1897
February 20 in Hanover with the thermometer 170 below and the north winds blowing, like Richard Hovey says they do, was not the best day to look over the facades of Main Street and prowl around the stores and behind the street front buildings to view the back lots in order to get a true picture of how cluttered Hanover south of the campus really is.
That is what a professional town planner and I went to Hanover for and we prowled and we saw, cold as it was. Another thing we went for was to see topographically the skirting shores of the new big lake soon to be developed at Mink Brook and the steep bank of the new big river from Mink Brook north to Tuck Drive; also to examine the maps showing the heavily wooded cathedral pine area from Tuck Drive to Girl Brook which flows through the Vale of Tempe. These river changes offer a great opportunity to add a lot of charm to Hanover.
We wanted to check up on the details of how the new big river and the new lake can become tied in with the Hanover scene before these shore lines are spoiled by some outlandish kind of camplike buildings. Wanted to study how the College can have a water front like that at Cornell with its Cayuga waters. By the way, this new lake at Mink Brook Valley needs a name. I wish each one of my classmates would suggest one for me to submit.
Ain't it funny how the engineer and the landscape architect, both of whom have been taught the meaning of contours, get to dreaming about possibilities of new things when they learn that fifteen of these contour lines are going to have wet feet a year from now when the Wilder Dam is completed.
I can't go into all of this visit, during which we conferred with a very interesting group of influential men in Hanover, but I will give you a series of our conclusions to think about seriously. But just a word more about the Hanover picture as it is. Some wise leaders long before our time in college had a dream of a park and wanted it to be a natural tree-grown area and wanted to know what trees would thrive. Here on the hill is where our classmate, John Poor, read the rain fall, water pail gauge, each day that it rained. Here on this hilly park-area we now have a fine lot of trees. Whoever set out these non-indigenous types of both evergreens and deciduous trees served later generations well. Here we have a lot of types which have fought their enemies for a long time and the information we can draw from this long experiment in tree culture will help us tremendously in our future plan for street tree planting in Hanover; for we know now that the Dutch elm disease has thoroughly warned us to avoid putting all our tree planting eggs in one (elm) basket.
In the last three years I have cut down more elms in one of my villages than can be seen from the college campus. These 90 trees were English Elms, White Elms and Slippery Elms, most of them two feet through and larger. They died of the Dutch elm disease, all in three years.
This hilly park diverted the Hanover building growth first to the northwest of the campus where we have beyond the college buildings beautiful Occum Ridge developed in Dr. Tucker's time and his beautiful home where he did most of his writings in a prominent location on this road; also, to the north, Rope Ferry Rd. leading to the golf course and the golf course itself were developed. This part of the town is well done and about all of the land available is covered.
A small area to the northeast has been well done and a good view can be seen from the houses in this rather small group. A very interesting new group has been developed in the area to the southeast and in this portion of town the area had to be reached by jumping over or wandering through the slum area of Lebanon St.
Recently and quite actively, new development is going on in the southwest portion of Hanover. Here again one must go through a slum-like jumble to get at this new area which is blessed with the best view of the river valley. No. 11 Pleasant St. has, I think, the best view in Hanover and I want to congratulate the man who bought that house. The new lake will improve this area in the southwest very much.
Now for my conclusions: Hanover is turning itself around, and the front door of the town, so to speak, is going to be south, and just south of our front door is going to be the new lake and this beautiful area with its view. Now this town planner, Vincent Merrill, a landscape architect, a Dartmouth graduate of 1933. and an associate of the firm of landscape architects which developed Williamsburg, joined me this cold, shivery day to have a professional look at our new front yard of our new south front of the college town, and we find that we have got to clean house. I helped pull down and roll over the last out-house in Hanover to burn at a celebration on the campus. The out-houses have all gone now but the "junky stuff" like barns, bad houses in the rear of good ones, big houses with store fronts stuck on the front, the old commercial hotel which was a rookery in our day, having in it a small theater where we went to see the exciting melodrama and to hear the wail of the heroine ("you have kilt the only man I ever loffed"), as the villain with a handle-bar mustache was stabbed by a young hero. This relic of a building is still there on the corner of College and Lebanon Sts. The old Tavern building on Main St. is still there, now covered with "tin" all over the exterior, marked off in brick pattern and painted gray, just about dirt color. "Debby" Russell's house, where "Poddy" Parker lived, is still there with a flock of small stores stuck out in front of it. "Hamp" Howe's carriage shed is still there propped up a little here and there. The college-owned "ash barrel" hotel is still standing patched up and rubbishlike in its decline. The box-like, jolly bay window facing the south, lighting the room where I had the pleasure in college days of visiting "Clothespins" and his talented wife, to sit with them and her dogs a spell, is still there. This window should be saved and the interesting bow window on the old coffin shop back of the undertaker's furniture store is still in place and this also should be saved. These two windows are worthy efforts of earlier craftsmen.
What is needed in Hanover is a slum clearance program. We have our "tobacco road" back of the Thayer School to get rid of. I am glad it was built so bad that it cannot be done over. Let's knock it down, save the lumber which can be used over, and get rid of it soon.
Re-conditioning and face-lifting of the substantial store buildings on Main St. should be studied now, and this improvement should be made soon so that, when visitors cross the new lake next year and drive up the hill into Hanover, they will come into the village by a front entrance and not through a slum area. Hanover is too good a place to have a back door entrance.
A further conclusion is that it will pay to make these improvements, if they can be made in the spirit that has made the College beautiful. Stores can be made beautiful. The College-owned building where Campion's store is is beautiful, and beauty of the store fronts do pay. Bricks can be beautiful, if properly made and laid. The University of North Carolina has just bought some New Hampshire bricks, a whole kiln of them, because they are beautiful bricks. Seattle is using these same bricks to beautify its buildings. Bricks and windows and doorways make Williamsburg beautiful. Let's give Hanover a new birth with fine design and have the town we all love freed from the mediocrity of Main St. and let's clean out the rubbish!
That is why Jim Campion and I employed Arthur Shurciiff to study Hanover and to point the way to improve it.
We have very able groups in Hanover who are interested and are doing a good job planning for the future. Among these are the Hanover Improvement Society which will soon rebuild the Nugget Theater, the Hanover Planning Board which is just being organ- ized for the new year's work, the Chamber of Commerce which is discussing Hanover improvements, the Zoning Commission which is holding a rigid hand to prevent unsuited property developments from finding their way into the village.
On our trip to Hanover we conferred with Halsey Edgerton, Jim Campion, Charles Batchelder, Max Norton and Charlie Widmayer, members of the Chamber of Commerce, and others. All these men expressed interest and want to know how. I hope our efforts on the cold day of February will not be in vain.
Secretary and Treasurer, 886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn. Class Agent, 862 Park Sq. Bldg., Boston 16, Mass.
