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Trumbull-Nelson’s old-fashioned values, adaptability, and desire to be a leader in the community and industry have made the company a staple of New England. By bruce wood

link when you drive by and you might just miss the understated Trumbull-Nelson headquarters on Route 120 in Hanover. But travel just about anywhere else in and around the greater Connecticut River valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont and the Company’s impact is impossible to miss.

Founded by W.H. “Harry” Trumbull in Hanover in 1917 as a builder of fine homes, Trumbull-Nelson has long since grown into the Upper Valley’s largest general contractor. The company that today specializes in a tremendous variety of institutional, commercial, and industrial construction projects has helped redefine the region over its 90-year history.

from left to right: W.H. TRUMBULL, DALE NELSON, DON SMITH, CLINT FULLER, AND LEONARD UFFORD, SR.

Just how widespread has T-N’s impact been? Few know better than Robert “Robbie” Robinson, the one-time yard foreman who went to work for the company as a laborer shortly after graduating from high school in the late 1950s and did everything from digging post holes and driving trucks to carefully helping move million-dollar artwork during museum projects before retiring in 2003 after 43 years on the job.

“Seems like everywhere I go I drive by something Trumbull’s done,” the Lyme man says proudly, using the familiar company name so often invoked by those who came before him. “It makes you feel good to see all the things we built.”

Trumbull-Nelson’s impact reaches from the U.S. Post Office in Hanover to the Woodstock Inn. From the Powerhouse Mall in West Lebanon to the pool at Storr’s Pond in Hanover. From Dartmouth College’s Rockefeller Center to the control tower at Lebanon Airport. From Centerra Market on Route 120 to the Stratton Mountain Club in Vermont. And the list goes on.

Whether it’s the newborn at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, the Dartmouth College graduate student at Sachem Village, or the octagenarian at the Richard W. Black Community and Senior Center in Hanover, Trumbull-Nelson’s impact has been felt by people of all ages and backgrounds.

But it’s not just buildings that bear the Trumbull-Nelson mark. “We’ve done a little bit of everything over the years,” Robinson says. “When I first went to work at Trumbull-Nelson we went up to Lebanon Airport. If you are going from Lebanon to West Lebanon and you look up on the hillside at night there’s a row of red lights up on the hill. The post holes were all dug by hand. It took two men one full day to dig a hole. I worked with a man every day to dig one hole. It usually took a full day, sometimes more.

“We built retaining walls on Mascoma Lake, some 22 feet high. We dug miles of sewers, and we even dug a nice-sized bomb shelter at the Rockefeller Mansion in Woodstock.”

Although Trumbull-Nelson was headquartered on Lebanon Street in downtown Hanover—across from the Hopkins Center—when Robinson signed on, it was a good deal less centralized than it is today.

“We had a storehouse down in Lewiston at the old railroad station (in Norwich),” Robinson recalled. “We had Wilder Yard, over in Wilder. We had a big metal building, Johnson Warehouse, in West Lebanon. Across from the old Valley News we had a big barn where we stored stuff. We had stuff stored everywhere, not like it is now, where it’s all out in one yard.”

Trumbull-Nelson’s business, like the physical plant, has changed over the years as it has adopted new building practices, technologies, and materials, and adapted to the changing economics and demographics of the region.

Dartmouth’s Sachem Village project, where T-N erected 130 units of graduate student housing in 37 modular two-story dwellings, is a prime example of the kind of cooperative and forward-looking building practices Trumbull-Nelson has embraced. The project, finishing up this spring, was expected to result in a 30-percent reduction of on-site construction time and significantly less upheaval for those in the immediate vicinity, points of pride for the company charged with bringing the buildings on line.

In recent years Trumbull-Nelson has put added emphasis on the value-engineering aspect of project management and so-called “green building” technology—making both the building itself and the act of building it more environmentally friendly.

Those practices have been a response to the marketplace, as has been the changing nature of T-N’s business. “You look back over our history and you can see the cycles,” says Director of Sales and Marketing Steve Usle. “There was a time when institutional was more important. A time when commercial was more important.

“Right now I’m seeing more of what I’d call residential, but not single family homes like when Trumbull-Nelson started. We’re doing more student housing like Sachem Village and assisted-living housing like Harvest Hill in Lebanon. What we are trying to do, for our part, is build up the staff to a level of sophistication that can handle all of the larger projects, because that seems to be the direction we are going right now.”

While the projects have become bigger and more complicated, Trumbull-Nelson’s goal has remained the same—professionalism with the personal touch that makes the customer and the local community happy. “That’s important to us,” Usle says. “We look at ways to hire local people on projects. We realize the more local a project is the better people feel about what we are doing and it ends up being a better job. There are opportunities to go beyond our position as a large employer and to start helping the community by working with groups in the community. We recognize we are a community member and our roots here go deep.”

Ninety-years deep and counting.

Rockingham Town Hall 1927	Hanover Co-op 1962
	Hanover Co-op 1994
Additions and renovations to Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital 1975-2006
Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences 1983
The Powerhouse Mall 1986	Whippleplace 1986
Richard W. Black Com. Center 2003
Luminescent Systems, Inc. 1999
Ledyard National Bank 1991	Molly's Restaurant 1998