Letters

Demurs on Dorms

To THE EDITOR:

Permit me to demur at the introduction of functional architecture into the college plant. Dartmouth's buildings of recent decades have been designed in a style particularly suited to the College's physical setting, climate and historical associations. None of this, it seems to me, can be said of the dormitories about to be built. Those who propose functional treatment of the Hopkins Center are no more certain of its harmony with the rest of the College than were the builders of Rollins Chapel.

Stanford, Calif.

The plans for Dartmouth's new dormitoriescarry out a concept of dormitory life that isdescribed on Page 27 by Prof. John P. Amsden'20, chairman of the Advisory Committee onPlant Development.

"Intelligent, Imaginative"

To THE EDITOR:

On a Hanover weekend in late April I had the good fortune to be shown some preliminary plans of the new student dormitories and to hear about the Hopkins Center. The projects were described to two of us alumni and our wives by Tom O'Connell, Assistant to President Dickey; and I must say, as an architect, I was carried away with both projects - their need, concept and design. I think that the Trustees and the Development Group are to be commended for the strength and honesty of their approach.

Two invulnerable arguments we architects advance in defense of contemporary building design are its economy and its honesty. I am deliberately staying away from slugfests with my fellow alumni on what is honest and dishonest about the designs of Dartmouth buildings up to now. We love them, and we're all sentimental, so let's let it go at that. The dormitories and the Hopkins Center, from the description and the floor plans I .saw, are beautifully conceived in design. The latter will give an entirely new phase of college activity, long, long overdue in remote Hanover. Like the Library has fulfilled for 30 years, this building will be another greatly needed nerve center on the campus: the center of creativeness, work shops, art, music, the stage and a great gathering place for students, their dates, their families and the alumni. For these purposes it has been planned with imagination, and with understanding of the great Dartmouth family, young and old, and its tremendous vitality.

Congratulations to the architects, and to those who are planning these buildings with them! I sincerely recommend the program, and believe the course which the Trustees are taking is intelligent, imaginative and in keeping with the spirit of our great and free liberal arts college.

Washingtonville, N. Y.

Why Change?

To THE EDITOR:

The Alumni Fund Committee recently sent out a blotter bearing a beautiful picture of Dartmouth Row painted by Paul Sample.

The message reads: "The Old Row - clean and honest of line, beautiful with the spirit and memories of generations of pioneers, teachers and students, and the young men who make the Dartmouth of today. Here, truly, is Dartmouth undying."

Yes, Old Dartmouth Row exemplifies Dartmouth, its spirit and its Colonial heritage, to Dartmouth men everywhere.

With this traditional example of Colonial north-country architecture gracing and featuring our beautiful campus, the question to be answered is this:

In the planning of the Hopkins Center on the campus, why should contemporary architecture be used instead of taking inspiration from either Dartmouth Row or Baker Library or both?

Bartlett, Chandler, Butterfield were all contemporary in their day. Inconsistent eyesores, all of them.

All our buildings designed in the last twenty-five years have been Colonial, pure or reasonably close, and mostly Georgian. Now after our great building program of the 20's, 30's, and 40's, why should Dartmouth switch to modern, contemporary architecture?

Do Dartmouth alumni like this change in policy? I, for one, do not.

New York, N. Y.

"Architectural Discordance"

To THE EDITOR:

The news in the March issue that the Hopkins Center, soon to be started, would display "a general design of contemporary character" is very exciting.

Exciting - the modern word of ultimate praise, overriding and cancelling out all other virtues or the lack of them! Contemporary treatment of this new, important and importantly placed building will excite wild enthusiasm in the devotees of extreme modernism, to whom it will prove the we are unfettered by outworn tradition, courageous, forward-looking. A lot of us, though, unafflicted by such tunnel-vision, I am sure are excited and dreadfully alarmed at the prospect of such an architectural anomaly right next to the old White Row and directly across from the Baker Library side of the green.

Some - I believe many — of us, unwilling to be swept up in the tide of present-day frenzies, skeptical of extremes, vehemently protest such architectural discordance; moreover, we wonder what the judgment of the future on this style may be.

With some admitted imperfections, we still possess one of the loveliest campuses in the country. Well conceived for construction about the central green, its keynote struck in Dartmouth Row, not too far departed from on the west side and brought back into perfect consonance by Fred Larson's development of the north end, the campus now stands to have its harmony shattered by the violent discord of this new and important building - as agreeable as the sudden burst of modern dissonance into the ordered harmonies of a classic symphony.

Along with the question of its fitness upon our campus is the question of this style's fitness in itself. We have had architectural fads before. We have Rollins Chapel and Wilson Hall, in the once highly approved but now generally repudiated pseudo-Roman-esque, tasteless and inappropriate companions of most of our other buildings. Can we in all reason believe that contemporary architecture will enjoy permanent approbation, admirable as certain examples in certain places may seem? Can we in common sense expect lasting regard for a style which is so mannered, paradoxically, in its lack of manner, so oversimplified in its .stark geometry, so mechanical in repetition and lacking in real rhythm, its insistence upon a functionalism which ignores function to the point where a factory looks just the .same as a fine arts building, a museum the same as a madhouse, and all of them look alike! Surely a style which too often has all the elegance, distinction and significance of a packing box cannot be enduring!

At one time, when I was enjoying the privilege of doing the Eleazar Mural, I could assume a light-hearted attitude toward the College — in the same good-humored vein, I hope, as Hovey's poem - but in this circumstance I am intensely serious. I am gravely concerned lest the College make an irreparable mistake and its taste and good judgment be deservedly questioned. I beg that the Administration carefully reconsider its intentions regarding the style of the Hopkins Center, in the light of what the considered opinions of the present and the future may be, and especially in the light of what is fitting and right. A great college's memorial to a great man, loved and honored by us all, must not be wrong!

New Rochelle, N. Y.

Government Careers

To THE EDITOR:

The reports from the Class of 1926 Fellows in the January issue were extremely interesting to me as an alumnus who has spent three years in Washington on similar assignments and two years in Chile in the Technical Cooperation Program. Field work, where programs are made and carried out by working in cooperation with members of a foreign government, is another essential and fascinating part of Foreign Operations.

I hope the Washington introduction will continue to stimulate interest in this branch of government career service. Its importance as well as its attraction are becoming more and more apparent.

Santiago, Chile