By Design

The view from director Peter Smith's modest office in Hopkins Center, tucked away down a corridor behind the box office, is to the east toward the contrasting ornateness of Wilson Hall - a contrast that a decade and a half ago generated as high-intensity alumni distress as, say, fraternities do now.

Within the next few years, a new structure will rise to bridge that gap. Where precisely it will go, how precisely it will strive to blend its non-complementary neighbors, are not yet certain. "What we do know," says Smith, "is that there will be a physical link" between the tentatively Romanesque stone pile of the Wilson Museum and the tentatively contemporary glass-and-brick of Hopkins Center.

This too is known: that the new facility will be named in honor of the late Harvey Hood 'lB, a long-time Trustee of the College, whose gifts in recent years will make up a major part of the $5 million earmarked by the Campaign for Dartmouth for a fine arts center and gallery. Announcing the Trustees' decision to commemorate Hood with the new structure, President Kemeny reported that a letter from the donor, delivered only after his death in March 1978, asked that the accumulated funds be used "toward construction of a facility of major educational significance."

Peter Smith met Harvey Hood only once, when they sat together at a dinner honoring the late John Meek '33 on his retirement as vice president and general factotum of the College. "It was a memorable experience," Smith recalls. "I can truly say that very few people have ever made such a deep impression on me." In retrospect, he is convinced that the seating was no happenstance. "Quite by design," Smith reckons it a manifestation of the ubiquitous Meck's keen perception of the needs of the once and future Dartmouth. But no one could have foreseen, he insists, in how little time the space in Hopkins Center would become inadequate to meet the demands upon it, how soon it would be - as Kemeny puts it - "suffering from too much success."

"What is really astonishing," Smith contends, "is that Hopkins Center is as big as it is. It was a gigantic act of faith that it was built so big; it is a minor miracle that it is now not big enough. There was every reason to assume that the job had been done, once and for all."

Since the Trustees signaled the go-ahead in February, a lot of heads have been put together in the inevitable committee to figure out how most wisely to spend the $2.5 million designated for the art museum and fine-arts teaching facility and the $.9 million for expanding the performing-arts space. (A like amount will be set aside as endowment, for maintenance and operation.) Lo-Yi Chan '54 is the consulting architect, advising the planning committee roughly how much of this or that can be had within the budget, what the options and trade-offs might be, or, alternatively, what the price tag might be for the whole pie-in-the-sky wish-list.

While much is still in flux, much too is definite, Smith says. The new construction will comprise at least 30,000 square feet, close to one third of that available in the Hop. The project will certainly involve the rehabilitation of a large amount of space in Wilson Museum. The Carpenter Hall galleries will be moved to the new facility, as will the galleries and storage areas now on the lower level of the center, which will then be used for the performing arts. The space thus freed could, for instance, become rehearsal areas for the drama program, dance studios for the program to be brought in from the cold of Webster Hall. Or the shifting-about could involve reshuffling some of the music space. "It will be a great game of musical chairs," Smith predicts.

The biggest question mark, exactly where and how Wilson and the Hop will be linked, must await the choice of an architect later in the spring. Preliminary plans should go to the Trustees in June, bids are tentatively anticipated in February and ground-breaking next spring. The dash for the vacant chairs should happen late in the 1981-82 academic year.