McCulloch Hall, the newest residence hall in the East Wheelock cluster, is scheduled to be completed by mid-July and open to students for housing next fall. With many unique features, it will likely keep that first batch of residents talking for some time.
Director of Residential Operations Woody Eckels, The Dartmouth's tour guide for the day, said that he hopes the unique architecture of McCulloch will help to promote a sense of community among residents.
According to Eckels, one of the main problems with the current state of the East Wheelock cluster is that the arrangement of rooms does not promote interaction between students.
In contrast, rooms in McCulloch are arranged in suites of between four and nine students.
Within the suites, each student will have his or her own room adjoining a common living area and study.
Doors to suites cannot be locked, and neither can doors between rooms in doubles.
"The entire building is a combination of one room singles and two room doubles," each with its own window and walk-in closet, Eckels said. Each room is approximately 140 square feet.
Doors will lack the traditional spring-loaded hinges present in most other campus residences.
Because of this, doors will remain open of their own accord rather than automatically slamming shut.
"There's more chance for community -- it's less isolating," he said of the arrangement.
According to Eckels, student opinion was an important factor in all architectural decisions.
"I can't think of any suggestion made by students that was not brought forward by the architects," he said.
The bathroom facilities represent an especially unique student addition. Shower and toilet facilities can be entered separately from a common hall within the suite.
"The flexible part is that if someone is in the toilet it does not take the shower out of service," said Eckels.
Even more unusual, however, is where you go after using the toilet. The sinks are located in the hallway of the suites to promote interaction between students each morning.
Other special features of McCulloch include skylights, balconies, porches, an elevator, and a community study on the second floor that offers overhead lighting, a desk-lined perimeter, and a gas fireplace.
A recreation room will have a wide-screen television and ping pong tables, social resources that are hoped to provide an added incentive for the residents of other dorms in the East Wheelock cluster to visit McCulloch via the two-level heated walk-way connecting it to Brace Commons.
The basement will include a laundry room, kitchen, and seminar room. The seminar room will be utilized by academic classes during the day but will be open for student use in the evenings.
It is currently wired as a "smart classroom," but, according to Eckels, will not reach its full technological potential without the aide of further monetary donations.
"We've built in more flexibility than we'll probably want to use at the start," Eckels said of McCulloch.
All dorm furniture is being constructed from the "green lumber" cut from the sustainable forest within the Dartmouth grant.
"This is full circle," Eckels said of its use.
McCulloch will be heated by a system which relies on the convection of hot and cold water currents rather than moving parts.
Walls within the building are being constructed from thick slabs of concrete and sheet rock, a decision that Eckels said he hopes will help to prevent architectural damage such as that recently incurred by the older, thinner-walled dorms in the rest of East Wheelock.
McCulloch has three staircases, state of the art smoke and fire detectors, and complete sprinkler coverage. Eckels said that these precautions will make McCulloch a very safe place on campus.
"We made a commitment a bunch of years ago to start improving life safety conditions," he explained of their motivations.
Eckels also said that McCulloch was in part a response to the present crowding in some of the older Dartmouth dormitories.
"There are definitely rooms on campus we feel are too tight," he said, citing as examples residences in the River and Choates clusters.
Via improvements in existing housing and the raising of standards in the creation of new dormitories such as McCulloch, Eckels said that the College hopes to improve the quality of residential life for all students.
"The desire is to start changing everything to be more like this," he said.
