The Hanover Improvement Society was formed in 1922 for the purpose of promoting civic work within the Hanover Community. Among it’s founders were many of the Town’s more prominent business and civic leaders of the time; and in fact that pattern has continued forward consistently right up to the present as far as the make up of the Society’s Governing Board of Directors.

On of the earliest undertakings by the Society was the operation of a movie theater in downtown Hanover-a very successful and popular venture for both Dartmouth Students and towns people alike. By 1950 a new state of the art movie theater was built by Trumbull-Nelson Construction Company for the Society, located on South Main Street across from the Post Office. The facility still stands to this day although several times altered thru the years to reflect changes in the overall movie industry.

By the mid-1960’s the Hanover Improvement Society had acquired the property on South Main Street immediately north of the theater beside present day Molly’s Restaurant, and began contemplating a new multi-story retail and office building to replace the decrepit and unsafe structures then occupying the property. Frank J. Barrett, a local architect who practiced in Hanover from 1946 thru 1985, was hired to design the new building; and Trumbull-Nelson was selected as the general contractor.

A modern brick and steel framed three story building was conceived by the architect (capable of two additional future floors), designed in part to be architecturally compatible with the existing theater building that it would physically attach to, as well as influenced no doubt from the extensive european traveling that Mr. Barrett was undertaking at that time.

The first price in September 1969 for the new building was $525,785. Unfortunately, this was beyond the Society’s budget. As a result, the architect, owner, and general contractor all worked quickly and successfully together and brought the price of the new 28,518 square feet structure down to $486,665., a final cost of $17.06 per square foot! Construction began late that fall; and the building was ready for occupancy by late summer 1970. This writer can remember as a teenager working that summer while in high school for the painting sub contractor Howard Stone of Littleton, New Hampshire. Later the same year the architect for the project even became an office tenant in the new building.

Of particular interest to the continued history of Trumbull-Nelson Construction Company was the fact that this was the last building project personally estimated and overseen by Dale H. Nelson, one of the founders of the Company and also a member of the Hanover Improvement Society’s Board of Directors. After seeing this project into the safe and very capable hands of Job Superintendant Erwin Jerome, Dale finally retired from the Company that he had so long and successfully built up.

Author Frank J. Barrett, Jr. is also an area architect and a principle in the firm of Church & Barrett Architects located in White River Junction, Vermont.