For most of my freshman year, when there wasn’t snow on the benches, I spent long, sometimes frigid hours sitting around the Green. Some of my time was spent reading or working, but most of it was spent people-watching and wondering about the little white booth across from Dartmouth Hall. Somehow, I never had the idea to visit the booth to just ask. I only learned that it was an information booth when someone mentioned it at a Mirror meeting.
The Dartmouth Green Information Booth is a quaint octagonal building designed by College architect Nelson Aldrich and built in 1957 by Walter Trumbull of Trumbull-Nelson Construction Company, according to the information booth website. Today, it is entirely staffed by volunteers. The booth typically operates from around 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. from May to October, depending on volunteer availability. The booth’s everyday operations are co-managed by volunteers John Engelman ’68 and Michael Gonnerman ’65, Gonnerman wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth. According to Gonnerman, there is currently a roster of around 17 volunteers, fluctuating year to year.
Despite its small stature, the information booth gets plenty of visitors. According to the information booth website, the booth was open 113 days and received 2,054 visitors from May to October 2025. So far this year, from May to August 2026, the booth has been open for 79 days and received 1,524 visitors, around 10% of which were from foreign countries. Peak season is usually August, when many incoming students and their families visit Hanover to get a feel for their future home.
Questions range from simple, common queries like “where’s the bathroom,” “where can I park” and “where is X building” to long conversations about Dartmouth’s history and student life, Engelman said.
Although the booth has stood on the Green for decades, its future has not always been certain, according to Engelman. When facing closure due to lack of investment in the booth, Engelman and a few other booth workers said that they would be willing to staff the building without pay, on a volunteer basis, if the booth would just remain open.
“We enjoyed doing it,” Engelman said, referring to working for the booth. “We think we provide a service for the College and the area.”
But how do people end up volunteering in this small booth with no air conditioning in a tiny New Hampshire town? For Engelman, it was something of a homecoming. After graduation, he began working in banking in Chicago. After some time, though, for personal reasons, he decided that he needed a change of scenery. He applied for and got a job at a bank in the Upper Valley and moved back to New Hampshire in 1975.
“An administrator at the College… came to a Dartmouth club in the Upper Valley event and said, ‘We're looking for alumni volunteers to help staff the information booth,’” Engelman said. “And I and a couple of other people at that event volunteered.”
Engelman may log the most hours, but he’s far from the only volunteer passionate about the booth. When I visited the booth this past Wednesday, Michael Gonnerman ’65 and Betsy Gonnerman were on shift. The Gonnermans began working at the booth after Mike heard about it at an alumni council meeting.
“I heard three alumni talking about this wonderful summer job and I said, ‘What is it?’” Mike recounted. “It turned out it was working in the information booth. That was in 2012. I…went up there, registered and we’ve been doing it ever since.”
While Mike came to Hanover as a student, Betsy grew up in the town. Their different relationships with the College and the town make them a fantastic information booth pair, able to thoroughly answer a wide range of questions about Hanover. Mike has a better handle on information about student life at the College, while Betsy has a long-term resident’s perspective on the town and surrounding areas.
“She also has the perspective of what is was like without women [at Dartmouth.]” Mike said.
All three volunteers said talking to a variety of visitors is their main reason for working at the booth.
“I get to talk with interesting people from around the world,” Mike said.
According to Betsy, volunteers keep a log of who visits the booth, what country they are from, and what questions they ask.
The Gonnermans both particularly enjoy visits from artists, sharing how one day, a jazz singer and painter from a gallery in Florida set an easel up right on the Green to paint its scenes. Another time, a man came by and asked if he could paint Baker Tower.
“I said, you don’t really want to do that now, because … it’s got scaffolding all over it,” Mike said. “And he said, that’s what makes it interesting.”
The visitor drew the tower by hand in five minutes.
John Engelman’s favorite visitor story involves his former fraternity Alpha Delta, which serves as inspiration for the 1978 film “Animal House”.
“A guy stopped and he said, ‘My wife and my kid are on a college tour, and there’s really only one thing I want to see.’ And I said, ‘Well what’s that?’ and he said, ‘Animal House!’” Mike recounted.
Engelman directed the visitor and his family to the Alpha Delta house and told him how to get in.
“I said, if there are any students there and they ask what you’re doing … just tell them I sent you,” Engelman said.
The volunteers also enjoy some more personal moments, like when Engleman spoke to a man who worked with Engelman’s twin brother’s office back in Chicago and would occasionally use Engleman’s? office.
Information booth volunteers have spent decades helping visitors in whatever ways they can: giving advice, offering conversation and answering whatever questions people may have. Even though many of us may not be visitors of Hanover, there is still much to be learned from the people staffing Dartmouth’s information booth. Stop by, even if only for a few minutes, and spend a little time learning more about the places we may take for granted.
