Summer Construction
Other Work Done
The Department of Buildings and Grounds was busy on a lot of other fronts this past summer. Finishing touches were put on the four new Choate Road dormitories, making them ready for the arrival of freshmen in mid-September. Landscaping will be started this fall.
Sachem Village, whose 24. houses were located just to the north of the Hanover Grade School on Lebanon Street, was moved to College-owned land on West Lebanon Road, near the town line.. Designed primarily for married students, it will house 48 families and is nearly full. The former Sachem Village site has been turned over to the town for school use.
In Dartmouth Hall, work on the new Linguistics Laboratory neared completion. There communications booths, with taperecording machines, will be used by students in the language courses.
Other classroom work included laboratory renovations and improved lighting in Silsby science building, new lighting in Reed and McNutt, and a new NROTC classroom in the basement of Webster Hall. Space in both Thornton and McNutt was remodeled into academic offices.
In the dorms, fire and sound partitions were installed in Hitchcock, a social room with lounge and ping-pong area was built in Russell Sage, paging systems were installed in several dorms, and the College continued its program of replacing old beds. The Tuck School dining hall got new kitchen equipment.
Outdoors, the north end of the campus was regraded, with a drainage system, and was seeded for use next year. The roadway along Massachusetts Row was resurfaced, as were Sanborn Lane and the parking lots in this area, and a number of College sidewalks were replaced.,
The major undertaking oF the summer was a start on the construction of additional floors on the east and west wings of Steele Hall, the chemistry building, bringing them up to the four-story level of the original building. An added 4,000 square feet of space will permit new laboratories and faculty offices. The Capital Gifts Campaign has provided $700,000 being expended for the enlargement, a new ventilating system, and new equipment, all scheduled to be ready for use in the fall of 1959.
A preliminary to the construction oF the Hopkins Center was the summer completion of a widened, regraded and resurfaced Crosby Street, which begins at East Wheelock Street, between Topliff Hall and the tennis courts, and now has a new junction with Lebanon Street near the main entrance to the stadium (as shown in the picture). Crosby Street, reconstructed by the College in a deal with the Town of Hanover, will carry a heavy traffic flow when College Street between Wheelock and Lebanon Streets is eliminated to make extra space for the Hopkins Center.
A familiar Hanover landmark was torn down and put back up again with brandnew bricks. The smokestack of the heating plant, source of a fascinating plume of almost stationary smoke on sub-zero mornings, had developed some serious cracks that could no longer be safely repaired, so it was entirely rebuilt.
