At Exeter, all four classes live together, and most students remain in the same dorm for their entire time at the Academy. Proctors and student listeners return to campus early each fall to be trained for their responsibilities, and the mentoring that occurs between older and younger students is important to the personal development of both. A strong sense of belonging for every student in the dorm is central to creating a strong sense of belonging to the school as a whole, and it is not surprising that our alumni typically identify first with their class year, and second with their dorm.

This fall, we celebrate the opening of the first new dorm on campus since 1969. It’s a multipurpose building that houses 60 students and five resident faculty, as well as an academic space with four Harkness classrooms and a department meeting room for our Health and Human Development Department. The building also frames a spacious lawn with two other dorms, creating an exciting new community space on campus.

To ensure the best possible residential experience for our students, and to attract and retain the finest faculty, it is essential that we continually renovate our dorms in line with the latest principles of accessibility and sustainable construction. Outfitted with geothermal heating and cooling, the new dorm is a testament to that commitment. It will be used to house students from Merrill and Langdell Halls as we embark on the renewal of those historic dorms and the construction of an expansive new dining complex on the site of Wetherell Dining Hall.

In the opening paragraph of our Deed of Gift, John and Elizabeth Phillips expressed their belief that “the time of youth is the important period.” Indeed, it is a time to learn about one’s self and develop a sense of purpose and identity, and to consider one’s place in the larger whole. Our residential programs are an essential component of this process at Exeter, and they are critical to our mission to unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

“There’s something really unique that boarding schools can offer to both day and boarding students,” says Carol Cahalane, the Academy’s dean of residential life since 2018. “It’s the opportunity to have many places and ways to gather with peers who are equally interested in connecting and learning about each other and the world together.”

Cahalane is far from the first school leader to place residential life among the most valuable aspects of an Exeter education. The process of converting the Academy to a residential school goes back to the construction of the first permanent dormitory on campus, Abbot Hall, in 1855 (see sidebar, “Abbot Hall”). In the early 1930s, Edward Harkness’ revolutionary gift funded the addition of Bancroft, Langdell, Merrill and Wheelwright Halls. This brought the school’s total to 13 large dormitories, each housing 35 to 70 students, in addition to eight smaller house dorms, and provided accommodations for instructors with families for the first time.

“The residential element is at the heart of the education we provide,” Principal Richard W. Day reported to the Trustees in 1971, two years after the last two large residence halls to be built, Main Street Dormitory and Ewald Dormitory, opened on the northern edge of campus. “Dormitory life is not separate from but an extension of what takes place in the classroom. The value of each experience is dependent upon the quality of both.”

This symbiotic relationship was on everyone’s mind in 2019-20, when more than 700 community members weighed in on a vision for Exeter’s future and composed a Campus Master Plan. Based on the result of a student housing study, the plan included the renovation of six existing dorms over the next decade, as well as the construction of a new residence hall to house 60 students. This new hall would allow for renovation of existing dorms without either executing that renovation completely in the summers or displacing students during the school year.

“The new dormitory is not about an expansion of student enrollment,” says Heather Taylor, campus planner and architect. “It’s about a long-term strategy to improve student life and housing options on campus.”

Following Wentworth’s renewal, Langdell and Merrill Halls are the next dorms scheduled for renovation, and students from both will be living together in New Hall for the next two years. Langdell and Merrill are expected to reopen in the 2024-25 school year along with an expansive new Wetherell Dining Complex. “We’re very fortunate in that all of these are good buildings with good bones that we will be able to renovate them for the next 100 years,”

Taylor says. “My hope is that the same is true for the new dorm. You want to design a building that is timeless and functions for generations of our students.”

In accordance with the principle of environmental stewardship, a key aspect of the Campus Master Plan, the primary structure of New Hall is wood frame rather than steel, which minimizes its carbon footprint. Inside, the building maximizes natural light in both the residential and academic spaces, and geothermal heating and cooling systems provide dehumidification to the student rooms and air conditioning and heating to the faculty apartments and academic spaces. Faculty apartments on each level include separate studies opening directly to student hallways, ensuring a strong faculty-student connection as well as privacy for instructors and their families.

The building also incorporates the historic Dow Barn, which dates to the mid-19th century. Previously used only for storage, the barn was adjacent to neighboring Dow House, a former clinic that the Academy purchased in 1967 to adapt into a student and faculty residence. Dow Barn’s original exposed wood beams now adorn the cathedral ceiling in a second-floor faculty apartment. The façade on the barn end of New Hall incorporates the double doors and diamond-shaped windows of the original barn, as well as the vented cupola and weather vane. The same angular windows, repeated along the rest of the building, echo the barn’s classic look and feel, creating a seamless blend of historic and modern.

“I’m proud of the many sustainable features of the new building,” says Mark Leighton, director of Facilities Management. “Especially the reuse of Dow Barn, enhanced building envelope, geothermal systems, low-maintenance materials, and efficient sizing and layouts of the student and faculty spaces.” In addition to its main residential space — bedrooms for 60 students, five faculty apartments, an airy front common room and ground-floor game room with kitchen and laundry — the building’s academic wing is home to the Health and Human Development Department, with four Harkness classrooms, a department room and a flexible common area.

New Hall was built on the former site of Fisher Theater, which was the hub of the Academy’s performing arts offerings from 1971 until the opening of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance in 2018. The sloping topography of the building site allows the new dormitory to easily incorporate academic and residential space, while keeping them securely separate.

The academic entrance, on the north side of the building, opens onto a courtyard adjacent to the Forrestal- Bowld Music Center and is a short walk from both the Lamont Health and Wellness Center and the Phelps Science Center. On the Front Street side, a broad campus green in front of the student entrance to New Hall links the building to two smaller dorms, Dow House and Front Street Dormitory. “I love how the topography allows for two distinct entrances, both of which have strong connections to campus,” Leighton says.

While the union of Merrill and Langdell in New Hall was born of necessity, it’s also an unprecedented opportunity. For the first time, former residents of two different dorms, their affiliated day students, and a small group of new students have come together to create a unified dorm

identity and forge the enduring bonds so many Exonians take away from their time on campus. “I do think each dorm has a very unique culture, and I’m fascinated to see how they mix,” says Troy Samuels, the head of New Hall and an instructor in history. “I’m excited to get to play around in terms of building community.”

While Samuels and other dorm faculty members take the lead in this process, they will rely on the support of senior proctors for the vital task of building dorm unity. Other large dorms on campus typically have six to eight student proctors, but New Hall has 10, five from each former dorm. “At the beginning of the year, we’re going to be doing double duty,” says Bronwyn Hall ’23, a senior proctor who spent her first three years at Exeter living in Merrill. “Two people on duty every night, one from each dorm, so that we make sure everyone gets a chance to get to know people that they don’t know, and even the proctors get to know the other dorm’s proctors.”

Hall and her fellow proctors also played a key role in helping their dormmates prepare for the transition during last spring term. Merrill and Langdell residents went through the process of room draw together and also gathered on a few more informal occasions, like toasting s’mores on Wetherell-Ford Quad. “I think they’re going to be a little cautious at first,” Samuels says, adding that the new dorm “has just so many wonderful spaces and wonderful opportunities for them. It’s going to be great.”

After meeting for the first time during an off-campus dinner outing at a local Thai restaurant, Addo and Wang became closer friends when they both ran winter track. As preps, Addo lived in Langdell and Wang lived in Merrill, but they decided in the spring to room together this year, becoming one of several cross-dorm pairings in New Hall.

A week after move-in day, their double looked well lived-in. They have both ordered shelves to attach to their beds for phone chargers and alarm clocks, and tacked up photographs, prints and collages over their beds. A shared built-in desk, which runs the length of the wall beneath the windows, is loaded with textbooks, laptops, Clorox wipes and other dorm room staples.

“I really like the view, especially when I’m studying,” Addo says. “When times get stressful, it’s really nice to look out at the trees.” The desk is so roomy that she has placed a second chair at the end, ideal for study sessions with a friend. Wang, a self-proclaimed “super clothes shopper,” loves the big closets.

Addo and Wang acknowledged having mixed feelings over the summer about the move to New Hall, and they worried about missing the close-knit culture of their former dorms. Now, however, they are optimistic. “There was a lot of emphasis in the first dorm meeting of everyone really trying to make the effort to see us as one big dorm,” Wang says. “I think that’s actually going really well.”

Addo agreed, saying: “There are a lot of people from Merrill that I wanted to talk to — people in leadership roles or people that play on the volleyball team — but never really got to know. I’m still working on that since it’s only been a week. But I feel really close with the Merrill people, and I’m really excited to see what we can do as one dorm.”

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

“We’ve talked about how nice it’s going to be to have our dorm team meeting and sit outside,” Dean says. “I’m also so excited about the bigger common spaces for the students. … I think having that big outdoor space in front of the dorm is going to be incredible. I can already imagine the kids having picnics out there.”

Dean’s apartment, like the other faculty residences, has a study that opens directly into the student hallway. The setup is ideal for dorm duty and fosters strong ties between resident faculty and students. Dean’s study contains a table with four chairs and a roll of kraft paper mounted on the wall, perfect for students — and kids — in the mood for a writing or drawing session.

Dean has more experience than most with dorm life at Exeter. A resident of Amen Hall during her student years, she has lived in Webster Hall and Merrill Hall since joining the Academy as a faculty member in 2013. As a parent, she admits that living in a dorm has its perks. “There are always a ton of kids volunteering to babysit,” Dean says. Bode and Wyatt have also taken piano and chess lessons from student members of the Exeter Student Service Organization.

For their part, her children seem relatively unfazed by their new surroundings. Bode likes living closer to his elementary school, and to the adjacent fields where he plays baseball and lacrosse. Although Wyatt’s bedroom has a stunning view of the Academy Building’s bell tower, he’s far more excited to show off the LED lights his parents installed and his collection of Boston Celtics gear.

Wyatt does muster some enthusiasm for seeing familiar students and meeting new ones as the school year begins — particularly if those meetings involve the dorm’s basement game room. “I might play some Ping-Pong,” he says hopefully, before rushing down the hall to join his family.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

As Frank H. Cunningham details in his book Familiar Sketches of The Phillips Exeter Academy and Surroundings, the rooms were “furnished at a nominal rent, so that fifty boys are thus supported at about one half the cost of living at the ordinary boarding houses.” Residents paid $1 a year for a room. “The Trustees believe that no other institution of the kind in the country has approached this Academy in giving substantial aid to young men of poverty and merit,” Cunningham writes.

The building was named Abbot Hall, in honor of Benjamin Abbot, the Academy’s second principal, who served from 1788 to 1838. Abbot was a respected and beloved instructor, teaching such subjects as Latin and Greek for 44 years and counting among his pupils statesman Daniel Webster.

Ever considerate of the Academy’s mission to educate students in goodness and knowledge, the Trustees voted to post, inside each student’s Abbot Hall door, a set of eight rules, including: “There shall not be in or about the building, during study hours, any singing or playing of musical instruments, or any other noise inconsistent with the quiet study; and good order shall be preserved at all times.”

Abbot Hall remained the only on-campus dormitory until Soule Hall was built in 1893.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.