collection of objects removed from old buildings around 1912. Webster Hall was planned as a prescriptive alumni hall of fame that would contain a large apsidal mural depicting Daniel Webster arguing the Dartmouth College Case and possibly a museum of college history below the balconies.³The Dartmouth 29:? (22 October 1907), 76. As far back as 1873, students were suggesting that “[a] Historical Society would do much toward collecting and putting in proper form such documents and letters as would be of interest and value to those who wish to learn the history of the College.”⁴“Editorial Department,” The Dartmouth 7:9 (November 1873), 374.

While Rauner does a brilliant job of conserving objects and documents from the history of the college, it cannot take on too many architectural antiques, and it lacks the space for a permanent display. And Dartmouth might have a particular penchant for losing artifacts that are too big or too uninteresting to be accessioned by Rauner. The WWI cannon from Memorial Field (which somehow made it into the hands of a private individual, although with the implication that it would be returned to its owner upon request); the masonry from the Butterfield Museum that has been dug up from beneath Baker’s lawn during various landscaping or maintenance projects; most of the best bits of the old operating theater or main building of the MHMH; the foundations of the WWII-era prefabricated shipyard housing units used as dormitories (“Wigwam Circle”) that were uncovered in the 1990s; perhaps even the big brass revolving front door of Baker library (was it sold by Vermont Salvage? I do not know, but other Dartmouth architectural elements of lesser importance have been sold there).

The Archaeology Station will presumably occupy the historic brick house in Lewiston, Vermont that the college has used as its pottery studio. Naturally its mission will not include the display of architectural elements salvaged from demolished buildings (as opposed to items uncovered by excavation), but there is always hope, and it is certainly a step in the right direction.

 [+]

References
↑1	Jasmine Taudvin, “College dig reveals 19th century infection,” Valley News (6 June 2021).
↑2	Kenneth C. Kramer, “The Dartmouth College Archives,” Dartmouth College Library Bulletin (April 1994).
↑3	The Dartmouth 29:? (22 October 1907), 76.
↑4	“Editorial Department,” The Dartmouth 7:9 (November 1873), 374.

Various topics including two West End flythroughs

Posted on 05.06.2021 by Regisseur

The experience design page at Arup has a small blurb about the Hopkins Center project with a conceptual illustration. It is difficult to tell what space the image depicts, but it could be a new room built within the Hop Courtyard.
This has not been mentioned much, but the architect of record for the Snøhetta Hop project is EYP (see “Snøhetta to redesign Dartmouth College’s arts center,” The Construction Specifier (15 February 2021)). EYP is doing a lot in Hanover these days, including some of the Dartmouth Row remodelings. The firm also conducted studies that are leading up to the new power plant/green energy project.
See Katie Angen, “Dartmouth’s 1960s-era Anonymous Hall makes a name for itself with 2030 overhaul,” The Architect’s Newspaper (31 March 2021); David Malone, “Dartmouth College’s new faculty and graduate student center completes,” Building Design + Construction (26 February 2021); Matthew Marani, “With an Array of Sustainability Measures, Dartmouth’s Newest Building Stands Above the Pack,” Metropolis (2 June 2021). Some articles about Anonymous Hall refer to the space to the north as “a north quad,” which is fine, but others refer to “North Quad,” which does not seem right.
The current images for the Dartmouth Hall remodeling show the subtle front podium. At the moment, the project update page has an excellent photo of a shutterless building with scaffolding around the cupola. The renovation of the Charles Rich-designed building involves the insertion of new structural steel framing and concrete floors (Amar Scherzer, “Thornton Hall renovation to finish in summer, Irving Institute construction to complete in fall,” The Dartmouth (11 May 2021)).
A nice flythrough video shows the CECS building; for some reason the markings on the glass bridge that will indicate where the extra ten-foot segment was added do not appear in the video. Oh well. Instead of “Kemeny Hardenberg,” as shown on the HGA page, the entrance to the building in the video now reads “Center for Engineering and Computer Science.” How is the abbreviation pronounced, by the way — is it Kex or Secs? The North to West Utility Extension page shows how very large the building is.
There are several new photos of the Irving under construction and a new flythrough video available on the building’s project page. It is so good to see the facade of the old Murdough Center, its glass hoarding now white-framed instead of black, preserved within the new atrium.
Old news: the college constructed a pair of 60 x 120 skating rinks on the Green in January, and a light installation was installed in the Bema in February.
A fascinating study of early 19th-century parasitic infection has emerged from the summer 2019 archaeological work at the Choate House site on Wentworth Street (Amy Olson, “Studying 200-Year-Old Privy on Campus Hits Pay Dirt,” Dartmouth News (3 May 2021)). The recent growth in campus archaeology continues to thrill (and to revive a sense of regret over potential missed opportunities in the 1990s, including on the southeast corner of the Green).
Something’s going on around here: The privy article refers to “Dartmouth Libraries’ Baker-Berry Library” and the recent iconography article refers to “Dartmouth Library’s Baker Library.” Surely a reader of the official Dartmouth News website is not going to mistake Baker for a constituent facility of the Town of Hanover’s Howe Library? On a somewhat-related note, the new Indoor Practice Facility displays the words DARTMOUTH INDOOR PRACTICE FACILITY. Why the “DARTMOUTH”? Could it be mistaken for a Hanover High facility? Perhaps the word is just standing in for the name of a donor.
Influential planning historian John Reps died on November 12 (Edith Fikes and Patti Witten, “Urban planning historian John W. Reps dies at age 98,” Cornell Chronicle (25 November 2020)). He became interested in maps at Dartmouth, where he was a member of the Class of 1943. His history of his collecting is worth a read.
The book Beneath the Green: The Map at Dartmouth is a 2019 collection of student projects from Mary Flanagan’s mapmaking class.
See Merideth Barnett, “Honoring the Past, Shifting for the Future,” Currents Magazine (1 May 2021) for a look at campus traditions that includes Dartmouth among its examples. In this article, “advancement professionals and higher education researchers share why traditions endure, how they shift, and what role advancement today plays in celebrating and shaping them.”
Here is an interesting college tradition: digging up a different buried bottle of seeds every 20 years (Cara Giaimo, “One of the World’s Oldest Science Experiments Comes Up From the Dirt,” New York Times (21 April 2021).

Insignia

Posted on 28.05.2021 by Regisseur

Office of Communications, “Working Group Will Outline Best Practices for Iconography” (6 May 2021):

The Campus Iconography Working Group has begun work to draft recommendations for artwork, images, and nomenclature across Dartmouth’s physical and digital environments. The group, which includes students, faculty, staff, and alumni, will consider items such as paintings, sculptures, statues, and official insignia.

Contrast that project with the recent OCD overhaul of Dartmouth’s visual identity on an essentially graphical basis.

It seems likely that the group will recommend the retirement of Dartmouth’s 1944/1957 coat of arms, the familiar shield depicting a pair of Native Americans walking toward a college building (not Dartmouth Hall but a generic college or, at best, a Dartmouth Hall precursor).

Jonathan Good’s Proposal for a Heraldic Coat of Arms for Dartmouth College anticipated this retirement decades ago and suggested an appropriate replacement.

It is important that Dartmouth, while retiring its current coat of arms, create a replacement coat of arms. There is a risk that the college will do nothing and that the D-Pine, a fine less-formal symbol particularly suited to athletics (notwithstanding its description by the Office of Communications as “the most formal brand mark”) will become the official symbol of Dartmouth College.

Any iconography decision will apparently not affect the naming of the Geisel School of Medicine (Inside Higher Ed).

Dartmouth NEXT, a sort of Great Issues for the world, uses the map (or really the pattern) of paths on the Green in a graphical way to form a right-pointing arrow logo:

A course exhibit from April 2020 titled The Indian Symbol at Dartmouth: A Story of Voices and Silence contains a number of notable documents from the archives. The 1932 article on “the new official insignia,” for example, is very interesting and brings to light an obscure design. One note: The Eleazar Wheelock Tombstone, which is carved (not stamped) with a version of the Indian head symbol, is actually a non-funerary monument located in Columbia, Connecticut. Wheelock is buried in Hanover, N.H.

The big renovation of Dartmouth Hall is beginning

Posted on 14.11.2020 by Regisseur

The Trustees have given the go-ahead (Valley News, Dartmouth News) to start the big renovation of Dartmouth Hall (design page). Apparently the project was moved up by a year because the relocation of faculty offices from the building was unexpectedly spurred by the pandemic.

Dartmouth Hall, it will be remembered, was designed by college architect Charles Alonzo Rich ’75 and was built from 1904 to 1906. Successor college architect Jens Fredrick Larson designed the gut-remodeling of the building that took place in 1935 and 1936, in which the current concrete floors and steel stairs were installed and Room 105 was created. The small gables over the north and south entrances bear the years 1904 and 1935 in reference to these construction periods. The year 1784 in the central gable refers to the original Dartmouth Hall, which stood on the site.

The most notable change in this latest renovation will be the extension of the existing granite foundation as a podium or terrace in front of the building. The three sets of steps will be there, and a ramp will be integrated into the south end of the terrace. The composition seems fitting and will probably go unnoticed by most observers.

Other changes: The building’s center doors will be made operable and will continue to give on to the shallow lobby of Room 105. In the College Yard, an east-west path leading to the center entry will return, and a new diagonal path will make the slope accessible. The rear facade will have ramps and stairs for the north and south entrances protected by simple if not utilitarian shed roofs.

The College Street sidewalk and other topics

Posted on 24.10.2020 by Regisseur

The college is replacing some of the glass curtain walls on the Black Family Visual Arts Center, including the large etched glass window that clad the upper levels of the building over the west (campus) entrance (former link). The replacement glass here and over the south entrance will be less distracting and provide better management of daylight. The etched design over the west entrance, however lovely up close, did always look from a distance like creeping frost or condensation inside a multipane window whose seal had failed.
Very interesting: the college is putting a lot of effort into installing a sidewalk along College Street north of the site of the old DG House (see North College Street Sidewalk weekly update). Sidewalks are good, and this one must have been deemed necessary, but there was something romantic about the way College Park spilled wildly toward the shoulder of the road, untamed. Just look at this barely-trammeled wilderness, as seen in Google Street View during July 2019:

At any rate, the project involves what appears to be a hand-laid stone retaining wall intended as a counterpart to the existing wall to the south. (Does that existing wall incorporate foundation stones from the Victorian DG House?)
Dartmouth News has a video on the wooden sculpture by Ursula von Rydingsvard called Wide Babelki Bowl that now stands northwest of Rollins Chapel. (It is not really a southern counterpart to Thel; that honor was held by Telemark Shortline, which has been removed.) As Jessica Hong notes in the video, the sculpture has a definite kinship with the cyclopean masonry of Rollins; it is also reminiscent of the multi-stone sculptures of Angkor Wat.
The college is going ahead with the DOC House renovation (project page) with funding from the Class of 1969. Compare the project page image with the image at The Call to Lead to see the exterior changes on the Occom Pond facade.
It is not clear if there is an earlier public mention than this April 20 article, but the trim Sports Pavilion by Burnham Field that was built in 2007 and expanded a decade later has finally been given a name: Reilly Pavilion.
Housing developer Michaels Student Living will build an $84 million graduate student housing complex on Mt. Support Road, near the hospital, in coordination with the college (see renderings in Dartmouth News release, site plan in The Dartmouth). The designer is JSA Design of Portsmouth (Boston Real Estate Times).
The Valley News reports that plans are afoot to save the Hanover Country Club as a nine-hole course. The northern two-thirds of the course, comprising holes seven through 15, would be used in the new course; the southern portion of the course, lying south of the bulk of Pine Park and including the clubhouse area and the bridge over Girl Brook, would be made available for possible college expansion.
The Valley News has a story on a new cold chamber to be built at CRREL.
The steel frame of the Irving Institute has been topped off (Dartmouth News).
Most construction projects, including the construction of a large dormitory at the corner of Crosby and Wheelock Streets, are on hold, reported The Dartmouth in June.
Vermonter Putnam Blodgett ’53 died on March 20 (Valley News). He led the Moosilauke advisory committee, and his woods were the source of the unique forked white pine called Slingshot that supports the second-level bridge as well as the roof of the new Ravine Lodge (see photos in Jim Collins, Welcome to the Woods, DAM (Jan-Feb 2018)). I recall him at the 1995 Senior Symposium talking about the 1949 Tug of War: apparently the regular tug of war between the freshmen and the seniors had come to be seen as too large and dangerous, so the college placed a huge log between the opposing teams and attached multiple ropes to each side. Unfortunately, one of the ropes came loose and the log went flying in the opposite direction, toward the side with more pulling force. He said it was a miracle that no one was badly injured.
A ring bearing the letter “Z” featured prominently in a photo in the July 24 Washington Post story on the Pebble Mine project in Alaska. The photograph, by Alex Milan Tracy, showed the right hand of then-CEO Tom Collier, a U.Va. graduate. It’s a safe bet that the ring indicates membership in the Z Society (Wikipedia).

Roy W. Banwell, Jr.

Posted on 22.10.2020 by Regisseur

Influential Hanover architect and Dartmouth architecture instructor Roy Banwell died August 21 at age 90 (Valley News obituary, very nice Stuart White letter, Banwell Architects notice).

The end of the Hanover Country Club

Posted on 13.07.2020 by Regisseur

Along with ending five varsity sports, the college is closing the Hanover Country Club after nearly 125 years (see the announcement, which features another great Burakian aerial; see also the more detailed Hanlon message and the FAQ).

The golf course has been thought of as a land bank, a reserve for future development, for decades. A thorough college planning process can be expected before anything is built on the golf course.

Here are some suggestions for the plan:

The historic clubhouse, a 19th-century barn that was extensively remodeled by Professor Homer Eaton Keyes in 1916 and 1917 (a post here), should be preserved, ideally on its current site. It could be expanded and turned into a dwelling.
If the golf course is going to be developed, it should be developed thoroughly. Piecemeal scatterings of parking lots and isolated buildings will only draw suburban sprawl closer to Hanover (a concern expressed in a 2008 post here). The college should plan for an all-encompassing, long-term project that reserves important natural areas, establishes a street grid, and envisions buildings surrounding walkable public spaces.
More to the point, the development should be urban, not campus-like. The golf course lies outside the 10-minute walking radius of the college, and none of the buildings built there should contain spaces for instruction or student dining or living. These should be mixed-use commercial buildings like the ones found in Hanover’s first downtown, South Main Street. That is the idea presented in a 2012 post here that featured this image:
One exception to the no-campus guideline might be made for a new business school campus. Professional schools are located at the edges of the college, and the Tuck School has looked in the past at new sites along Lyme Road — which is too far away. A new Tuck campus beginning behind the Life Sciences Center and extending up into the golf course could be impressive. Thayer School might be happy to take over the old Tuck buildings.
While commercial buildings extend northward along Lyme Road, what kind of construction should the college promote on old Hilton Field, the area beyond the DOC House and the Clubhouse? To bring some income, provide needed housing for academic families, and appease the existing neighbors, the college might want to consider building houses here in the character of the historic neighborhood.

Symbols, including weathervanes and flags

Posted on 04.07.2020 by Regisseur

Baker Tower Weathervane. The Valley News has been reporting on the petition calling for the removal of the Baker Tower weathervane and the college’s plan to remove it (see also Dartmouth News). A crane crew removed the weathervane on June 25 (Dartmouth News).

The college plans to create a replacement; George Hathorn has suggestions. The June 25 Dartmouth News piece by Aimee Minbiole states that “Vice President for Communications Justin Anderson will assemble a working group to consider designs for a new weather vane and whether other changes in iconography across the institution are necessary.” If that iconography includes the college seal with its depiction of Native Americans, one solution would be to adopt an heraldic seal based on an heraldic coat of arms.

The cascading effects of the weathervane’s deprecation are interesting. The Guarini shield, less than a year old, contains the tiniest imaginable depiction of the weathervane, but it will apparently be changing. (It is even less visible than the Indian head cane that was removed from the pre-2012 DMS shield.) The Town of Hanover is also changing its official logo, which contains a line drawing of Baker Tower that also features a small version of the weathervane. Remarkably, the Valley News story, citing Town Manager Julia Griffin, states that some variants of the town logo already render the two human figures as trees: “Griffin said via email that many of the logos in town show three pine trees on the weather vane, rather than the more troublesome figures. For now, those logos won’t be changed, she said.”

The original 1928 copper exterior of the Baker Tower weathervane is already in storage. The exterior was recreated, according to the Valley News story of June 12, as part of the tower renovation project of 2016, less than four years ago. Compare that missed-opportunity-in-hindsight to the travails of U.Va., which updated its athletics logo in April and two months later finds itself tweaking the new design to get rid of the twisted hilts of the crossed sabers. What is the symbolic significance of a twisted hilt? It is not clear that it has any independent meaning at all, but the promotional verbiage that was put out with the spring update pitched the twisted hilts as a reference to the serpentine walls that line the back gardens of the university’s original buildings. Those walls’ connection to enslavement is the prompt for the latest change.

(One would think that the bigger problem is the association with the Confederate cavalry saber — the crossed, curved cavalry sabers are much more typically seen as an emblem on a mid-19th century slouch hat than in connection with a 17th-century cavalier — but the designer of the U.Va. logo in the mid-1990s says he did not intend it to refer to the Civil War.)

Flags. A lot is going on with flags these days. Mississippi has dropped its flag and will consider the Stennis Flag among the possible replacements. The 9/11 “Freedom Flag” (spotted in the wild here) is the subject of a bill, sponsored by Reps. Spanberger and King, proposing to make it the official flag of 9/11 remembrance (WTVR News). The flag is to be flown on federal buildings from September 11 through 30 each year. Finally, CNN has a piece on the Juneteenth Flag. Maybe looking at the Freedom Flag encourages one to view every flag as a map, but the zig-zag “burst” lines on the Juneteenth Flag can also be read as the plan of a 19th-century star fort. One might prefer a version of the date that omitted the comma, but the specificity of putting the date on the flag in words is appealing.

Other symbols, including plaques. There is an official climate emergency tartan (Scottish Register of Tartans). The FCC has a new seal (see Brand New, also FCC announcement pdf). The eagle has post-Homeland Security wings; the antenna feed line, which curved realistically in the old FCC seal, is made into a rigid line of division of the shield — ouch.

Finally, because this site is always on the lookout for a rogue plaqueing, a link to Kevin Levin’s Civil War Memory post on the series of unofficial historical markers erected by activist historians on Monument Avenue in Richmond. Some of the markers apparently have been ripped up already (WTVR News). Three of the four city-owned statues of defeated rebels have been removed in recent days, and only Stuart remains. Here is a windshield snap taken yesterday; the statue is not expected to last another week. It does feel like Europe in 1989:

Crosby Street dorm off the table and other news

Posted on 05.04.2020 by Regisseur

The construction of the Indoor Practice Facility is nearly finished (see Big Green Alert). The school’s existing indoor practice facility, Leverone Field House, is being eyed as a site for a temporary hospital ward during the pandemic (Valley News). The west wing of Alumni Gym is also under consideration (Valley News).
This interesting tidbit appeared at the end of a board news release about new trustees:

The new board members were elected at the board’s spring meeting, held this year at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

That seems like a first. The main news release (issued 1 March) has more information:

The board met at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., where they engaged in wide-ranging conversations with a diverse group of Stanford leaders including trustees, the former and current presidents, the provost, faculty in leadership positions, and representatives from departments across campus.

Not sure what to make of that, whether the learning opportunities were added to enhance the remote meeting or the meeting was held on the other side of the continent specifically in order to learn from Stanford.
Shattuck’s Revenge. At the Stanford meeting, the board approved a capital budget to fund projects that include “include renovation of Thornton Hall; planning and design of the Dartmouth Hall renovation; planning for proposed projects with private developers, including graduate housing and energy infrastructure; and” other projects. An interesting mention is made of $3 million “for planning and schematic design to explore the renovation and expansion of the Choates residence halls and the East Wheelock residential complex,” and funding for the future Hop renovation (still on the table!) and construction of teaching and research spaces is also noted. Not a word, however, on the Crosby Street dorm, which has been in planning for more than two years now. The project page for the design of the building was quietly removed from the Campus Services website during the last few weeks.
Irving Oil Co. has a rendering of the Irving Institute that differs in detail from the other images out there.
The college launched its capital campaign two years ago at Duggal Greenhouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Some photos from the event show considerable attention to detail: the use of Dartmouth Ruzicka lettering on the front facade; the model (15′ high?) of the bonfire, reimagined as a cocktail table; and the plaster/pasteboard renderings of Baker Tower and the main buildings of Tuck, Thayer, and Geisel (it’s white, but it’s a reasonably accurate rendition of the school’s ex-hospital building on Maynard Street).
Unrelated even to architecture: Although it is not unusual to hear of a company that has been operating since 1905, it is unusual to find one that has been making the same product since its beginning. How odd would it be if that product were a Morse code key? Take a look at Vibroplex and its Original Standard key. This is not quite an example of Ferry Porsche’s theory that the last car ever to be built will be a sports car (see Porsche’s site), because the FCC seems to effectively subsidize the use of Morse Code by prohibiting other modes of communication on certain radio frequencies, but it is close.

The new Guarini shield

Posted on 09.02.2020 by Regisseur

The Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies has a new shield by OCD.

The prior shield (see the post at this site) was adopted in 2011 after a low-budget crowdsourcing project. It shows the mandatory river lines in the base as a pair of helping hands, a bit reminiscent of the United Way logo. Some versions of the shield included the year 1885, when the first graduate degree was awarded at the college.

The new shield displays the year 2016, the year the school was formally established, in the base. It is not clear whether the sans serif typeface is the required National 2, but the extra height it gives the numeral 6 suggests that these numerals were not hand-drawn.

Above the year are the waves of the river, and on the left side of the shield, emerging from the river — not yet swamped! — is the upper portion of the cupola of Baker Tower. This might be called the Day After Tomorrow shield. Stanley Orcutt’s Wheelock and an Indian under the Pine weathervane bumps up against the very thick border of the shield, and the rest of the shield is occupied by a representation of the constellation Cassiopeia, as the news item explains:

The designers worked with the School to create an image of Cassiopeia, one of the constellations that one could have seen when standing on the green at midnight and looking north at Baker on the night the Board of Trustees voted to establish the School, on July 1, 2016.

250th anniversary of the Dartmouth Charter

Posted on 13.12.2019 by Regisseur

On December 13, 1769, Provincial Governor John Wentworth signed letters patent bringing Dartmouth College into being.

There is a transcript of the Charter at this site, along with information about the Charter. The 250th Website announces closing festivities for today.

Hell Gate Cabin burns, and other news

Posted on 21.11.2019 by Regisseur

Valley News reports that the 1974 Hell Gate Gorge Cabin in the Grant burned to the ground this week.
A Dartmouth News story profiles the Band; at the recent Yankee Stadium football game against Princeton, the marching bands of the two schools combined for a halftime performance.
Construction on the Irving began in October and will involve the demolition of the northeast corner of Murdough. The current rendering of the interior atrium of Irving is labeled “no beehive.” Presumably the beehive is the stepped hemispherical-roofed conference room (?) that dominated the lower left corner of earlier renderings. Presumably the roof is just omitted from the rendering rather than dropped from the design; the boat-hull jetty on the left side of the stair looks like the base of the beehive.
Valley News reports that DHMC has submitted its expansion plans to the Town of Lebanon; the hospital is going with a bigger parking lot by Jesse’s rather than a multilevel parking deck.
Ledyard Canoe Club is celebrating its centennial.
There are more twists and turns in the story of the plans for the new heating plant (Dartmouth News). The college seems to be looking at options other than a biomass plant.
VTDigger has an article on petroglyphs in Brattleboro submerged since 1909.

Boathouse addition finished, and other items

Posted on 06.10.2019 by Regisseur

There are Dartmouth News items on Vox Croo, the special DOC Trips unit (also photos) and the Warner Bentley bust.
The addition to the rowing boathouse has been completed and dedicated (see also the Call to Lead item).
Other new building items: The Dana transformation continues, and the Indoor Practice Facility update page includes a rendering of the building’s lobby.
Greg Fennell in the Valley News discusses the fact that Dartmouth football is not on radio for first time in decades. Good old WDCR (on line) and the EBA’s ads are missed.
A Valley News story picks up on the hesitation expressed by the college (in its announcement of the latest board meeting) to build the new heating plant as a biomass plant.
Valley News also has articles on the student-research historical accountability project and the visit of the tenth Earl of Dartmouth.

Historical archeology on campus and other topics

Posted on 22.09.2019 by Regisseur

News of an archeological dig on the site of Choate House, on Wentworth Street is thrilling; one hopes that such digs take place all over Hanover. Comparing the younger and larger state-supported University of Virginia is not really appropriate, but U.Va. seems constantly to be conducting digs, such as this one last summer.
In posts of August 17 and September 20, Big Green Alert Daily has photos of the Indoor Practice Facility going up.
The Valley News has an article on DHMC plans for a northward expansion (see also a later article without the plan). The expansion will go between the arms of the vee at the north entrance:
Campus Services has a nice interactive map of projects around campus.
The Rauner Blog has a post on Charles L. Hildreth of the class of 1901 and his campus cyanotypes.
The Valley News has an article about a class that studied the college’s connection to farming and put up an exhibit in the Berry Brickway Gallery.
The Engineering/CS construction update page has a photo of the extensively-rerouted Thayer Drive with this caption: “The new access road (to be named Thayer Drive) is almost complete. The drive begins at West Wheelock, turns left behind the residence halls to Channing Cox parking lot, and around to the back of MacLean Science Center.”
The Digital Library Program is running a great project called Image of the Week.
One of these things is not like the others. Once the OCD visual identity came out, we knew it was possible, but still we hoped it wouldn’t happen: the college has begun to replace the Dartmouth shield with the D-Tree. The school has started with the official letterhead of all places:

The D-Tree itself is nice, especially as an athletic logo, but it’s not a shield. And while the college might have good reason to take the midcentury Dartmouth shield out of its letterhead, it should commission a new shield for that purpose, as part of a new heraldic coat of arms. See, for example, this proposal from 1995.

Didn’t anyone find it notable that every one of the four Associated Schools now finally has a shield that depicts the Connecticut River in its base, just as the Dartmouth shield does?
The Valley News reports that the college submitted a new plan for the Thayer/CS building, this time showing its location accurately. After the building opens, wouldn’t it be neat if someone painted a line on the bridge that connects the building to MacLean to show where it was meant to stand? If the college is unable to muster the humility required, then some wry engineering student group ought to do it, in secret.
The PBS Newshour has a story on the Hood and its unconventional presentation of out-of-the-mainstream art. See also the good art-centered review in Apollo Magazine and the review in Dezeen. Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien received honorary degrees at Commencement.
Rauner Library Blog has a post on a 1946 proposal for a Canadian flag with a profusion of stars, including the Big Dipper (compare the Alaska Flag, at Wikipedia).
A Valley News article from June describes a tour offered by the Lebanon Heritage Commission.

Dartmo.

The Buildings of Dartmouth College

Category Archives: History