‘It feels like a castle’: Russo Hall and renovated Fayerweather Hall open to students

This past weekend, the new Russo Hall and renovated Fayerweather Hall began welcoming residents for the fall term. The new building developments are part of College President Sian Leah Beilock’s 10-year, $500 million housing initiative, which aims to add 1,000 new beds for students, faculty and staff” announced at her inauguration in June 2023. The Dartmouth toured Russo Hall and the Fayerweather Halls and spoke with undergraduate housing projects director Lindsay Walkinshaw about the new spaces and their construction process. 

Russo Hall

Russo Hall is an apartment-style building for juniors and seniors located at 25 West Wheelock Street. Construction began during August 2024 and finished earlier this month, although some sophomores lived in the building this past summer term. Between the five residential floors and a mix of two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments, there are 283 new beds available at Russo for undergraduates and two beds in the assistant director’s room, according to Walkinshaw. 

Each apartment comes with a full kitchen, a living room and storage space. Entrance to the apartments and other private rooms works through key card access.

The ground floor level of Russo, which Walkinshaw called the “connector,” has a “variety of seating” options. The space also leads to a quiet outdoor patio adjacent to the Dartmouth Cemetery. One end of the connector leads to a “reading room,” which offers a variety of breakout rooms and study spaces. The other has a Fresh Zone vending area.

“I always love how quiet it is in here,” Walkinshaw said. “There’s the street [West Wheelock] and you can’t hear it.” 

Assistant director of residential education Jodi Blackburn lives in the building to coordinate programming with undergraduate advisors in Living and Learning Communities to make sure they are “aligned” with the mission of the particular LLC. Blackburn also works with Russo Hall since it is an all-house dorm, meaning residential house affiliation is not a factor in whether or not someone can live in the building. 

“This community, for example, is mostly seniors, so the UGAs work very hard to make an awareness of community standards,” Blackburn said. “They help understand that even though [residents] are here in an apartment, they’re still part of their house community, so they can do all the cool stuff with their house communities.”

She added that having people of all housing communities is “really fun” because “everybody can bring the best of stuff” to Russo. 

The basement has a variety of amenities, including 14 washing machines and 12 drying machines. Others include a bike rack room, a storage room and larger lounge areas with televisions and different seating options. There is a “dedicated elevator” that goes between the basement and the ground floor level so that “folks can arrive with their bikes” and easily store them in the basement, Walkinshaw said. 

The five residential floors are “stacked” on top of each other, meaning each floor is constructed in the same way with “trash rooms” and “breakout spaces” for students, she added. For apartments, the “typical unit is four bedrooms, two baths” with amenities such as a kitchen and living room. Each student gets a private “single bedroom.” 

Some of the outside amenities include a parking lot, which includes spaces for ZipCar vehicles — which are available to students for short-term rental — and an “outdoor covered bike rack.” The rack has charging stations for electric bikes as well. 

Avery Stern ’27, who lives in Russo, said she has enjoyed amenities such as the kitchen and living room.

“I’m living in a quad with three of my good friends, and so it’s nice to wake up in the morning and sit and have coffee on the couch,” she said. 

Annabelle Coles ’27 said she is “happy” with her living situation and is “glad to be” in her own apartment in Russo. 

“I can sort of keep it to the standard of cleanliness that I’m comfortable with,” Coles said. 

Fayerweather Hall

Fayerweather Hall is located on Fayerweather Hill Road, behind Dartmouth Hall. The building, which joins together what was formerly North Fayerweather, Mid Fayerweather and South Fayerweather — began renovations in June 2024. The renovated building has an additional 35 beds, bringing the total number to 263, including two beds in the assistant director’s apartment. The second and third floors host South House upperclassmen, while the fourth and fifth floors are currently exclusively for South House freshmen. 

Walkinshaw said the outdoor area of the Fayerweather building is meant for students to “have some outdoor space that feels sort of like yours.”

“The vision for this space was to have a mix of some structured outdoor options for [gathering],” Walkinshaw said. 

One of the most notable amenities on the first floor is the Great Hall, a large meeting space with a glass exterior and a large projector screen. 

The Great Hall “has flexibility in that on the daily you’ve got your fireplaces, soft seating, study spaces, but then this [projector] can be set up for lecture or a presentation,” Walkinshaw said. 

The ground floor level also has a variety of lounge and study rooms. This level is a “little different than Russo” in that it is all event space, while Russo’s ground floor is a mix of event space and residence halls, Walkinshaw said. The Fayerweather basement includes amenities like a laundry room with 12 laundry machines and 12 drying machines and multiple soundproof music rooms.

Assistant director of residential education Tony Williams lives in Fayerweather along with two “resident fellows” who are “Dartmouth graduate students, professional students or post-baccalaureate students.” The three live in undergraduate housing communities to “bridge the connection” between undergraduate and graduate students, according to College spokesperson Jana Barnello.

Each floor has a “connector” in the middle of the floor, which is an open area with amenities including a lounge, study spaces and a kitchen. Single-use private restrooms can be found throughout the building on residential floors as well. 

Elizabeth Ma ’29 lives on the second floor of Fayerweather Hall, which she called a “great improvement” from her dorm in Richardson Hall last year.

“Richardson’s technically one of the oldest buildings on campus now, so it’s nice to go from one of the oldest buildings to one of the newest ones,” Ma said. “Probably the biggest differences are climate control, so it’s really nice that even though we can’t control it directly, at least there’s more air conditioning and more heating.”

Zander Turner ’29, who also lives on the second floor of Fayerweather, called the building a “dormitory that South House really needed,” adding that older South House dormitory buildings, such as Topliff Hall, where he lived freshman year, are “a little bit downtrodden.”

“It’s really nice to be able to [be] in a new modern dorm with new amenities,” Turner said. “It feels like a castle.”