Hotchkiss, the Place

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VAN SANTVOORD FORECOURT

DANA HALL IN 1964, BEFORE ALTERATIONS

DANA HALL (1964 Rudolph, 1983) is named for donors William D. Dana ’17 and Arthur D. Dana, Jr. ’21. Dedication day for Dana and Griswold was a path-breaker for Hotchkiss. Dana, with 60 rooms for boys, replaced the last remaining student housing in the old Main Building. The architect, Paul Rudolph, was well known as chair of the School of Architecture at Yale and as a brutalist, eschewing finish coats and trims to reveal brick and concrete structures (and often mechanical systems) in their “natural” state. Rudolph chose a sloping site that would give the campus a new face to the north without blocking views from the south. For a three-level building with single rooms and penthouse commons, he used familiar red brick in unfamiliar ways, creating an exterior with articulated columns and interiors with undulating corridor walls. Instead of exposed ducts he chose “invisi-

ble” electric radiant heat. Today, with double-hung windows having replaced rusted casements and the view obscured by a covered rooftop emergency exit, it takes some effort to appreciate the building’s many challenges to convention and its imaginative use of concrete and brick. WATSON HALL (1979), the first dormitory to be designed specifically for girls, is striking in its modest scale, Shaker-like simplicity, and not-quite-formal symmetry. Echoing its neighbor Bissell in composition, Watson has two-story red brick “houses” joined by a common room, that step down to white clapboard faculty cottages. With 28 single rooms, it is the most homelike of any campus residence. It was given by Trustee Emerita Nancy Watson Symington and her sons, Stuart and David Watson,’76 and ’78, in honor of her husband and their father, Arthur Kittredge Watson ’38, board president from 1967

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