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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.
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