THE CENTER COMES ALIVE
LONG years of dreaming, planning, and working ended in handsome reality last month when the Hopkins Center threw open its doors to become a part of the daily life of the College. It is not often that realization exceeds anticipation, but the consensus of students, faculty, alumni, townspeople, and others who poured into the Center on opening day and throughout the ensuing ten days of inaugural celebration seemed to be: "This place is amazing. I expected something pretty special, but I wasn't prepared for anything so big and varied and stunning as the Hopkins Center has turned out to be."
The plain fact is that for awhile the Center is going to take some getting used to on the part of the Dartmouth community. The disparity between former facilities and this new home for the creative and performing arts is huge, lifting the College in one giant step to the forefront of all colleges and universities with respect to complete and modern means for giving the arts their vital place in higher education. And so, amidst the splendor and bustling activity of the eleven-day inaugural program, November 8 to 18, there lingered a slight air of disbelief and of wondering whether all this was really being experienced right in Hanover.
The significance of the Hopkins Center to Dartmouth in the years ahead was a recurring theme in the speeches during the inaugural days. And if President Emeritus Hopkins was the focus of the sentiment attending the opening events, President Dickey was the central and deserving figure to whom tribute was paid for the bold leadership, fresh imagination, and untiring effort that resulted in adding "this great new dimension to liberal learning at Dartmouth." As several speakers pointed out, the true significance of the Center, although presently glimpsed, will not be understood until some years have passed, just as the role of Baker Library in Dartmouth life could not be fully appreciated when it was dedicated in 1928.
This issue contains many pictures of the Hopkins Center, in order to give alumni some idea of what it is like, and also excerpts from the stimulating talks that marked the Center's opening. The entire inaugural program, managed expertly by Nichol M. Sandoe Jr. '45, was another of the historic milestones in Dartmouth's lively postwar life; and with this specific goal now achieved, the College moves on to the other tasks it has set for itself in the years leading up to the Bicetennial in 1969.
Main lobby stairway leading to the Top of the Hop.
