Physical Facilities
I suspect that every college has some achieve-president ments credited to his administration which occur not because of his efforts but in spite of them. My own priorities are people and programs, not buildings, but the last four years have seen one of the most intensive building programs in the history of the College.
One important goal of the Third Century Fund was to add four major facilities badly needed by Dartmouth. I am pleased that we were able to carry out this commitment in spite of financial dif- ficulties; three of the facilities are now in full use and the fourth is nearing completion.
The Murdough Center is perhaps the most elegant classroom building on campus. At the same time it is marvelously functional. The main purpose of the center, admirably accomplished, is to provide added space for, and a physical link between, Tuck School and Thayer School. In addition it serves an institution-wide purpose with the magnificent Cook Auditorium and three 75-seat classrooms built around a core containing modern audiovisual equipment. I find it a physical pleasure to participate in an event in one of these rooms. The same may be said of the magnificent Feldberg Library, the variety and flexibility of meeting rooms, offices, and small conference rooms.
The addition of clinical departments to the Medical School made it essential to double their space in order to implement the M. D. program. This was achieved by construction of the Vail Building, renovation of the Remsen Building, and the addition of a new floor to Dana Library to house modern audio-visual teaching aids. The combination of these facilities will provide fully for the teaching needs of the Medical School and for that research which gives vitality to any teaching medical center.
The completion of the Fairchild Center for the physical sciences has provided crucial additional space for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (without which expansion under the Dartmouth Plan would have been impossible), and has enabled us to complete a program of clustering departments with similar interests. The spectacular Fairchild Tower provides a physical link between Wilder, Steele, and the new Fairchild Building, tying together the departments of physics, chemistry, earth sciences, and geography, as well as the environmental studies program, and housing the new Kresge Library for the physical sciences. Space freed by the movement of departments into Fairchild has made possible the renovation of Silsby Hall to provide badly needed space for the social sciences. And the renovation of Dartmouth Hall has helped the humanities. Thus, while the Fairchild Center was built specifically for the physical sciences, the total project of building and renovation has profited all three divisions.
We hope to see the completion of the fourth major facility, Thompson Arena, within the current year. While designed primarily as an ice arena to replace our totally inadequate facility, it will also serve as a multi-purpose institutional building. It can accommodate occasional major basketball games and will serve a variety of other purposes. For example, Spaulding Auditorium is no longer large enough to hold the entire freshman class, and Webster Hall is a very poor facility for Convocation. With its 3,800 seats Thompson Arena will accommodate much larger crowds than we have been able to seat for visiting lecturers or for such events as popular music concerts. It is designed so that we can also use half the structure, for example, as an auditorium for Convocation. In the future it will also be the rainlocation for Commencement, enabling us to save the considerable cost of setting up elsewhere.
One of the great attractions of the Dartmouth Plan was the fact that we could add a significant number of students to the undergraduate body, yet avoid spending $20 million for new facilities. Certain modest renovations and additions were necessary, however, in order to accommodate women students. The most important of these was the addition of women's facilities to the gymnasium and the alteration of certain dormitories.
According to a well-known joke, one of the three chief missions of a college president is to provide parking for the faculty. A problem I had to face early was the fact that Dartmouth College had run out of parking space. The Trustees approved a master plan, which would eventually have called for the construction of three parking garages, the imposition of modest parking fees, and the enforcement of parking regulations. The first of these parking garages was completed near the Medical School.
Subsequent events have altered our plans, however, and I see no need for the construction of additional garages. The imposition of parking fees and the energy crisis have made people much more conscious of the use of automobiles and, although parking is a favorite topic for complaints on the part of everyone, we have reached a satisfactory solution of our problem.
The College continues its slow and carefully planned program of opening up new land so that faculty and administrative officers can build houses reasonably near the campus. Yet this program is now threatened by a totally unanticipated development. Many alumni, and others, have found Hanover a very attractive place for retirement. As some of the earlier houses are sold by their owners, they often pass out of the hands of the immediate College family. Retirees often are able to pay a price for an attractive house near campus far beyond the means of the average faculty member. We are seriously worried that this development will, over a period of years, push the faculty farther and farther away from campus and thereby threaten the traditional close relationship between faculty members and students.
While Baker Library has been supplemented by major branch libraries for the biomedical sciences, for Tuck and Thayer and for the physical sciences, as well as by smaller departmental libraries, it still is the core and heart of the library holdings of the College. Within Baker we have completed a microtext center which will enable us to build up collections in this extremely important modern medium. In the long run this development may have as much significance as collections of books. Additionally, we are in the process of completing a modern circulation system to give the librarians better supervision at less cost. We have also created, by renovation, several highly attractive seminar rooms in the Library.
One new facility being constructed for the College is far removed from the campus. An interest in astronomy at Dartmouth dates back to Eleazar Wheelock. There have been many distinguished astronomers throughout its history, and our very modest observatory has played a lively role in undergraduate instruction. Until recently we were convinced that a school as small as Dartmouth could never get into the "major leagues" in astronomy. But when the University of Michigan was forced to move its 52-inch telescope to a site with better atmospheric conditions, it sought partners in this ambitious undertaking. The telescope is now being located on Kitt Peak near Tucson, Arizona, one of the best sites for observation in the world. It is a joint project of Michigan, MIT, and Dartmouth, which we were able to join at a very modest cost, to be paid for from new gifts. It will provide a major research facility for our faculty and a fascinating off-campus educational experience for undergraduate and graduate students.
Among the continuing improvements of existing facilities I should mention the construction of a design studio in a building adjacent to Hopkins Center, the significant renovation of the original Tuck School building, the renovation of Carpenter Gallery after a near disastrous event caused water damage, and the renovation of Webster Hall.
There have also been a number of improvements in our athletic facilities in addition to the Thompson Arena and the construction of the east stands in Memorial Stadium. These include the addition of artificial surface to the Field House for more flexible use of this important facility, the improvement of our tennis courts, and the addition of a new playing field near the Medical School.
In reviewing the achievements of the past few years, the exceptional quality of the buildings, as well as the very tight control of costs, there is one individual who deserves special recognition and praise. Richard W. Olmsted '32 served as business manager of the College for many years with great loyalty and devotion. As a trained engineer he brought special skill to the design and completion of a vast number of facilities on this campus. He continues to serve the College as director of planning, and it is clear that future generations of faculty and students at Dartmouth College will long be in his debt.
ne of the challenges during the past five years was to complete this ambitious building program and yet use as little of the free funds of the College as possible. There are some important lessons to be learned concerning the construction of major facilities. At the time the physical facilities component of the Third Century Fund was planned, all these buildings were at an early stage of program development. This fact, coupled with the unexpectedly rapid rise in building costs, meant that every facility was listed in our Third Century Fund brochure at a cost significantly lower than the eventual completion cost. In each case the Third Century Fund raised sufficient money to constitute a moral commitment, but not nearly sufficient to carry out the total project. While most of the funds for these facilities were obtained through the generosity of alumni and friends of the College, a major federal grant played a key role in the completion of the Vail Building, and several grants from private foundations were essential, notably those from the Fairchild, Kresge, and Dana Foundations.
The Trustees during the past five years have faced a continual dilemma of not wanting to commence a major project without sufficient funds and yet realizing that building costs were rising at the rate of one per cent per month. The question was: how close to total funding should we be in starting a large project when we know that a year's delay can add $500,000 to the cost of the building? It took the combined efforts of many Trustees and officers of the College to turn these dreams into reality.
There is a second important lesson to be learned. While the funds necessary for the completion of the buildings were eventually raised, no provision had been made for maintenance and operating costs. As a rough rule of thumb, a new facility costing $2 million will need the income from an equal amount of endowment to cover the maintenance and operating costs. To assure that the building will not be a drain on the free funds of the College, one must raise $4 million in new funds to complete a $2 million facility. The Trustees have now established a rule that major new construction cannot be undertaken without raising sufficient funds to cover both the construction and the maintenance and operating costs.
One good development has come out of these difficulties: the establishment of a system for setting facilities priorities for the College. The facilities planning board consists of senior officers of the College, chaired by the dean of the faculty. It is their task to consider all proposed new facilities, looking at least five years into the future, and place them on a scale of priorities.
We all feel that this system is more equitable than our previous procedures, and that it functions better to meet the physical facility needs of the College and to protect the institution from financial commitments it cannot afford.
