The New Medical School
CONSTRUCTION of a new $3,500,000 medical sciences building for the Dartmouth Medical School will start in July, President Dickey has announced. The building (shown above) has been designed by the Boston architectural firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott.
The seven-story unit, to be located near the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital on Lyme Road and Maynard Street, will house the Medical School's research, teaching and administrative staff, and will consolidate facilities which now occupy several old buildings. One is the School's original Medical Building, erected in 1811.
Accommodations are designed to combine research and teaching interests of the Medical School faculty and to give the students exposure to both in a related setting, Dr. S. Marsh Tenney '44, director of medical sciences, explained.
Space for research laboratories for clinical investigators, as well as those working in the basic sciences, will be provided. Teaching space includes alternate lecture and conference rooms on each floor and student research laboratories. Each of the six departments of the Medical School - anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, pathology and microbiology - will occupy one floor. An animal house and animal operating rooms will occupy the top floor. One part of the building will be adapted for placement of electron microscopes and other high-precision apparatus.
Laboratory space in the new building is planned on the "module concept," which is adaptable to changes in interest and personnel, Dr. Tenney said. Over 60 per cent of the building is designed for research use.
The unit will ultimately be connected to the Hitchcock Hospital by a bridge passageway from the fourth floor. A ravine separating the property from the hospital is utilized so that two floors of the seven-story building are below the entrance level, which faces Lyme Road.
It is estimated that the building will serve a basic medical science faculty of 35, a part-time clinical faculty of 55, some 100 medical students, 75 residents and interns, and 30 research fellows.
Funds available for construction include gifts from several major sources: the Rockefeller Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Public Health Service, the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, the James Foundation, and alumni.
These contributions were made in a campaign the Medical School launched in 1957 to raise $10,000,000 for new research and teaching facilities and an enlarged faculty. The new medical sciences building is an essential part of the expanded program, which has already added 25 basic medical scientists to the faculty.
