Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2006/10/01/tdr_interview_scott_meacham_95.php
Sunday, October 1, 2006
Scott Meacham graduated from Dartmouth in 1995 with a degree in English and a minor in studio art, where he took an interest in architecture. After working in Washington, DC as a historical architecture consultant, he received a law degree from the University of Virginia in 2004. He presently works for the National Legal Research Group, but in his spare time maintains the web site Dartmo.com, a catalog of the buildings of Dartmouth College, both present and historical.
Dartmo is pieced together from myriad sources, including the Dartmouth library and New Hampshire state records, as well as architectural journals and surveys. It is undoubtedly the most comprehensive, authoritative source for knowledge about the Dartmouth campus. Scott sat down with The Dartmouth Review to discuss recent campus construction projects and their historical predecessors.
The Dartmouth Review: Scott, just to start off, I’m curious as to what was the impetus behind Dartmo.com. What first got you interested in the topic of Dartmouth and her architecture?
Scott Meacham: I became interested in this back when I was a student at Dartmouth. I took classes–a series of three–taught by Jack Wilson. They were a great intro to architecture, but not, of course, part of a professional program. The interesting thing was that all the problems assigned were real problems that Wilson himself had worked on or was currently working on at Dartmouth and its environs. He’s basically one of the College architects. So you get a preview in his class of what the College is going to do, say, 10 or 15 years down the road.
Dartmo.com, the site, presents my view of the College’s architecture. It began with some essays in May of 1995 and incorporated the buildings catalog in 1996.
TDR: In your studies at Dartmouth and after, did you find out about the College’s campus during its infancy, its earliest buildings and such?
SM: Yes, but unfortunately, you know, there exist no photographs of the earliest buildings. There are only sketch maps, which are not to scale, so we only have a general sense.
TDR: Well, what do we know about them?
SM: The first buildings were located on the southeast corner of the Green. The main building was actually called just “The College”. And it served the dual purpose of housing students and being a classroom; basically a dorm with academic functions. The other building was called the “Commons”–a term for what is essentially a dining hall. A chapel was also housed in the “Commons” next to the dining area. You have this centralized space where people are all living, eating, sleeping and worshiping together. If you go to Oxford you will typically see a dining hall in the vicinity of the chapel. So you have very much the same setup.
The President’s house was on the site of what is now Reed Hall. “The College” and “Commons” faced Wheelock’s house.
TDR: What happened to it?
SM: It was sold and moved to a different location. But it’s still around today, on West Wheelock Street.
TDR: All of this, of course, ties in with Dartmouth’s conspicuous lack of National Historic Registry status. You’ve mentioned this on the site. With all the historic buildings and landmarks, you’d think Dartmouth would be on the registry of National Historic places. But it’s not.
SM: Yeah, that’s unfortunate. The National Historic Registry is a federal program. You can list from individual buildings up to whole towns. The list is kept by the National Park Service. Rarely does the government take the initiative. Individuals usually nominate sites to the list. It’s a fairly simple process, too. Each state has an office that will evaluate any proposals and Dartmouth would certainly qualify.
TDR: That begs the question why we haven’t already.
SM: I don’t know. Being on the registry can somewhat limit your future possibilities for campus expansion. There’s no legal reason, mind you. It’s just that you get a lot more negative media attention if you’re on the registry and decide to implement some sort of significant change. But I really don’t the answer. Could be just inertia, I guess.
TDR: I’d imagine there are benefits to being an official Historic Site.
SM: Yeah, there are.
TDR: Financial–tax breaks, right?
SM: That’s certainly part of it. There are state and federal tax breaks…largest in terms of commercial properties but still significant for even a home owner. But the real reason for a college to apply is that it is a blue ribbon. It’s a fairly prestigious sign that the government and people in-the-know recognize your place to be of national historic import.
I know Lyme, Norwich, Lebanon, and other parts of Hanover township are part of the registry.
TDR: I’m pretty sure other schools are on the registry, as well. Certainly others among the Ancient Eight, no?
SM: Well, Nassau Hall at Princeton University, for sure…I think they all do, actually. Now that you mention it, Dartmouth might be the only Ivy League school without this status.
TDR: It seems from your web site that you favor some sense of historical continuity, and I take it you would like to see some vestige of past building persist–in one form or another–for future appreciation or study. What then do you think of the impending destruction of Clement and The Shower Towers?
SM: Yeah, absolutely. But I’m definitely not in favor of keeping those two buildings you mentioned just because they are old. But it is important for the school to put a thorough picture of what was there for scholars in the future. The Historical American Buildings Survey (HABS) is a federal program that’s been around since the 1930s, and sets standards to appropriately document a building.
If the school contacted any type of preservation consultant, it would only take a series of measured plans and some black and white photographs to do it. So no more than a couple of months.
Clement is more important as it was not built by the College. It’s a pre-World War I building and was first built as an auto dealership.
TDR: Really?
SM: Yeah, it always amazed me how well it fit in a collegiate space when it was built with such a different purpose in mind.
TDR: What will replace it?
SM: Clement will be supplanted by a new visual arts building designed by McCado and Silveti–a very academic, theoretical type firm–to go on that site. It will be the new home of the studio art department. Loews–that notoriously hard to find movie theatre–will, I think be moved next to the site on Lebanon Street.
TDR: Significant changes are afoot with the addition of new student housing. By the way, where did you live freshmen year?
SM: Ah, Mid mass. But Sophomore year, I lived in the Choates, in Brown.
TDR: Speaking of eyesores. The Choates are slated for replacement. How do you feel about that?
SM: I definitely think the Choates are worth tearing down. The school has known from the beginning that they were inferior to the other dorms. But it was always a question of cutting your losses or improving what was there. However, as late as ’98, there were plans to make the Choates permanent. Now it appears they are going to get rid of them. It’s going to be interesting to see what they will put up. You could even make an argument for some non academic function in that space, say faculty housing or a dean’s house.
You know, though, they were built with unbelievable amounts of idealism. They wanted to make great places to live. It wasn’t just because they were modern in style. But they used certain planning ideas in the layout of the rooms to make them truly better spaces to live in. Somewhat revolutionary back then in the ‘50s. Like the large common living quarters to facilitate dorm togetherness and the small rooms because the idea was that they would be spending there time studying together.
Early on they even convinced faculty to live in apartments in the Choates.
TDR: While we’re on the subject of eyesores: What do you think are some of the greatest architectural soils on campus?
SM: The Choates are the ones most in need of replacement. The biggest mistake is the Murdough center. I don’t think it should necessarily be torn down or replaced, but it should be amended.
It was built with the type of architects who, said “Oh, there is no more hierarchy. We’re in a modern era.” But it does a tremendous disservice to Baker Library. If you were to build a building as a front addition to Murdough that would affirm Baker Berry, that would be good.
I suppose the Fairchild center gets a lot of censure, and it is incongruous. But it is cool. And it was meant to be presentable. I don’t think it’s completely convincing. But at least it is presentable.
TDR: And what about Blunt? It’s pretty incongruous.
SM: Yeah, definitely. There’s another. It was designed by someone who could have given it a real sense of style. Perhaps it was the fact that it was a brick building that was painted white? Front part was built in the early 19th, and I believe it is the oldest building in town that is on its original foundation. Even if you liked the new addition, you could make an argument that it’s a waste of space. You could make a good argument for making use of the Crosby house (which is the name of the older part), and getting rid of the rest; it makes good use of that space.
Another thing that annoys me is it is not built at ninety degree angles. It’s not very friendly to the buildings around it.
TDR: Well, enough of the negative, Scott. What have we done right?
SM: A couple of years ago the school sat down and said officially that it was going to take care of its historic buildings and committed themselves to a policy of making sure new buildings fit the old ones. Part of this commitment involves laying out an official palette of recommended materials. Part of this is the copper roofs you see on the new dorms.
The other thing is the specification of a certain type brick in a particular pattern and from a particular manufacturer and even a stipulation for granite foundations!
South Block Development is on the whole a rather successful implementation; again, these are individual decisions about how the buildings look that you could quibble with. But the decision of it to be a commercial area with a residential portion on top is good. They could have conceivably expanded the campus in that direction, but thankfully they didn’t…
TDR: You see this type of encroachment in the Lodge, right?
SM: Yes, this might be the best example of it. Essentially it was built as a hotel, as part of the town.
TDR: And what of the new remodeling of Alumni Gym?
SM: Very impressive. I think it’s kind of neat that they made it in to a fitness space. After all, that was its original use. Long ago, a whole class would gather there, work out together and, you know, lift barbells. When the class would enter they would be weighed. Exercise back then was something entirely different. Much more regimented. More designed to identify and eliminate weaklings.
TDR: I’ve always thought having a cemetery in the midst of a college campus was rather unique. I don’t think too many make it to the cemetery, which is a shame because I rather enjoy taking walks through it.
SM: I think its great. If you need a respite from your studies, a change of scenery, or to put things in perspective, it’s great.
Wheelock set it out back in the 1730s. And it’s very much a counterpart of the Green… [the Green] is full of trees, rectilinear, full of life, and bustle, while the cemetery is a place of contemplation, ravines, death, and so forth.
The only unfortunate thing is that it blocks access to the grad school. I think this is what lead Larsen to propose a large causeway to connect Thayer dining hall area with the graduate part of the campus; it would basically be a parallel to Tuck Mall.
TDR: Naturally, of material concern to the future incoming classes of Dartmouth are the plans for a replacement to the “Thayer Dining Hall”.
SM: Yes, I hope some of that area is preserved, in particular the buildings of South Fairbanks and North Fairbanks [the present site of the Tucker Foundation] should be preserved, South Fairbanks being the first building designed and built by Charles Rich 1875, the first really successful architect to graduate from the College. He originally designed the building as a house for his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi. He worked on the campus expansion under the Tucker administration for nearly two decades, but building the Beta house took the longest time, as the fraternity had trouble raising the necessary money.
North Fairbanks, in fact used to be a prep school gym. The Clark School operated in Hanover from 1918 until 1952, and sold its property to Dartmouth the following year. The sale also included Cutter, North Hall, and the Sig Ep house. North Fairbanks was moved from the spot where Baker is now. It certainly was the largest building move in Hanover’s history.
My only concern is that, well…that out of any building on campus the dining hall is where you’d like to preserve the sense of collegiality. This is why we see the expansive dining halls with wooden beams. Now it’s obvious we don’t eat like they did in the ‘30s. But it is a nice ideal of having this grand model instead of going out to a restaurant. This is what I would look out for in the new plans. But they aren’t finalized yet, so I’m not being critical. It’s just something I would definitely keep an eye on.