Dartmouth College. Hopkins Center (1962-)
Biography
The Hopkins Center opened in 1962. Its genesis was the promise for a new theater made in the late 1920s by then Dartmouth president Ernest Martin Hopkins to Warner Bentley, a newly recruited English faculty member with responsibility for the non-department theatre program. Various calamities intervened—the Depression, the Second World War, Korea, and Hopkins' own retirement. But when the building finally reached the construction stage in the favorable economic climate of the early 1960s, its concept had grown to include space for a new concert hall / film theater, a "black box" theater, music and theatre rehearsal halls, a recital hall, gallery exhibition and art storage space, arts studios, and a student workshop — and its new footprint covered four and a half acres.An early architect's rendering revealed a building of Georgian-style brick, matching much of the rest of the Dartmouth campus. But with the engagement of architect Wallace K. Harrison, a favorite of Dartmouth graduate and New York's then-governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, the style moved to 1960s modern, and the arched and glassed-in front façade took on aspects that Harrison drew upon when he later designed the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.
Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:
Hopkins Center records
The records of the Hopkins Center include press clippings, programs, correspondence, audio tapes, reel-to-reels, contracts, photographs of events, programs, people and performers, flyers and CD's. The material documents performances by visiting artists and Dartmouth Ensembles. Of note are the CD's of the Congregation of the Arts concerts and lectures.
Hopkins Center sheet music
Hopkins Center. The collection contains vocal and instrumental compositions most of which were performed at the Hopkins Center in the 1960's, some of the compositions were commissioned by the Congregation of the Arts music program.