New Thayer School
Construction of a new building for the Thayer School of Civil Engineering was begun on October 3 when ground was broken on a site on the southern side of Tuck Mall, directly opposite the Chase House wing of Tuck School. This latest addition to the College plant, a Georgian Colonial structure with two stories and a finished basement, is expected to be finished before Commencement and will be put into use with the start of the next academic year. J. Fredrick Larson, College architect, has drawn the plans for the building, which is being constructed by the W. H. Trumbull Company.
The new home for the engineering school faces east on a site which was chosen in accordance with the general plan of physical plant development drawn up some years ago when the late Henry B. Thayer '79 was chairman of the Trustee committee on the plant. This general plan envisages possible future construction on the flat of the Hitchcock Estate.
Plans for the interior of the Thayer School building were drawn with the restricted size and educational policy of the engineering school in mind. With complete and modern equipment for laboratory, drafting and class work, the building has been designed to provide intensive, personal instruction to a small student body of about thirty men, although it will be possible, if necessary, to accommodate a student body of approximately fifty men. The main floor will be devoted to the work of the first-year men, while the second floor will contain rooms for second- year studies and the general offices of the school. Shops and laboratories will occupy the basement space.
A library with a balcony and two-level stacks will be on the second floor, and a large lecture hall for 75 men will be part of the main-floor plan. The greater part of the first floor will be devoted to a large drafting room, an electrical laboratory, two offices, a smaller laboratory, and rooms for instruments and stores. In addition to the library, the second floor will contain a drafting room, a sanitary laboratory, a blue-print room, the Dean's office, the general Thayer School office, a records room, and a faculty room. The ground floor will include shops, a testing laboratory, a hydraulic laboratory, a concrete laboratory, and a soil mechanics laboratory.
The laboratories in the new Thayer School will fill all the needs of the civil engineering course offered at Dartmouth and will be open to the students for their personal use, in contrast to the formalized laboratory instruction offered in many large engineering schools. Also in keeping with Thayer School methods, the drafting rooms will serve as the only classrooms for the students, the men remaining at their individual tables for all lectures and all study.
When the Thayer School moves into its new quarters next year it will have for the first time in its history a building erected specifically for engineering instruction. When founded in 1871 by General Sylvanus Thayer, 1807, the school had scattered quarters in Wentworth and Culver Halls. Later in the same year Reed and Thornton Halls were used together with Wentworth, and in 1874 increased space became available in Thornton, with a laboratory in Culver. From 1892 to 1912 the Thayer School occupied the former New Hampshire Experimental Station, now known as Thayer Lodge, on South Park Street. Since 1912 the school has occupied its present home in Bissell Hall, once the College gymnasium.
Thayer School today offers two curricula, a two-year intensive course in the theory and practice of civil engineering, and a one-year course in general engineering fundamentals, designed for Dartmouth seniors who intend to pursue a branch of engineering other than civil at another technical school. Both courses include supplementary training in business administration. At present the Thayer School enrollment includes 12 first-year men and 6 second-year men. It is expected that the new building will ideally accommodate 20 first-year students and 10 second-year men. Restriction of its size has always been a policy of the Thayer School in order to carry out the principle of intensive instruction under close personal supervision. Also unbroken since its founding in 1871 has been the policy of offering a civil engineering course only after the student has prepared for professional study through a liberal education of college grade.
ARCHITECT'S DRAWING OF NEW THAYER SCHOOL BUILDING
