The Green (Dartmouth College)

[2] After being cleared of pine trees, it initially served as a pasture and later as an athletic field for College sporting events.

Today, it is a central location for rallies, celebrations, and demonstrations, and serves as a general, all-purpose recreation area.

[1][3] The Green is a five-acre (two-hectare) plot located in the center of downtown Hanover, New Hampshire and on traditional land of the Abenaki indigenous group.

This irregularity is due to the Town of Hanover's 1873 seizure of part of the southeast corner of the Green, which it used to straighten Wheelock Street.

[8][9] The land on which the Green sits was originally a pine forest, with some trees reaching the height of 270 feet (82 m), high enough to block out the sun.

[12][13] The main road from Hanover to the northward Lyme, New Hampshire, had previously led diagonally across the Green, and due to the new fences, had to be diverted around it.

Dartmouth students protested by tearing down and burning the rebuilt fence; the town threatened to reopen Main Street on its previous route from the Green's southwest corner across to the northeast.

[5][17] In 1893, when the fence's original purpose of keeping out livestock was no longer needed, the college decided to tear it down, to much student and alumni outcry.

[21] Given the Green's role as "the physical and emotional center of campus life,"[3] it is often the setting for protests, rallies, and demonstrations.

Dartmo, an online directory of Dartmouth College's buildings, describes the Green as being "used any time when collective joy or frustration is to be expressed".

[2] At the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, the Green regularly saw antiwar demonstrations, some attracting up to a thousand protesters.

[22] A 1969 protest over the presence of the campus Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program culminated in the occupation of Parkhurst Hall, the College's administration building.

[23][24] In 1986, students constructed shanties on the Green to encourage the College to divest from South African companies supporting Apartheid; staffers of the conservative newspaper The Dartmouth Review took sledgehammers to the structures.

The Green was the site of student rallies in favor of various candidates,[28] and also saw the live broadcast of Hardball with Chris Matthews.