The College's 265-acre campus is rich in history and tradition. But soon it will be expanded and modernized to face the demands and challenges of the 21st century.
Facilities planning for the next 25 years is one of the College's most important priorities. Working with the architectural firm of Venturi, Scott-Brown and Associates, the College prepared a "concept plan" that shapes the College's northward expansion toward the area occupied by the old Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital.
The plan attempts to maintain an architectural consistency, combining the innovative modernization undertaken since the Great Depression era with the more traditional Georgian-style buildings and open courtyards created in the College's first 150 years.
But this plan does not come without a very hefty price tag. The main features of the College's expansion and modernization will cost well over $50 million.
Some of the new facilities are already complete, such as the $28.6 million Burke chemistry building and Byrne Hall, a $10 million administration and student services building for the Tuck Business School.
A remodelled Collis Student Center and the Sudikoff computer science laboratory will open next year, according to Bruce Pipes, associate provost for academic affairs. Renovating Collis and transforming an old mental health building into Sudikoff is costing more than $10 million.
By 1997, a new $15 million psychology building will be completed and Baker Library will expand to include a $30 million Berry Library -- a completely computerized "library of the future."
There are also long term plans for a classroom addition to the Sudikoff Lab and a new math building that would connect to Sudikoff through the classroom addition.
These buildings and the new psychology building will face north toward the old Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital which will be torn down by 1997.
The area between the old Hospital and the Berry Library, currently a parking lot, will become a new lawn area with footpaths, similar to, but smaller than, the current Green.
But these changes will not create a separate campus, according to George Hathorn, assistant director of Facilities Planning. "For Dartmouth to remain the special place that it is, it needs to continue to have one identifiable, integrated campus."
The Will to Excel capital campaign booklet echoes Hathorn's statement. "The relocation of the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center has presented Dartmouth with the unique opportunity to do bold long-term planning for the region north of Baker Library, which should preserve -- indeed, enhance -- the character of the campus."
Today, the College has outgrown its campus. While the 1960s and 1970s represented a time of great expansion for many schools, Dartmouth instead focused on the maintenance of its existing facilities.
"Although Dartmouth did not defer maintenance, it did defer modernization. By the beginning of the 1990s, many programs in the sciences and the social sciences were threatened because of potentially obsolete facilities," the campaign booklet states.
As the College looks forward to new facilities and one of Dartmouth's largest expansions, it is also looking back upon and trying to maintain the current campus' unique history and character.
"The autobiography of Dartmouth College has been written, and will be written in its sticks and stones as irrevocably as in any other records of its life," Professor Packard wrote in a 1942 issue of the Alumni Magazine in response to expansion plans during the 1940s. Packard recommended that expansion combine new and old architectural styles.
"We're being very careful to ensure the architectural vocabulary of the campus is respected," said Art History Professor Robert McGrath.
A neo-Georgian style dominates the campus's architecture. Most of the buildings were designed by architects Charles Rich and Jens Larsen in the early 1900s.
But the College attempted to modernize the campus after the Great Depression and World War II.
Although not particularly aesthetically pleasing, these "modernist" buildings emphasized interaction between departments and a new spirit of innovation and computerization, also important components of more recent expansion.
The Rockefeller Center, built in 1983, together with the adjoining Silsby Hall, contain almost all the social science departments including economics, education, government and sociology.
According to Robert Graham, in "The Dartmouth Story," the purpose of the center is to "bring together under one roof a core of departments in the social sciences division, thus facilitating the cross-fertilization of ideas and information within that family of disciplines."
But when all is said and done, the campus' appearance is central in the minds of College planners.
Dartmouth's future, as laid out in the "concept plan" will remain true to the neo-Georgian style established by Rich and Larsen, Hathorn said. "Post-modern" buildings like the East Wheelock dormitories, the Berry Sports Complex and the Hood Museum offer an indication of how future buildings will look.
