Goddard College
Thoughts and Images 2006

(all content copyright 2006 by Glenn C. Koenig)

I visited the Goddard College campus during their alumni weekend, October 6 - 8, 2006. I have included this page in my web site primary for other alumni, but everyone is welcome to take a look.

If Goddard were a person and could speak with one voice, its first words might be to quote "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!" Yes, Goddard is alive and quite well, and it still operates an undergraduate and masters programs, although they are all now 'low residency' which means that no one lives on campus 'full time' anymore (as of 2002). This means that very few people attend Goddard straight out of high school these days. However, in spite of that, Goddard is growing again and is reported to be on more sound financial footing than in the recent past.

Part of my trip was to see if I could find the 'heart and soul' of Goddard - was it still there or had it been lost? After staying the entire weekend, talking at length with a recent student and a current student, and attending an alumni meeting with the president (that really got down into the substance of what Goddard is and how it operates today), I'm glad to say that its essential essence seems to be intact. If you are reading this and are not an alumni, and you are wondering what I'm talking about, then all I can tell you at this point is to look at their web site (which helps a little) or arrange a visit and go there and talk to the people there now. If you go during a 'residency cycle' then you will have the entire range of people with which to converse, students, faculty, staff, president, and deans. From them, you will gather your own sense of what I'm talking about.

OK, now on to the pictures. Note that these are of limited resolution here. Please contact me if you want to see full resolution copies.

First, the Greatwood Farm buildings are now more open to view, as much of the dead underbrush and some of the trees are now gone. This the back of the Manor House and the garden in the evening, now on the historic register:

This is looking the other way. This looks darker here than it looked in the camera (I had forgotten to disable the flash), but you can still get an idea of how open it now looks. That's the Clockhouse in the center.

Here are some views of the Greatwood Dorms. The first is looking toward the farm buildings on a frosty morning, going down to breakfast:

These three are looking the other way, later on in the morning:

Then, I decided to take a look inside Froelicher Dorm, where I lived in the Fall of 1973 and Fall of 1974, after my double NRT (non resident term). The lounge, shown here, is still there but the kitchen and dining area (behind me as I took this photo) are now just part of the lounge. There are no more cooking dorms, as it would be impractical with a low residency program:

Then I went up to room 5, where I lived one term. It was easy to remember living here:

The two photos above are a little dark because I let the camera expose for the view outside, so you can still see the trees through the windows, just a little, but you may get some idea of what it's like to be there. Kind of cozy. Too bad I neglected to remove the waste basket from the desk (!) As I was leaving, I decided to get an image of the entry way. I like this image much better.

Then I headed to Northwood:

Stopping at the Eliot Pratt Center, home of WGDR-FM, 91.1 (and now streaming on the web!)

And then beyond that, to the painting building. At the left is the remaining portion of the bridge that connected it to the Sculpture Building. The rest, further to the left (obscured by trees in the photo) became too rotted and has been removed.

After that, I walked up the road to Northwood itself. The dorms did not originally have names, just letters for each of the six buildings, A through F. Each building was actually divided in half, into two separate dorm units, left and a right. Thus the they were abbreviated "DL" (D building, Left side), or "AR," etc.
The dorms were sold to a developer (a Goddard alum!) who renovated them in the early 1990s to make apartments. Now they are condos as I understand it. Gone are the flat roofs and second floor clapboards in the Mansard style, now replaced by gable roofs, more traditional in New England to handle the heavy snowfall.
In the first photo, you can see the back of D. When I lived in DL my first term (on the right end of the building in the picture, as this is a view of the back of the building), we added architectural features and renamed that side "Pitkin" dorm after the current college's founder, Tim Pitkin:

This is a view of CL (end view of light tan building in the distance, in the middle of the photo, partly obscured by the large conifer) and the back of A (the prominent building, up the hill on the right):

Here is a closer view of AR, the last place I lived while a student at Goddard:

That's it for the photo tour. If you'd like to see more, you'll have to wait until I make another trip up to Vermont, or perhaps pay Goddard a visit yourself!