Dartmouth College is all ivy and copper roofs, red brick and classy tradition. And then there’s… Leverone Field House.
The official Dartmouth write-up states: Leverone Field House was designed by Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi, whose distinctive sports palaces for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome earned him the laudatory title, “Poet in Concrete.”
Yeah. Poetry in Concrete. Right up there with German Love Songs as things better not to attempt.
Sadly, Leverone comes across as a reinterpretation of neo-stalinist functionalism, but with less charm. It is perhaps the single hardest building on campus to photograph without tearing up and asking “why”?
This week, however, Mother Nature did her best: spring was in the air, snow was melting under a clear sky, so I gave it another shot. And it almost — almost — worked.
