Notes Toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College
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Notes toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College Scott Meacham, 1995-2001 Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 A.......................................................................................................................... 2 B.......................................................................................................................... 8 C ....................................................................................................................... 23 D ....................................................................................................................... 43 E........................................................................................................................ 55 F........................................................................................................................ 58 G ....................................................................................................................... 64 H ....................................................................................................................... 75 I ......................................................................................................................... 86 J ........................................................................................................................ 86 K........................................................................................................................ 86 L ........................................................................................................................ 90 M ....................................................................................................................... 98 N ..................................................................................................................... 107 O ..................................................................................................................... 111 P...................................................................................................................... 114 Q ..................................................................................................................... 121 R ..................................................................................................................... 121 S...................................................................................................................... 131 T...................................................................................................................... 147 U ..................................................................................................................... 154 V...................................................................................................................... 156 W..................................................................................................................... 156 X Y Z ............................................................................................................... 166 STREET NUMBERS ....................................................................................... 167 Introduction About these notes These notes contain information about roughly 450 buildings, streets, and open spaces related to the College, all built between 1755 and the present. These notes were put into this pdf document in December 2008 after having existed as a series of web pages since 1995. These notes are being posted for archival purposes only, especially with regard to buildings that are no longer standing. All of the information regarding buildings now standing will be supplanted by a book in the summer of 2008. Names were the original reason for this catalog. Where one history will refer to the Golden Corner, another describes the same building as the Balch Mansion. To add to the confusion, the predecessor building on the same site was known as Unity House after it was known as Chi Phi; the successor building on the site is the Collis Center, which began life as College Hall. This list attempts to sort one building from another and give them dates. In very few cases I have supplied a name for a feature, such as the Quadripylon behind Robinson or the Roaring Maw, the steam-tunnel ventilator on the Green. What’s in an entry LATEST NAME* (I) Year Built (Year Demolished). The asterisk signifies that this building no longer exists and the Roman numeral (I) refers to its relative order among successive buildings: the two Dartmouth Halls are (I) and (II). A building might be known only by its street number. -LATEST NAME (a) Year Built (Other Name). The dash indicates that this building is outside of Hanover and the (a) indicates that it is the earlier of several unrelated buildings that share a name, such as the two unrelated Elm Houses. Please note that many dates throughout the catalog are only outside possibilities based on maps that might be decades apart. Citation Scott Meacham, “Notes toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College,” Dartmo.: The Buildings of Dartmouth College (updated 2001), at http://www.dartmo.com/buildings.pdf (viewed. ____ [date]). Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College, 2 A A LOT after 1961. The parking lot east of campus connects to East Wheelock Street by a short drive branching off north of Smith Street between house numbers 47 and 49. The parking lot is hidden behind trees and houses in a hollow. AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE BARNS* by 188X (by 1944). Three large barns stood behind the lot where the Kappa Kappa Gamma House stands today, labelled “Farm Barns” on Sanborn maps of 1894-1904. The Experimental Farm of the New Hampshire College of Argiculture and the Mechanic Arts (in Hanover 1868-1892 before moving to Durham to become U.N.H.) used the barns, some of which predated the founding of the College. The College bought the farm in 1892 and demolished them between 1927 and 1944. ALLEN HALL* c.1872 (1919) (ISOLATION HOSPITAL) (PEST HOUSE [II]) (INFIRMARY [I]). The N.H.C.A.M.A. built the small frame building west and slightly south of Hallgarten near the Heating Plant. By 1870 Ezekiel Dimond saw that the N.H.C. needed an experimental machine shop, as well as a science museum.1 When the legislature funded this second building in 1871-2, Culver Hall, the N.H.C. declined Dartmouth’s offer of some too-distant site for the building and instead bought the Allen lot east of today’s Hopkins Center. The school laid out Crosby Street on the lot’s east edge.2 Allen also rose on the lot and was apparently designed to serve the mechanical arts, the need for which Dimond had noted, but no equipment materialized and the building was converted to a dormitory.3 The building appeared as 6 East Wheelock Street on contemporary maps. When N.H.C. decided to move to Durham, the legislature passed a bill on 10 April 1891 that allowed Dartmouth to buy the buildings, including Allen.4 The Trustees bought Conant Hall, Allen, the workshop and adjoining land for $10,000.5 By 1905 the biulding appeared on maps as “Isolation Hospital, Formerly Allen Hall;” students with contagious diseases lived there and were cared for by a live-in medical student.6 Dr. Kingsford, who long ran the Isolation Hospital, a.k.a. the Pest House, said “Dick’s House was the best thing that ever happened to Dartmouth College.” He required students to write in the humorous 1 John P. Hall, et al., History of the University of New Hampshire 1866-1941 (Durham: U.N.H. Press, 1941), 22. 2 John P. Hall, et al., History of the University of New Hampshire 1866-1941 (Durham: U.N.H. Press, 1941), 31. 3 John P. Hall, et al., History of the University of New Hampshire 1866-1941 (Durham: U.N.H. Press, 1941), 33. 4 John P. Hall, et al., History of the University of New Hampshire 1866-1941 (Durham: U.N.H. Press, 1941), 95. 5 HJohn P. Hall, et al., History of the University of New Hampshire 1866-1941 (Durham: U.N.H. Press, 1941), 97. 6 From Dartmouth 1967, 28 Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College, 3 Pest House Log before they left, and many wrote poetry and made drawings to pass the time. Rivalries developed between the floors where patients with different diseases were segregated. The infirmary function moved to Hallgarten when the Pest House was torn down for the construction of Topliff in 1919 according to one source.7 The building still appears as “Allen (dormitory)” on a 1928 map. ALLEN STREET 1835 (ALLEN LANE). Allen Lane, running west from Main Street as the first intersection below Wheelock Street, began as an1835 access way for a livery stable owned by Ira B. Allen. In 1869 the stable was enlarged and made to face north rather than east to Main Street, and the road was opened all the way to School Street; the lane became known as a street in 1877 when the Town extended it as far as Maple Street at the time the new school built. Owners of houses along Prospect Street named it that rather than Allen, though it continues the street to the west.8 ALPHA CHI ALPHA HOUSE 1896 (ALPHA CHI RHO HOUSE [II]). Fred P. Emery had his house built at 13 Webster Avenue when the College first opened the street to the west from North Main Street.9 The barn that today stands behind and connected to the houes appears on Sanborn maps by 1905. Emery owned the house at least through 1928; Mrs. F.P.