BUILDING OPERATIONS OF THE YEAR

The College has not been without its building operations any year of the past fifteen, and this season is no exception to what has now come to be the expected thing. Work is progressing on two new dormitories and on the remodelling of Wentworth Hall, and plans and specifications for the enlargement of Rollins Chapel are in the hands of contractors.

The new dormitories are to be built at either end of Massachusetts Hall and they, with the present building, will form one of the most effective groups on the college grounds. The exterior details of the new buildings conform to those of Massachusetts Hall, and the group idea is completed by the construction of colonnades connecting each of the new dormitories with the present hall. The buildings will be known as the Massachusetts Halls, the new buildings being identified by the names North Massachusetts Hall and South Massachusetts Hall.

Excavation and foundations for these buildings were begun last November and the work was completed in time to deliver the sites to the general contractor the middle of March, when work on the superstructure was commenced.

The removal of the Proctor House; which was made necessary by the building of South Massachusetts Hall, was accomplished early in March. The house was torn down, as it was found impracticable to move it without the destruction of valuable shade trees. The timbers and boards from the old house gave opportunities for interesting comparisons between the pine trees which were in existence on Hanover Plain at the time of the building of the Proctor House, and trees which are now available for lumber. Clear, white pine boards thirty inches wide were removed from the wainscotting of the front rooms of the house.

The site of North Massachusetts Hall was directly over the center of the valley which formerly ran through the Susan Brown property, from Main Street down through the cemetery. Under this building site the original soil was thirty-five feet below the first floor level of the building. The cost of the ordinary wall type of foundations for this location would have been prohibitive, and the plan of carrying the building on a concrete beam supported by concrete piers, was adopted. The piers were carried - well down into the original soil of the valley and the tops were connected with a re-inforced concrete beam.

The dormitories are fifty feet wide and sixty-five feet long, with an ell twenty-five by thirty-four feet. They will have a rooming capacity of one hundred and thirty men, North Massachusetts Hall taking care of six more men than South Massachusetts Hall by having some rooms on a ground floor. This is made possible by the slope of the ground to the west of the building, which gives a full story below the first floor, entirely above ground.

The exterior of the buildings is of red brick with granite base courses and window sills, and the roofs are covered with slate and copper. The interior is of fireproof construction, with a steel frame, cinder concrete floors, terra cotta partitions, and steel stairways. The plastering is applied directly to the outside brick walls, the terra cotta partitions, and the concrete ceilings, leaving no air space for fire to originate or spread.'

Entrance to the dormitories is from the colonnades, which connect the buildings with Massachusetts Hall. Passing through an entrance vestibule, one finds a brick-walled corridor with terrazo floor. The walls of the corridors will be painted in two colors, above and below the chair rail. At the opposite end of the corridor from the entrance is a pair of sash doors entering into the social room. This room is a new feature for Dartmouth dormitories and it is hoped that it will add greatly to the pleasures of dormitory life. The social room has a large fireplace as a central feature, and the walls are panelled with oak for two-thirds the height of the room. A large bay window with a window seat, extending entirely across one end of the room, will give splendid light and also be a very attractive feature of this room.

The stairways are of steel framework with slate treads. There are two toilet rooms on each floor of the buildings, all public, and they will average one set of fixtures for each five men. Shower baths are used to the exclusion of all tubs for bathing. The toilet room floors are of terrazo, the toilet partitions of white marble, and the walls are of imitation tile work, white enamelled.

The students' rooms are either single or in suites, no alcove bedrooms being used. The rooms will have painted walls, and will be finished in plain oak with maple floors., The doors are of plain pattern with no panels and they will give a very solid as well as attractive appearance to the woodwork. The hardware is of bronze. The buildings will be heated by' steam and lighted by electricity, both steam and electric current being supplied by the college plant. Charles A. Rich, Dartmouth 1875, is the architect of these dormitories.

Wentworth Hall, the northerly build- ing of the old row, is being remodelled and will be used hereafter as a recitation hall. The old building, built in 1-827, will be furnished with an entirely new fireproof interior. Wentworth Hall measures fifty feet by seventy feet and it is three stories high. In the new plan there will be four recitation rooms and four instructors' offices on each of the two lower floors, and two lecture rooms and two instructors' offices on the first and third floors. The recitation rooms will each seat about forty men and the lecture rooms will seat about one hundred and twenty men.

The outside walls and the roof will be retained practically as they are at present, but the interior will be rebuilt with a steel frame, concrete floors, terra cotta partitions, and steel stairs. The old stone doorway will be moved from the west end of this building to the center of the south side to form the new front entrance. The corridors will run across the building from the front entrance, and the stair well will be on the north side at the end of the corridor. The hallway floors are to be of terrazo, with . a sanitary base, and the stair treads are to be of slate, making the entire corridor space easy to keep sanitary and clean.

All of the interior finish of the building is to be of quartered oak, including a wainscotting which will be carried around all the corridors and up the stairs. An interesting feature of the building will be the finishing of the original roof trusses into the lecture rooms on the third floor. These trusses are of hand hewn native pine, fastened with mortise and tenon and oak pins. The trusses will be cleaned up and left in their natural condition as a reminder of the original building. These lecture rooms will be further distinguished by an old-fashioned low wainscotting ex-tending around the room.

The heating and ventilating will be by indirect steam fresh air inlet, and gravity vent ducts, which will give ample ventilation for all purposes. The lighting will be by electricity.

As will be seen by the foregoing description, the building will remain, ,to all outward appearances, unchanged, a part of the old row, while at the same time the College will gain a modern recitation building, of most attractive design.

Rollins Chapel remained practically as it was built, with the exception of a few changes in seating arrangements, until 1903. In this year, more room became necessary to seat the student body, and a gallery was built across the north end of the building. In 1908, the College had again outgrown the chapel, and the apse was moved back and the intervening space filled, providing additional seating capacity of four hundred and ten seats. Once more the chapel is in a crowded condition, and the plan is projected to extend the transepts a distance of twenty feet, on each side of the building. This will give an additional seating capacity of three hundred and twenty seats on a total of 1179 seats in the chapel.

The extension of the .transepts means the tearing down of the present gable walls, building on twenty feet to the side walls, on each side of the building, and replacing the gable walls. It also demands many changes in the interior arrangements of the building. The organ and choir as now placed would be at a disadvantage and the speaker's desk would be out of range, to a large part of the audience. To overcome these difficulties, the organ and the choir are to be placed in the gallery,which will be extended towards the center of the chapel and the organ and choir will occupy the entire gallery. The speaker's desk is to be placed at the intersection of the nave and the south transept on the east corner and the seating arranged to conform to the new location of the speaker. The present organ and choir spaces will be seated for students.

These changes would seem to exhaust the possibilities for enlarging the chapel, but the impossible situation at the chapel has been met and solved so many times that one hesitates to state that the chapel has reached its ultimate seating capacity.

Edgar Hayes Hunter '01, Superintendent of Buildings