This summer, Dartmouth will begin a two-year renovation of the Fayerweather Halls, according to senior project manager Lindsay Walkinshaw. The construction will increase bed count, enhance building accessibility and replace worn out infrastructure — including fire alarms and electrical systems — Walkinshaw said.
“From the maintenance side of the building, a lot of the systems were old and needed to be replaced,” Walkinshaw said.
The three Fayerweather buildings, which currently do not have any elevators, will be connected by elevators and study spaces and transformed into a single compound called Fayerweather Hall, Walkinshaw said.
The renovation follows College President Sian Leah Beilock’s inaugural pledge to add 1,000 new beds on campus over the course of the next decade, according to past reporting by The Dartmouth. In February, the College announced that it would hold discussions with Hanover planning officials about building a new apartment-style residence hall on West Wheelock Street.
According to the Dartmouth South House website, the Fayerweather Halls house first-year students from South House. For the duration of the renovation, freshmen in South House will live in Topliff Hall and Mid Massachusetts Hall, which currently house sophomores and upperclassmen, according to an email from the Office of Residential Life sent on April 10. The renovation will displace upperclassmen in South House to Summit on Juniper housing — a College-owned apartment complex in Lebanon, eight minutes away from campus by car.
Summit on Juniper houses graduate students and is connected to campus through a shuttle bus system, according to the Office of Residential Life’s website.
Ellie Huang ’27 , a member of School House, said the prospect of living so far from campus is “isolating.”
“For sophomores that will be living there, it’s only your second year and you’re living off campus and it’s hard to find a community … especially because most sophomores don’t have cars,” Huang said. “I think they should reconstruct the Fayes because they are very old, but they should have built dorms on campus to house the students in South House while the Fayes were getting redone.”
Marina Cascini ’27, who lives in North Fayerweather Hall, said that the complex’s basement is a hot spot for freshmen social life. She said she is worried that first-year students will lose a crucial place to make friends if they do not have to cross through the basement to access other halls in the complex.
“The big community in the Fayes will no longer be a thing,” she said. “They aren’t going to have that… one big connected space to go to. There is no real replacement for that.”
Liam O’Brien ’27, a North Fayerweather resident, said he is glad the buildings are being renovated because they are “old and rundown.”
According to Kate Demos-Brown ’27, a pipe burst while she was living in Mid Fayerweather Hall, forcing her neighbors to move out of their room for a month while it was being fixed.
Students have also complained of mold in the Fayerweather rooms, according to past reporting by The Dartmouth. Chloe Gern ’27, who lives in the Choates, said she attributes her continued sinus congestion to time spent in her friend’s room in Mid Fayerweather.
“There was a week in the Fayes where I spent multiple hours doing homework every day of the week in my friend’s room,” Gern said. “Since then, I think I have had mold poisoning. I have had a sinus problem that has not gone away. I blame the Fayes, and it is a good thing they are being [renovated].”
