USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > A history of the town of Hanover, N.H. > Part 5
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The new hotel had a hip roof, with balustrade above the eaves. After the pitch roof had been put on, probably by Mr. Markham, most of the attic rooms were still dark, and it has happened that tired guests arriving the night before Commencement and forced to sleep in them, were not aroused until Commencement was wholly past. The dormer windows were put in by Mr. Frary after he had acquired the property. The front of the upper story of the main building was at first devoted to a hall for public pur- poses, twenty feet by fifty. Mr. Markham cut this up into rooms, and built a two-story wooden building on the east side of the lot, a few rods back from the street, having a very good hall in the second story. This building was two or three times enlarged and extended by Mr. Frary, and finally raised to three stories and brought to the line of the street, the hall, subsequent to 1866, being entirely eliminated. Down to about 1855 there stood at the street corner, after the old fashion, a tall pole with a swinging sign about three by four feet square, with the name "Dartmouth
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History of Hanover
Hotel" below in yellow letters on a black ground, and above a rude sort of landscape.1
This hotel, the new "Brick Tavern," was opened in September, 1814, with Robert Dyde and Company as landlords. The partners quarreled in 1816, and the house was for a short time closed and the furniture was offered for sale. It was next kept by Captain E. D. Curtis and known as Curtis' hotel. In the fall of 1821 it was taken by Miss Rosina Fuller, a daughter of Deacon Caleb Fuller, aided by Elam Markham, whom she at first employed as bookkeeper and general factotum. His accounts in this capacity becoming involved in dire confusion, Miss Fuller, under advice, married him as the shortest method of effectual settlement. The result was unusually successful, for they kept the hotel until 1838, when it was pur- chased by Jonathan G. Currier, who kept it himself and rented it to tenants until 1857.2 In this year Mr. Currier sold the hotel to Horace Frary by whom, in the course of twenty years, it was greatly enlarged and improved, at a total cost to him of about $40,000. In October, 1867, the brick part was extended ten feet on the south and twenty feet on the north, and the wooden part under- went the changes already mentioned. The external appearance of the building was far from improved by all this. In its original form there was an open yard east of the brick building, and later along the whole west front there was a handsome portico of the height of two stories, which was removed by Mr. Frary after 1875. Over the entrance facing the Green was a tier of balconies, extending to the upper story, and about them a yard, a rod deep, protected by a neat fence.
When Mr. Currier acquired the property it still extended to the Tontine. Along the street toward the south end was a row of sheds, closed toward the street and opening back into the stable yard; nearer the hotel and opening out upon Main Street was a broad inn yard for the accommodation of numerous stage coaches which daily centered here. At the south corner of the hotel, next the street, stood the pump. In the spring of 1839 Mr. Currier purchased an old building that stood north of the Mink Brook Road in Greensborough, about two miles from the College, built by Chester Ingalls years before for a tavern and dancing hall, but then abandoned. This was now taken down and brought in,
1 Account of Dr. J. W. Barstow.
" Among his tenants, as far as can be ascertained, were Loren Way, Parker Morse, Fay and Stearns, John Hitchcock, Nathaniel Huggins, John and Frank Ward, one Kimball, Horace Frary, and Horace Fabyan. The variety of tenants does not indicate a successful house.
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The Village at the College
attached to the hotel on the east of the inn yard and facing west- ward into it, and made into a house and shops. Here was a saddler's shop kept by William West, and a barber's shop, the latter kept by a deformed and vicious negro, "Den," a son of one of Mrs. Wheelock's slaves, who was driven out of town in 1854 for misconduct. Here, in 1841, John F. Brown had a bookstore. About ten years later this building was drawn out into the yard, flush with the street, nearly where the Guyer building now is, but leaving between it and the hotel to the north a narrow entrance to the stable yard. On its south side Mr. Carter, and after him his son Elijah, for many years dispensed creature comforts to the hungry and the thirsty. On the north side, Elijah Smalley had a drug store about 1853, and here the first telegraph office was located on its introduction to the village.
The building intervening between this and the Tontine was made up piecemeal by Mr. Currier, some time prior to 1850, out of parts of the old stable, the coming of the railroad and the decay of the stage coach making unnecessary so great an extent of stable room. It was purchased by J. C. Perkins, a jeweler, and after his death by H. L. Carter. In this building were a shoe store, kept by S. Dow, a furniture store, kept first by F. H. Nichols and then by George W. Rand, and also a bookstore, kept for many years by B. W. Hale and afterward by J. B. Parker. Both buildings were burned in the great fire of 1887, and replaced, north and south, respectively, by the sons of Elijah Carter and by H. L. Carter, with the buildings now standing.
The central lot south of the Green, twenty-two rods deep, was given by the College to Dr. John Crane as an inducement to settle here as a physician. He built a two-story house in 1773 eighteen feet from the north line. In 1779-80 the house was leased to Ebenezer Brewster, the college steward, and in 1785 conveyed, doubtless for debt, to Moses Chase of Cornish. After passing through various hands it was owned and occupied for five or six years by Judge Farrar, then by Professor Benjamin Hale, Daniel Blaisdell and Professor Stephen Chase, whose family, after living in it a quarter of a century transferred it in 1867 to Dorrance B. Currier, who occupied it at the time of its burning, January, 1887. On the rear of the lot were built the large hotel stables that burned in January, 1859. Later Mr. Bibby had a stable on this site, which passed into the hands of H. K. Swazey.
The lot on which Bissell Hall now stands was originally divided diagonally from northeast to southwest by the line sepa-
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History of Hanover
rating the lands of the College from those of Wheelock. It passed into the hands of Patrick Field, a tailor, then to Eleazar Wheelock, the son of the President, and in turn to Eleazar's brother James, and later, probably on execution for debt, to Richard Lang, who after holding it forty years sold it to Professor Haddock. After two more transfers it was bought by the College in 1842 to prevent its becoming a site for an Episcopal Church. In early times there was a house on it, near the north end, used for a time as a shoe shop by Jacob Kimball and Jeremiah Utley, but it disappeared before 1840. Bissell Hall was built as a gymnasium in 1866, but was converted to the use of the Thayer School of Civil Engineer- ing in 1910.
On the lot across the street, where Wilson Hall now stands, Dr. Laban Gates erected a house about 1785, and later enlarged it to the dimensions which it now exhibits on the site of No. 48 South Main Street, to which it was moved in 1884. On the death cf Dr. Gates in 1836 it passed to his daughter Almira, who sub- sequently married John C. Divine, from which circumstance the house was called the "Divine House," though at a later time the earlier name of "Gates House" reasserted itself. About 1845 the house passed to G. W. Kibling by foreclosure of a mortgage, but owing to the vigilance of Mrs. Divine, who inherited many of her father's peculiarities and who refused to give possession to Mr. Kibling, he was able to obtain entrance only by stratagem. After he had watched in vain for many days to take advantage of her absence, Mrs. Divine so far relaxed her vigilance as to go to the post office, only to find, on her return a few minutes later, Mr. Kibling in possession and her furniture outside the door. She raised an outcry that drew a crowd to her rescue, and Mr. Kibling was compelled to temporize to avoid being pitched out by the friendly students. Mr. Kibling sold the property to John D. Powers, and he, in 1869, to Edward McCabe, from whom it passed to the College in 1872, after which it was occupied as a tenement house until it was moved away to make room for the library.
The land on the east of the Green has always been occupied by the College, but in early times trade had a footing on its west and north sides and even north of Wentworth Street. The lot on the northwest corner of Main and Wheelock Streets was granted by the College to Comfort Seaver, a carpenter from Stillwater, N. Y., called Esquire Seaver, who came here in 1772 and built upon it a house in which he lived, but apparently the house was not
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The Village at the College
upon the corner. The property came into the possession of Dr. George Eager and then of Richard Lang, who, in 1795, built on the corner the house, to which reference has already been made, and in which he lived until his death, September 8, 1840. For ten years it was occupied by Professor C. B. Haddock, who had married Lang's daughter, Susan, but on his appointment as chargé d'affaires at Lisbon he disposed of it to Mrs. L. C. Dickinson for a girls' boarding school, but she changed her plans and sold it to Professor Samuel G. Brown, who kept it until he left Hanover to become the President of Hamilton College in 1867. It was bought by the savings bank from which the title passed some years later to A. P. Balch, who had built a large house upon it. The old house was moved away and after being the home of Dr. Carlton P. Frost was sold by his heirs to the Chi Phi fraternity (No. 11 East Wheelock Street). The Balch house was bought by F. W. Davison in 1887, converted into a store, the second story being used by the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and partially burned in February, 1900; the property was then bought by the College, which in 1901 erected College Hall upon it.
North of this, on the corner of Cemetery Lane, the lot, eight rods by ten, was granted in 1774 to William Winton, a mason, who went to the war, was wounded at Saratoga and died Septem- ber 28, 1777. He had a house, but what became of it is uncertain, unless it was converted into the shop which stood on the south side of the lot and was occupied by various traders before 1820, when Richard Lang transferred to it his general store from the north side of the Green, and which was used as the office of the College treasurer from 1851 until 1870, when the savings bank building was erected in its place.
Dr. Cyrus Perkins built a large house on the north side of the lot, but on leaving Hanover after the collapse of the University, to whose fortunes he had adhered, he sold it to President Brown, on whose death in July of 1819 the house was purchased by the College, and, after being occupied in succession by Presidents Dana and Tyler, was sold in 1833 to Dr. Oliver. After Dr. Oliver's resignation it was the home for many years of Professor E. D. Sanborn, but after his death it was again purchased by the College and in 1894 was converted into a dormitory ; and this, to give place to Robinson Hall, was moved back in 1913 to its present site at the west end of Cemetery Lane.
On the north side of this lane, which was laid out a rod and a half wide as an entrance to the cemetery, were several shops at
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History of Hanover
various times. The land was granted in 1785 to Asa Holden, who, in 1790, had on it a "medicine shop" which later gave way to one for European wares and to a "vendue office" open every Thurs- day at 2 P. M. for auction sales. Behind it was a cabinet shop. In 1810 Professor Ebenezer Adams bought the property and, using the existing gambrel roofed house as an ell, built the house which was occupied by him, by his son-in-law, Professor Ira Young and by Professor Young's widow, and his daughter, Mrs. J. C. Proctor, until it was removed in 1902 to make way for Tuck Hall.
The land next to this was granted to Samuel McClure in 1784, who built a house and north of the house he had a shop, which he occupied in the capacity of tailor, barber and postmaster, and which was later used for students' rooms and as a hall, receiving in consequence the name of "Lyceum." About 1839 it was moved to West Wheelock Street and became the home of Luman Boutwell. Dr. Shurtleff bought the property in 1807, and it remained in his possession and that of his daughter, Mrs. Susan A. Brown, until her death, April 24, 1900. It was torn down in 1911 to make way for the Parkhurst Administration Building. In early times there was a brick yard in the rear of the lot. In 1828 the old chapel was moved from the College yard to the north side of the lot and was used as a vestry by the church, but about five years later it again took up its journey and became a barn in the rear of the house of J. S. Lang, on the northeast corner of Main and Elm Streets. In 1842-43 Professor O. P. Hubbard built here a brick house, which passed in time to Profes- sor E. T. Quimby and from his estate to the College, by which it was used as the first abode of the Tuck School and as a dormitory, disappearing on the erection of Parkhurst Hall.
This lot was bounded on the north by a crooked lane, which the Trustees of the College had dedicated to public use to enable the students to reach the river through the charming ravine, known in modern times as "Webster's Vale" from the fact that it was the favorite walk of the great Expounder during his college days, as it was that of many subsequent generations of students until it was extinguished in 1864. The lane leading to the cemetery dates from 1878. The passage to the river was again opened in 1914 by the construction of the "Tuck Drive," the gift of Edward Tuck, the generous donor of the Tuck School foundation. On the corner of the lane and the street was built in 1791 Moor's Academy, which was used for many purposes, for a printing office
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PLATE IV : THE VILLAGE OF HANOVER
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The Village at the College
and for private schools, but through neglect it fell into a ruinous state and the building was sold in 1835, and on its site was erected an attractive brick structure known for many years as the "Academy," which by several renovations and enlargements has become the present "Chandler Hall."
All the land on the west side of Main Street, between the Academy and the "Governor's line" (below the present Number 24), comprising ten acres, was granted by the Trustees in May, 1792, to Ebenezer Woodward to pay him for work on Dartmouth Hall. On it was built, about 1810, by Professor Z. S. Moore the brick house, which, passing to Dr. Reuben D. Muzzey, was occupied by him from 1815 to 1838, and then owned and occupied by Dr. Dixi Crosby and his family until it was bought by the College for the Chandler fund in 1884. On being converted into a dormitory in 1896 it was christened by the name of its last private owner.
The open ground between the Tuck Drive and the former Kappa Kappa Kappa house has had an unfortunate record, for three houses in succession have been burned upon it, in 1798, 1817 and 1847. All the buildings were small dwellings, and the last was occupied by Mrs. Betsy Shays, a widow, who kept a small notion store which was tended by her deformed son. This fire was of incendiary origin, kindled to divert attention from the burglary of a jewelry store farther down the street. North of this house there was, about that time, a little red building used as a car- penter's shop. In 1850 the property was bought by Professor D. J. Noyes, who in the next year built upon it a house which, purchased by the College in 1884 as a President's house and occupied by President Bartlett for eight years, was later moved to its present position as No. 4 Webster Avenue. The present end of the Tuck Drive was opened in 1864 as an entrance to a house built in that year by the Rev. Henry Fairbanks, a pro- fessor in the College, and later known as the "Hitchcock" place from its long occupancy by Hiram Hitchcock and his widow, Emily Howe Hitchcock, who devised it to the College. The house was removed in 1920, and on its site the Russell Sage Dormitory was erected. The house next above was built by Professor Henry E. Parker in 1868-69, and passed into the possession of the Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity in 1894, and from it into that of the College in 1924.
From the Governor's line northward a parcel of fifteen acres was given by the first Wheelock to his daughter, Abigail, on
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History of Hanover
her marriage to Sylvanus Ripley in 1774, and a large additional acreage on his death in 1779. The one-story house, now Number 24, was built by her husband, Professor Ripley, about 1780, who also built the house next east of the College Church. Although the latter was incomplete at the time of his death in 1787, it was occupied by his family, and was sold by his widow in 1794, when she moved back to the house on her farm, where she remained until she went to live with her son-in-law, Judah Dana of Frye- burg, Me., to whom she conveyed this house for $500 in 1802. It was during her ownership that Webster roomed there. In 1806 the house passed to another son-in-law, a Mr. Baylies of Wood- stock, and the next year to Simeon Dewey. Among the later occupants of the house was the lawyer William Smith, mentioned elsewhere, whose son Henry, known afterward as Henry F. Durant, was the founder of Wellesley College. For a long time the place was owned by Miss L. J. McMurphy, whose name is still occasionally connected with it.
Webster Avenue with its extension to Occom Ridge was opened in 1896, and of course the houses in that section, of which an account is given elsewhere, have been built since that date. On the corner of Main Street stands the house of the Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity, erected in 1924, and next north of it a large house built by Joseph L. Dewey about 1840 (No. 30). Passing a small house that came in by squatter sovereignty, the next one (No. 34), still sometimes called the "Morse Place," is the old Academy building, hauled there and fitted up for a resi- dence in 1839 by Phineas Clement, whose name is preserved in "Clement Road." It recently passed to Clifford P. Clark and is used as the dining hall of the Clark School. The house next above (No. 36), on the corner of Choate Road, occupied for some years by the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, was built by Jackson Gould in 1874, and in the same year the house (No. 38), until lately used by the Hospital as a nurses' home, was built by Mrs. A. A. Pike. It now belongs to the Epsilon Kappa Phi fraternity.
Returning to the Green and coming up on the east side of the street, we find at the corner of Main and Wentworth Streets the vestry lot, two rods by eight, which was the site of the College barn, built in 1771, or possibly the barn was in the yard north of the lot, which was granted by the College in September, 1788, to Stephen Hopkins, who (or one of the same name) had land farther down the street. He immediately conveyed it to Asa
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The Village at the College
Holden, mentioning in the deed only "a shop or tenement standing on it," but in the next year it was transferred to David Fogg, "cordwainer," and six years later the lot "with house and barn on it" passed to Samuel Gordon Mackery, who opened there an apothecary shop and general store, but it does not seem to have lasted long, as the latest advertisement of it appears in June. At the time of the building of the church an attempt was made to enlarge its lot by purchase of this "red house, land and barn," but without success. In 1834 the small lot west of the church was bought by Mills Olcott from the estate of David Hinckley for $50, and in 1840 was given by him to the deacons of the Congre- gational Church for the site of a vestry, on condition that the building be constructed within a year "and continued for the use and purpose of a vestry."
On the open ground north of the church and the vestry, a part of Bezaleel Woodward's original lot, there have been several buildings, all of which have disappeared except a shop which was built by Deacon Samuel Long in 1832 just south of the present No. 19, and which being moved away in 1847 to a position on East Wheelock Street (No. 27), was made into a house for James Wright, 2nd, and is now (1925) owned by Dr. G. D. Frost. The house, now No. 19, was occupied for many years by Daniel Blaisdell, who bought in that year a house that had probably been built by a man named White, who had bought the place in 1786.
Of the next two houses the first (No. 21) was built by Dr. Samuel Alden about 1835 for his relatives, Mrs. Pearson and Mrs. Hawkins and their children. Mrs. Pearson removed from town about 1850, but the house was occupied by Mrs. Hawkins and her daughter until the death of the latter in 1875, when it was bought and enlarged by Professor E. R. Ruggles, after whose death in 1897 it was bought by the College. The house on the corner (No. 23) was built in 1843 by Sarah and Hannah Free- man, daughters of Jonathan Freeman, and was sold at their death to Miss L. J. Sherman, from whom it was purchased by the College, which thus completed, except for a part of the church and vestry, the ownership of the entire square.
On the opposite corner the house known of late years as the "Carpenter" house (No. 25), and now occupied by the "Clark School," was built about 1833 by Richard Lang for his son, Colonel John S. Lang, who died February 8, 1839. Five years later his widow was followed in the house by Dr. Thomas P. Hill and he, in 1866, by E. D. Carpenter, through whose daughter it passed
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History of Hanover
to her husband, Dorrance B. Currier, and from his estate to Clif- ford P. Clark who used it as the home of a private "school of intensive education" preparatory to college. The house next north of the Clark School (No. 27), occupied for a time by the Sigma Nu fraternity, was built in 1842 by Joseph L. Dewey for his sister-in-law, Mrs. Thomas Whipple. It passed to E. K. Smith, the well-known baker and confectioner, who in 1868 built as a residence for his son George (on his marriage to his cousin, the sister of Whitelaw Reid) the house (No. 29) which a little later he occupied himself. Eventually it became the home of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity until the building of their new house in 1925, when the residence was torn down. His earlier home came through the intermediate ownership of Mrs. A. L. Paige and George B. Weston into its present hands. The two houses (Nos. 33, 35) beyond the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, now belonging to the Lambda Chi Alpha and Theta Chi frater- nities, were, as already told, built by E. K. Smith as a candy shop and a bakery and were converted into residences after the removal of the business to White River Junction. The house on the corner of Main and Maynard Streets (No. 37), now the property of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, was built by Pro- fessor Frank A. Sherman in 1883. Maynard Street was opened between Main and College Streets in 1892, affording access to the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, which was built by Hiram Hitchcock in memory of his wife, Mary Maynard Hitch- cock, and opened in May, 1893. The site chosen for the Hospital was a tract of seven acres, then outside the village, on which stood houses and barns belonging to Edward Clifford and E. K. Smith. Work on the Hospital was begun in 1890, the architects of the building being Rand and Taylor of Worcester, Mass., and the contractors Bishop and Cutting, also of Worcester.
The design was for a cottage hospital of thirty-six beds, and Mr. Hitchcock spared no expense to construct a building as perfect as science and skill could make it. Few believed that it would ever be fully occupied, but before he died, December 30, 1900, he saw a partial fulfillment of his expectation in the growth of a "hospital habit," which a few years later so extended the use of the Hospital that in 1913 it was necessary to construct an addition, large enough in all for sixty-three beds, such addition being made possible by a bequest of Mrs. Dawn L. Hitchcock of Gorham, N. H.
Returning again to the Green in the story of buildings, the
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The Village at the College
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