"An Open-Arms Aspect ..."

The Architect's Model and the Social Possibilities of the Center Inspire This Enthusiastic Report

THIS is the report of the one woman member of the Hopkins Center Building Committee. It is supposed to be, I think, the woman's point of view on this building. I have no idea where to start except to say that having been unable to go to Hanover for the most recent meeting when Mr. Harrison was present with the scale model, I went into New York to Harrison and Abramovich's offices to see it. A Dartmouth wife went with me, a very close friend, and at last we saw the building as it will be when it is completed.

It is impossible to convey the thrill with which I first beheld it. I had seen it sectionally, or all in white or with no trees around it, and before certain changes, major changes, had been made in the exterior appearance. I had heard the dreams of each one of the persons at Dartmouth who have charge of the creative arts as taught and developed there. I could see perfectly how each wanted his bailiwick to look and seem, and I wondered what architect alive could ever embody all these things in one building. It has been accomplished beyond doubt. To sit at eye-level with this model, now in the right color, with green grass around it and the old elms in their correct places, with South College Street closed off and a small portion of the Inn shown in scale, so that you're perfectly oriented as you look at the model, is an experience that just defies description.

The size of the Center affected me greatly. I had no idea it was going to be so big, but if the "people" that Mr. Harrison has in this scale model are in proportion to the building, then it really is. a huge place. But without giving the impression outwardly of being so large, it simply houses a number of things and an immense number of cubic feet. It has a quality which I was sure it would have from the time Mr. Harrison said he knew what ought to be there - a purity of line. I feel like saying the purity of the Greek, but it's not like Greek, it is only that simple. Therefore, standing at right angles, as it will, to old Dartmouth Row, the Center will not be so contemporary or in any sense so drastic as to seem unsuitable in that position. There is a great deal of glass in the walls of this building. It will give passers-by the feeling of participation. As they see people moving back and forth inside it will be the same as passing people on the street. The building definitely has no feeling of being closed up and secretive, withdrawn from the community life.

Anyway, speaking of it from the social point of view and the woman's point of view - let's see, we'd better take the social point of view first. This building can be beautifully used, apart - from those who will be in it constantly and for whom it is being built. The large room, known as "Top o' the Hop," has an open-arms aspect from outside - from the campus or from in front of the Inn, from across at Webster or from the lawn of the library. If there were, say, a tremendous Prom dance taking place up in that room (which is very possible: this would remove such affairs from the gymnasium, which everybody will appreciate), the color and the motion one would see as a passer-by would give a festive atmosphere to the whole surrounding town. You wouldn't have to participate literally On the dance floor but you would feel that a big event, a festival, a gay and great night was in town, and that in some sense you had a part in it.

The theatre, which my scant technical knowledge of blueprints makes me least intelligent about, is the most exciting theatre contemplated in a long time anywhere. Alter many years of participating in theatrical affairs of the College and, even before that, of having my first theatre experience by going to productions of the Dartmouth Players, I know it will offer a wonderfully stimulating - and comfortable - experience and will attract far more customers than Robinson Hall or Webster ever did, and that was plenty of customers. Unlike the past and present, there is no limitation to what can be presented.

You can eat in this building, too, both inside and out. Service facilities will be within but you can eat out in the patio, terrace, enclosed garden. I think enclosed garden is a good thing to call it.

There will be concerts to go to in summer and winter. The summer concerts, when the weather is right, can be held outside in the garden. There will be a very large room reaching over in the direction of the Inn, called Alumni Hall. This can be divided into three sections or used as a whole. It is planned for big banquets or big private parties. Any one of the sections can be used independently for smaller groups. The possible uses of such space are limitless. Catering and food arrangements emanate from the Inn.

IT WILL be necessary to do away with the Ski Hut as now known to make room for the Hopkins Center. Consequently, the Ski Hut will be housed under the roof of the new building in a quite different guise but will be just as intimate and informal as the one we have known all this time. It will probably be a paneled room with fireplace and bar, a meeting place for those from 21 to 101. I am not sure that this is definite but the idea for paneled walls in that room is a good one. You could have class escutcheons in each one of these panels — in other words, each year a class would add its own escutcheon, chosen perhaps in an annual escutcheon contest - and many vacant panels would exist for future classes. It could have the very atmosphere for quiet, convivial intimacy.

There will be listening rooms in the Center and all that's necessary in the way of technical outlets to play whatever music, tapes of plays and sound-tracks, or poetry one wants to hear. Anybody can go in and withdraw from a library collection the recording he wants to hear and can utilize the room for whatever time that takes.

The corridors through the building will lead past every one of the endeavors taking place in it. The visitor can take whatever time he wishes in making his own way through the broad and generously lighted passageways. He will glance into studios, rehearsal halls, workshops, music practice rooms and have his attention arrested by one or another. He will not in any sense disturb the students working there. That is the whole point of the plan. It is certainly a contrast to time past when all such activity took place in some so remote spot that you never felt you could go and look in or listen in without intruding.

The Art Gallery too is a departure from anything that our generation or those before it knew. It will be open all.the time, just as the rest of the building is. For anyone who wants to wander through it will not have the hushed, angel-tread sort of atmosphere at all. Anyone can go in and discuss, in any voice he cares to, the things he sees. This will encourage something that already exists, but boys work under difficulties now in exclusive-feeling galleries where silence overtakes them when they walk in, as if they were entering the reading room of a public library. There is nothing awesome about the arrangement here. The lighting of course will be ideal. Visitors can stay a long time or run through if they like, but anyway they'll be exposed to the best art the College owns - and it proposes to own even better art when it has a place so good to hang it. It won't be the same old stuff hanging in the same old place either. There will be art showings of all kinds, displaying different points of view and art of various historical periods. These will be frequently changed, so that one will want to look in at the gallery every week or two to see what has been added or moved about.

The foregoing discourse has been mostly about what the Hopkins Center will be socially for the visitor - that is to say, for the adult, the member of the faculty, the parent. All of it applies of course to the boys and their friends and guests and girls. I've been speaking of what universal use it has, that it is not restricted at all to the college age.

One of the best things included in the building (and originally it was not there, it didn't occur to the committee until we were going over what might have been omitted, from the undergraduate stand-point) is the COLLEGE POST OFFICE. This great space is delegated to mail-boxes for every single student in college. This is such a big step from having the mail dumped in the dormitories, as anyone familiar with that system knows. The new plan will necessitate a student's calling in at the College Post Office once or even twice a day to pick up mail. This is not a postal sub-station. It won't have federal standing as a post office, but the sacks of mail addressed to boys going to Dartmouth College are going to be brought to the Hopkins Center Post Office and sorted by the College's own help and allocated to the correct boxes.

So theoretically every single boy who goes to Dartmouth will enter the Center at least once a day. In getting his mail the boy will run across a couple of pals and probably hang around a bit to discuss the mail situation. He can't exactly get to collect his mail without being exposed to some of the things I've mentioned before; therefore by exposure and then osmosis and custom and finally taste he will become habituated to this building. Whether or not he ever takes part in the seven lively arts, he will partake of the building. He may start modestly in the Hopkins Center by stopping to get something to eat while he considers his mail. Very early after this building is in use he will have the feeling that he has always been using it. That's the main thing. The shape and aspect of this place are simple, durable, infinite. It has a quality that isn't brand-new, yet on the other hand is so much of the future that it will always seem contemporary in housing the Fine Arts together. Just the experience of looking at the building, as the student would need to in going in and out to get his mail, is going to affect him in some way. Nobody can go to Dartmouth without knowing this building. What influence could there be that you could set more store by?

RESISTING the temptation to discuss the best part, naturally the personal part, until one has made all the other observations has been difficult. This building is not designed primarily for the enjoyment of mothers and sisters and best girls and faculty wives and female residents of Hanover. However, as it is dedicated to so many other things, then it automatically becomes a place of the greatest enjoyment for a woman. This is very important for the woman. Dartmouth College, bless it, has always been fun, but there has never been a place where women were honestly welcome all the time. Mother and Dad can make a plan to meet their son at the Hopkins Center. Someone in this group very probably is going to have to wait for the others. What more perfect place could there be to wait, perhaps sitting up in the Top o' the Hop watching the ceaseless shift and change out on the campus, or browsing around or freshening up? If plans don't click there will be a message desk where the waiting part of the group can leave word where it can be found next.

There are times on a visit to a son or a best beau when a woman can't be with him. He has to go to wash up and change or go to practice or do a couple of hours of studying and this is the time when Mother or best girl really gets in her licks in this wonderful building! She can sit and knit or have a cup of tea or go through the art gallery or go watch the rehearsal of a play or listen to a jazz session or watch Paul Sample paint or go see what they're doing in the workshop or combine any or all of these things. She can spend the whole day in the place if she cares to. She's very welcome to do that and won't seem odd. She won't feel as if she's treading in all-male territory where she gets stared at and feels kind of conspicuous because "men only are supposed to be in here but on weekends it's thrown open to ladies." That idea won't prevail at all; there will be no time when there isn't just as much room for the women as there is for the men. It will be a great day for Dartmouth when this becomes true!

I can think of no other part of the College where this is true, so I look forward to it intensely myself and think of many plans that went awry and how I missed seeing somebody because of bad planning and no really appropriate place to wait while things set themselves right again. On our strictly male campus it seems good to me that when the college men go into the Hopkins Center there are going to be plenty of women around. I think that's a good idea. After all the world is made that way, so why not have some part of the campus give forth this normal state of affairs? It's just about time and it's justgreat.

The former Ann Hopkins, now Mrs. John R.Potter shown in Florida this winter with herfather, President-Emeritus Ernest Martin Hopkins, for whom the Center is named.

The southern end of Hopkins Center, facing Lebanon Street, contains the lecture-oncert hall seating 900. Musical activities will also be located in this unit of the Center.

A place for the women too ... "about time and it's just great."

The model gives a striking impression of the block-long sweep of Hopkins Center from Wheelock Street (right) to Lebanon Street.