The Hanover Scene
though a belligerent and illiterate chum once so denominated us. Nevertheless, we are a sucker for a pretty map, and any alert gasoline vendor can send us away smiling with the gift of a district chart showing secondary routes and population by counties. The latest production to catch our eye is a spandy new "Guide to the Buildings of Dartmouth College," which appeared this fall just in time for presentation to the gigantic class of 1960 and any sequacious seekers after The Way.
As a matter of fact it was high time we had a new map, for how, otherwise, could the uninitiated learn the location of such as McKenzie, North Lab., Elm House, or Billings Lee? The village is changing — new or retitled structures are cropping up here and there, and even the old-timer has need for a chart to some reaches of Hanover's troubled waters.
We turned lately, in an indulgently reminiscent moment, to a copy of the map that, some generations ago, we had spread on the pavement in front of the Inn to orient ourself on the occasion of our initial advent on the Hanover scene. Of the forty-odd College buildings therein noted, we found that a quarter have since been decommissioned through one means or another; while today's Guide shows almost forty that have sprung into being during our subsequent period of scrutiny. Small wonder that Van Winkles, returning to the scene of their childhood triumphs, are bemused by the contemporary display of architecture.
Of course, the real key to the town and College is to be found in a map that is secured from the general public - the Sanborn Insurance map. This, with its paste-up revisions, shows all the structures in the village, with eaves heights, location of windows, water supply, and what not. Baker Library has recently cadged a flock of old Sanborn maps from the Library of Congress, and they make pleasant scanning for any who relish the fact that in 1884 Reed Hall had "windows all around," that the College owned a "Gas Wks (not used)," that Rollins Chapel had "No Crnce," and that there was a cistern in the middle of Main Street with "Hand F.P." nearby, all surrounding a "Campus: Student Playgrd."
In 1904, the Sanborn map showed the following sequence down the west side of Main Street: "Bk & Staty (Barbr 2d), Gro & Hdw, Dg 3 Barbr 2d, Drugs, Barbr B & S, Mill'y, Furne." In addition to this plethora of tonsorial aids, the village enjoyed "prevailing winds NW, no steam & no hand engine, 2 independent hose carts, 1 H & L." This was, of course, a great advance in twenty years from "water facilities not good - 1800' good hose."
The current insurance map, though two years out of date and therefore much behind our rapid times, is stippled with T H's and F A's and, in lieu of several strategically spotted storage cisterns, notes "avg.daily water con. 2 million gal - 3 million gal.storage." Lewin's slaughter house is gone, along with the Chinaman's, but the map still carries Frank Austin's old ant-house factory as "A & Lbr Stge."
But to get back, the College now has, thanks to Van English of the Geography Department, a complete and accurate plat of its own holdings, to say nothing of churches and fraternity houses. If one wishes to locate East Hall (that most northwesterly of College possessions) or the AKK house, for whatever reason, he is now accommodated. Even the baseball diamond is correctly oriented with the sun in the left fielder's eyes.
Although local maps may seem relatively unimportant to those so habituated that they can navigate by sense of smell alone, we must be mindful of the never-ceasing influx of new customers and casual callers who cry for indices and reference points that the aboriginals disdain. But for each and all, autochthonous or fresh fledged, there still stand in the geographical center of the undergraduate College and needing no direction arrows, the gleaming walls of Dartmouth Row, a blessed landfall to the eye or memory of countless generations of the faithful.
