Hopkins Center For The Arts - History

History

When the Hopkins Center opened in 1962, it was the first academic (or civic) arts center of its kind, and as such, it served as the prototype for an entire generation of such centers that has grown to encompass many hundreds over the succeeding half century. 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 1960’s 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.

The arts were not new to Dartmouth at the time. A student theatre company, the Glee Club, Handel Society Chorus, Community Symphony Orchestra, Dartmouth Film Society, and artist-in-residence programs all pre-existed—but the thought was that students would need to be “drawn in” to the arts activity housed within the center. So, integral to its concept was the use of internal glass. Large windows looked into the theaters and design shops, practice rooms, art studios, and galleries — many of which proved impractical given the activity occurring within. Nevertheless, the arts flourished and the Hop proved enormously successful.

Public programs initiated by its first director, Warner Bentley, and his successor, Peter D. Smith, drew significant media coverage and made the Hopkins Center a regional and sometimes national destination. For a number of years in the mid- and late 1960s, the Hop hosted a summer Congregation of the Arts, which featured summer theatre programs, a festival orchestra and resident chamber ensembles that performed works by distinguished contemporary composers invited to residencies, exhibitions of works by artists-in-residents, and special film series. The Hop earned a reputation as a venue friendly to contemporary music that persisted for nearly two decades. In the 1970s its also initiated and hosted Celebration Northeast, an indoor / outdoor festival that was one of the first to celebrate indigenous but non–mainstream North America folk musics.

For many years the Hop remained ahead of the curve in its programming of imported events, and Peter Smith liked to joke that he was the only impresario who could fail to sell out a 900-seat hall for either Luciano Pavarotti or Bruce Springsteen — both of whom were engaged just prior to their super-stardom.