Building Boom

HEAVY equipment arrived on the site of the Hopkins Center in mid-November and South College Street was permanently closed off, preparatory to the start of construction of the block-long structure that Dartmouth has dreamed about and worked for since the 1930's.

The contract for building the Center was awarded in late October to the John A. Volpe Construction Company of Maiden, Mass., whose bid was the lowest of eight submitted. Actual construction cost will approximate $5,500,000, it was announced by Richard W. Olmsted '32, business manager of the College. Furniture, equipment, fees, and other expenses beyond the building contract will raise the total cost of the Hopkins Center to $7,750,000.

The Volpe Construction Company, founded in 1933, has erected millions of dollars worth of buildings in the United States and Europe. Its New England cons truction includes the engineering building at the University of New Hampshire, the medical-surgical building at the Verm ont State Hospital, the Air Defense Laboratory Building at the Bedford (Mass.) Air Force Base, and the Woonsocket (R. I.) Hospital. Besides moving in equipment, the company has built a large temporary wooden structure on the Hopkins Center site to serve as construction headquarters and house tools.

With major College construction now going on at the southeast corner of the campus and near the Hitchcock Hospital, where the new Medical Science Building is going up, the Town of Hanover is also adding to the local building boom by making a $214,000 addition to the grade school. And on Main Street a major project is the enlargement of the Dartmouth Savings and Dartmouth National Banks, which are expanding their joint quarters to the north on Main Street and to the east on Lebanon Street.

The banks are using the Main Street frontage formerly occupied by Eastman's Drug Store, which has moved south on Main Street and erected a new building opposite Manchester's Gulf station. Just below Eastman's, the Green Lantern, familiar to several Dartmouth generations, has undergone still another change and has added a restaurant to go along with its new coffee shop. Perhaps the most colorful improvement along Main Street is the new Beefeater restaurant, which has replaced the Indian Bowl which replaced The Wigwam. The Beefeater's trademark, a yeoman of the guard in brilliant Elizabethan uniform, is now a prominent part of the Main Street lineup. This project in bright decor and beef specials is the undertaking of a group of young College officers — J. Michael McGean '49, assistant secretary of the College; Hartwell Perry '55, assistant to the director of financial aid; and Charles F. Kettering '53, assistant to the director of admissions - in association with Allan M. Herrick, owner of Starlake Farms Dairy, and Raymond A. Robinson, whose brother owned the Indian Bowl.