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Widener Library

February 05, 2023

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, housing some 3.5 million books in its "vast and cavernous" [2] stacks, is the center­piece of the Harvard College Libraries (the libraries of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences) and, more broadly, of the entire Harvard Library system.[3] It honors 1907 Harvard College graduate and book collector Harry Elkins Widener, and was built by his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener after his death in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912.

Harry Elkins Widener
Memorial Library
"You could destroy all the other Harvard buildings and, with Widener left standing, still have a university." — G. L. Kittredge[1]
CountryUnited States
TypeAcademic
Established1915
LocationCambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Coordinates42°22′24.4″N 71°06′59.4″W / 42.373444°N 71.116500°W / 42.373444; -71.116500Coordinates: 42°22′24.4″N 71°06′59.4″W / 42.373444°N 71.116500°W / 42.373444; -71.116500
Branch ofHarvard College Library
Collection
Items collectedPrimarily humanities and social sciences
Size
  • 3.5 million (onsite)
  • 3 million (offsite)
Access and use
Access requirementsHarvard faculty, students & staff
Circulation600,000 items/year
WebsiteWidener Library

The library's holdings, which include works in more than one hundred languages, comprise "one of the world's most comprehen­sive research collec­tions in the humanities and social sciences." [4] Its 57 miles (92 km) of shelves, along five miles (8 km) of aisles on ten levels, comprise a "labyrinth" which one student "could not enter without feeling that she ought to carry a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle." [5]

At the building's heart are the Widener Memorial Rooms, displaying papers and mementos recalling the life and death of Harry Widener, as well as the Harry Elkins Widener Collec­tion,[6] "the precious group of rare and wonder­fully interesting books brought together by Mr. Widener",[7] to which was later added one of the few perfect Gutenberg Bibles‍—‌the object of a 1969 burglary attempt conjectured by Harvard's police chief to have been inspired by the 1964 heist film Topkapi.

Campus legends holding that Harry Widener's fate led to the institu­tion of an undergrad­uate swimming-proficiency requirement, and that an additional donation from his mother subsidizes ice cream at Harvard meals, are without foundation.[8][9]

Tablets in vestibule and foyer. "This noble gift to learning comes to us with the shadow of a great sorrow resting upon it", said Henry Cabot Lodge at the dedica­tion. "But with the march of the years ... the shad­ow of grief will pass, while the great memo­rial will remain".[note 1]

Background, conception and gift

 
Widener Library's predecessor, Gore Hall
 
Harry Widener's will directed that his books go to Harvard when it was capable of caring for them properly.
 
Eleanor Widener, son George (left), and archi­tect Horace Trum­bauer in Harvard Yard, c. 1912

Predecessor

Main article: Gore Hall

By the opening of the twentieth century alarms had been issuing for many years about Harvard's "disgrace­fully inadequate" [12]: 276  library, Gore Hall, completed in 1841 (when Harvard owned some 44,000 books)[8]: 5  and declared full in 1863.[8]: 5  Harvard Librarian Justin Winsor concluded his 1892 Annual Report by pleading, "I have in earlier reports exhaust­ed the language of warning and anxiety, in rep­re­sent­ing the totally inad­e­quate accom­mo­da­tions for books and readers which Gore Hall affords. Each twelve months brings us nearer to a chaotic condition";[13]: 15  his successor Archibald Cary Coolidge asserted that the Boston Public Library was a better place to write an under­grad­u­ate thesis.[14]: 29  Despite substantial additions in 1876 and 1907,[15] in 1910 a committee of architects termed Gore

unsafe [and] unsuitable for its object ... No amount of tinkering can make it really good ... Hopelessly over­crowded ... leaks when there is a heavy rain ... intolerably hot in summer ... Books are put in double rows and are not infrequently left lying on top of one another, or actually on the floor ...[16]: 51–52 

With university librarian William Coolidge Lane reporting that the building's light switches were delivering electric shocks to his staff,[17] and dormitory basements pressed into service as overflow storage[18] for Harvard's 543,000 books,[19]: 50  the committee drew up a proposal for replacement of Gore in stages. Andrew Carnegie was approached for financing without success.[note 2]

Death of Harry Widener

Main article: Harry Elkins Widener
 
Two electric trucks removed Gore Hall's books for storage during Widener's construction.[22]

In 1912, Harry Elkins Widener‍—‌scion of two of the wealthiest families in America,[23] a 1907 graduate of Harvard College, and an accomplished bibliophile despite his youth[24]‍—‌died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic. His father George Dunton Widener also perished, but his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener survived.[23]

Harry Widener's will instructed that his mother, when "in her judgment Harvard University shall make arrange­ments for properly caring for my collec­tion of books ... shall give them to said University to be known as the Harry Elkins Widener Collection",[note 3] and he had told a friend, not long before he died, "I want to be remembered in connection with a great library, [but] I do not see how it is going to be brought about." [24]

To enable the fulfillment of her son's wishes Eleanor Widener briefly consid­ered funding an addition to Gore Hall, but soon determined to build instead a completely new and far larger library building‍—‌"a perpetual memorial" [20]: 90  to Harry Widener, housing not only his personal book collection but Harvard's general library as well,[28] with room for growth.[29] As Biel has written, "The [Harvard architects] committee's Beaux Arts design [for Gore Hall's projected replacement], with its massiveness and symmetry, offered monumen­tal­ity with nothing more particular to monumen­tal­ize than the aspira­tions of the modern university"‍—‌until the Titanic sank and "through delicate negotia­tion, [Harvard] convinced Eleanor Widener that the most eloquent tribute to Harry would be an entire library rather than a rare book wing." [20]: 88-89 

Terms and cost of gift

To her gift Eleanor Widener attached a number of stipulations,[B]: 43  including that the project's architects be the firm of Horace Trumbauer & Associates,[30] which had built several mansions for both the Elkins and the Widener families.[B]: 27  "Mrs. Widener does not give the University the money to build a new library, but has offered to build a library satisfactory in external appearance to herself," Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell wrote privately. "The exterior was her own choice, and she has decided architec­tur­al opinions." [31]: 167  Harvard historian William Bentinck-Smith has written that

 
Gore Hall was reduced to a "pile of stones and rubbish" to make way for Widener.[8]: 13 

To [Harvard officials] Mrs. Widener was a lovely and generous lady whose wealth, power, and remoteness made her a somewhat terrifying figure who must not be roused to annoyance or outrage. Once [construction] began, all financial transactions were the donor's private business, and no one at Harvard ever knew the exact cost. Mrs. Widener was counting on $2 million, [but] it is probable the cost exceeded $3.5 million [equivalent to $70 million in 2021].[note 4]

Though Harvard awarded Trumbauer an honorary degree on the day of the new library's dedication,[note 5] it was Trumbauer associate Julian F. Abele who had overall responsi­bility for the building's design,[30] which largely followed the 1910 architects' committee's outline (though with the committee's central circula­tion room shifted from the center to the northeast corner, yielding pride of place to the Memorial Rooms).[note 6]

After Gore Hall was demolished to make way, ground was broken on February 12, 1913, and the corner­stone laid June 16. By later that year some 50,000 bricks were being laid each day.[22]

Building

 
View from University Hall
 
Second floor plan (north at bottom)

At Harvard's "geographical and intellec­tual heart" [37] directly across Tercenten­ary Theatre from Memorial Church,[38] Widener Library is a hollow rectangle of "Harvard brick with Indiana limestone traceries",[39] 250 by 200 by 80 feet high (76 by 61 by 24 m)[31]: 167  and enclosing 320,000 square feet (30,000 m2)[37], "colon­naded on its front by immense pillars with elaborate [Corinthian capitals],[40]: 362  all of which stand at the head of a flight of stairs that would not disgrace the capitol in Washing­ton." [31] Sources describe the building's style as (variously) Beaux-Arts,[20]: 88 Georgian,[41]: 57 [42]: 457  Hellenistic,[43]: 281  or "the austere, formalistic Imperial [or 'Imperial and Classical'] style displayed in the Law School's Langdell Hall and the Medical School Quadrangle".[40]: 361 

The east, south, and west wings house the stacks, while the north contains administrative offices and various reading rooms, including the Main Reading Room (now the Loker Reading Room)‍—‌which, spanning the entire front of the building and some 42 feet (13 m) in both depth and height, was termed by architec­tur­al historian Bainbridge Bunting "the most ostenta­tious interior space at Harvard." [44]: 154  A topmost floor, supported by the stacks framework itself, contains thirty-two rooms for special collections, studies, offices, and seminars.[45]: 327-8 

The Memorial Rooms (see § Widener Memorial Rooms) are in the building's center, between what were originally two light courts (28 by 110 ft or 8.5 by 33 m)[46] now enclosed as additional reading rooms.[47]

Dedication

 
Gabriel Ferrier's por­trait of Harry Widener hangs in the Memorial Rooms.[48]

The building was dedicated immediately after Com­mence­ment Day exercises on June 24, 1915. Lowell and Coolidge mounted the steps to the main door, where Eleanor Widener presented them with the building's keys.[49] The first book formally brought into the new library was the 1634 edition of John Downame's The Christian Warfare Against the Devil, World, and Flesh,[8]: 18  believed (at the time) to be the only volume, of those bequeathed to the school by John Harvard in 1636, to have survived the 1764 burning of Harvard Hall.[50]

 
"President Lowell accepting the key from Mrs. Widener"
 
"Even from the very entrance one [can glimpse] the portrait of young Harry Widener" far inside.
 
Above the door, hallmarks of 15th-century printers: Caxton; Rembolt; Aldus; Fust and Schöffer.[51]
 
Flanking the Memorial Rooms' entrance, murals by John Singer Sargent honor World War I dead.
 
The Memorial Rooms "reflect an atmos­phere of realism", wrote a visitor, "[as if] Harry Widener still lived among his books." [20]: 91  The desk at left was Harry Widener's own.[note 7]

In the Memorial Rooms, after a benediction by Bishop William Lawrence,[11] a portrait of Harry Widener was unveiled, then remarks delivered by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (speaking on "The Meaning of a Great Library" [56] on behalf of Eleanor Widener) and Lowell ("For years we have longed for a library that would serve our purpose, but we never hoped to see such a library as this").[49] Afterward (said the Boston Evening Transcript ) "the doors were thrown open, and both graduates and under­graduates had an opportu­ni­ty to see the beauties and utilities of this important univer­sity acquisition." [11]

"I hope it will become the heart of the University," Eleanor Widener said, "a centre for all the interests that make Harvard a great university." [57]

Widener Memorial Rooms

The central Memorial Rooms‍—‌an outer rotunda[58] housing memorabilia of the life and death of Harry Widener,[59] and an inner library displaying the 3300 rare books collected by him‍—‌were described by the Boston Sunday Herald soon after the dedication:

The [rotunda] is of Alabama marble except the domed ceiling, with fluted columns and Ionic capitals [while the library] is finished in carved English oak, the carving having been done in England; the high bookcases are fitted with glass shelves and bronze sashes, the windows are hung with heavy curtains [and] upon the desks are vases filled with flowers.

The big marble fireplace and the portrait of Harry Widener occupy a large portion of the south wall. Standing front of the fireplace one may look through the vista made by the doorways, the staircases within and the stairs without and get a glimpse of the green campus.[note 8]

Conversely, "even from the very entrance [of the building] one will catch a glimpse in the distance of the portrait of young Harry Widener on the further wall [of the Memorial Rooms], if the intervening doors happen to be open." [45]: 325 

For many years Eleanor Widener hosted Commencement Day luncheons in the Memorial Rooms.[8]: 20  The family underwrites their upkeep,[61] including weekly renewal of the flowers[62]‍—‌originally roses but now carnations.[note 9]

Amenities and deficiencies

Touted as "the last word in library construction",[64] the new building's amenities included telephones, pneumatic tubes, book lifts and conveyors, elevators,[7] and a dining-room and kitchenette "for the ladies of the staff".[65]: 676  Advertisements for the manufacturer of the building's shelving highlighted its "dark brown enamel finish, harmonizing with oak trim",[66] and special interchangeable regular and oversize shelves meant that books on a given subject could be shelved together regardless of size.[note 10]

The Library Journal found "especially interesting not so much the spacious and lofty reading rooms" [36] as the innovation[69]: 255  of placing student carrels and private faculty studies directly in the stack, reflecting Lowell's desire to put "the massive resources of the stack close to the scholar's hand, reuniting books and readers in an intimacy that nineteenth-century ['closed-stack' library designs] had long precluded".[B]: 45–46  (Competition for the seventy[45]: 327  coveted faculty studies has been a longstanding administrative headache.)[note 11]

Nonetheless, certain deficien­cies were soon noted.[B]: 107  A primitive form of air conditioning was aban­doned within a few months.[69][70]: 97  "The need of better toilet facilities [in the stacks] has been pressed upon us during the past year by several rather distressing experiences," Widener Superintendent Frank Carney wrote discreetly in 1918.[note 12] And after a university-wide search for castoff furniture left many of the stacks' 300 carrels still unequipped,[71] Coolidge wrote to J. P. Morgan, Jr., "There is something rather humiliating in having to proclaim to the world that [Widener offers] unequalled opportunity to the scholar and investigator who wishes to come here, but that in order to use these opportu­ni­ties he must bring his own chair, table and electric lamp." (A week later Coolidge wrote again: "Your very generous gift [has helped] pull me out of a most desperate situation.")[note 13]

Later-built tunnels, from the stacks level furthest underground, connect to nearby Pusey Library, Lamont Library,[73] and Houghton Library.[74] An enclosed bridge connecting to Houghton's reading room via a Widener window‍—‌built after Eleanor Widener's heirs agreed to waive[70]: 75  her gift's proscription of exterior additions or alterations[16]: 79 ‍—‌was removed in 2004.[75] (Houghton and Lamont were built in the 1940s to relieve Widener,[76] which had become simultaneously too small‍—‌its shelves were full[77]‍—‌and too large‍—‌its immense size and complex catalog made books difficult to locate.[note 14] But with Harvard's collections doubling every 17 years, by 1965 Widener was again close to full,[78] prompting construction of Pusey,[79] and in the early 1980s library officials "pushed the panic button"[80] again, leading to the construction of the Harvard Depository.)[citation needed]

Collections and stacks

 
"The shelves are lost in the dark­ness above, and to either side they run off to in­fin­i­ty", wrote Thomas Wolfe.[81] Each of the ten lev­els has some 187 rows of shelving.​​[65]: 327 
 
The two lowest stack levels before instal­la­tion of inter­ven­ing floor panels

The ninety-unit Harvard Library system,[40]: 361  of which Widener is the anchor, is the only academic library among the world's five "megalibraries"‍—‌Widener, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, France's Bibliothèque Nationale, and the British Library[82]: 352 ‍—‌making it "unambigu­ously the greatest univer­sity library in the world," in the words of a Harvard official.[83]

According to the Harvard College Library's own description, Widener's humanities and social sciences collections include

holdings in the history, literature, public affairs, and cultures of five continents. Of particular note are the collec­tions of Africana, Americana, European local history, Judaica, Latin American studies, Middle Eastern studies, Slavic studies, and rich collec­tions of materials for the study of Asia, the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and Greek and Latin antiquity. These collec­tions include significant holdings in linguistics, ancient and modern languages, folklore, economics, history of science and technology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.[note 15]

The building's 3.5 million volumes[37] occupy 57 miles (92 km) of shelves[84]: 4  along five miles (8 km) of aisles[85] on ten levels divided into three wings each.[84]: 4 

Alone among the "megalibraries", only Harvard allows patrons the "long-treasured privilege" of entering the general-collections stacks to browse as they please, instead of requesting books through library staff.[note 16] Until a recent renovation the stacks had little signage‍—‌"There was the expecta­tion that if you were good enough to qualify to get into the stacks you certainly didn't need any help" (as one official put it)[47] so that "learning to [find books in] Widener was like a rite of passage, a test of manhood",[90] and a 1979 monograph on library design complained, "After one goes through the main doors of Harvard's Widener Library, the only visible sign says merely ENTER." [91] At times color-coded lines and shoeprints have been applied to the floors to help patrons keep their bearings.[92][93]

As of 2015 some 1700 persons enter the building each day, and about 2800 books are checked out.[94] Another 3 million Widener items reside offsite[95] (along with many millions of items from other Harvard libraries) at the Harvard Depository in Southbor­ough, Massachu­setts, from which they are retrieved overnight on request.[B]: 170-1  A project to insert barcodes into each book, begun in the late 1970s, had some 1 million volumes yet to reach as of 2006.[95]

Harry Elkins Widener Collection

The works displayed in the Memorial Rooms comprise Harry Widener's collec­tion at the time of his death, "major monuments of English letters, many remarkable for their bindings and illustrations or unusual provenance":[8]: 9  Shakespeare first folios;[40]: 362  a copy of Poems written by Wil. Shake-speare, gent. (1640) in its original sheepskin binding;[96] an inscribed copy of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson; Johnson's own Bible ("used so much by its owner that several pages were worn out and Johnson copied them over in his own writing");[61] and first editions, presenta­tion copies, and similarly valuable volumes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, Blake, George Cruikshank, Isaac Cruikshank, Robert Cruikshank[6] and Dickens‍—‌including the petty cash book kept by Dickens while a young law clerk.[97] Book collector George Sidney Hellman, writing soon after Harry Widener's death, observed that he was "not satisfied alone in having a rare book or a rare book inscribed by the author; it was with him a prerequisite that the volume should be in immaculate condition." [97]

Harry Widener "died suddenly, just as he was beginning to be one of the world's great collectors," [57] said the Collection's first curator.[55]: 6  "They formed a young man's library, and are to be preserved as he left it" [57]‍—‌except that the Widener family has the exclusive privilege of adding to it.[note 17] Harvard's "greatest typographical treasure" [98]: 17  is one of the only thirty-eight perfect copies extant[99] of the Gutenberg Bible,[100] purchased while Harry was abroad by his grandfather Peter A. B. Widener (who had intended to surprise Harry with it once the Titanic docked in New York)[61] and added to the Collection by the Widener family in 1944.[note 18]

Like all Harvard's valuable books, works in the Widener Collec­tion may be consulted by researchers demonstrating a genuine research need.[104]

Parallel classification systems and dual catalogs

 
The original catalog room, "though mag­nif­i­cent ar­chi­tec­tur­al­ly, looked [as though the catalog cases, with their 3796 drawers] had simply been dropped hap­haz­ard­ly into them." [69]: 225 [105]

Like many large libraries, Widener originally classified its holdings according to its own idiosyncratic system‍—‌the "Widener" (or "Harvard") system‍—‌which (writes Battles) follows "the division of knowledge in its [early twentieth-century] formulation. The Aus class contains books on the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the Ott class serves the purpose for the Ottoman Empire. Dante, Molière, and Montaigne each gets a class of his own." [84]: 15 

In the 1970s new arrivals began to be classified according to a modified version of the Library of Congress system.[106]: 256 [B]: 159  The two systems' differences reflect "competing theories of knowl­edge ... In a sense, the [old] Widener system was Aristotelian; its divi­sions were empirical, describing and reflecting the languages and cultural origins of books and highlighting their relations to one another in language, place, and time; [the Library of Congress system], by contrast, was Platonic, looking past the surface of language and nation to reflect the idealized, essential discipline in which each [item] might be said to belong." [B]: 158-9 

 
Catalog card. In the "Harvard system", C denotes Church History and Theology.

Because of the impracticality of reclassifying millions of books, those received before the changeover remain under their original "Widener" classifications. Thus among works on a given subject, older books will be found at one shelf location (under a "Widener" classification) and newer ones at another (under a related Library of Congress classification).[107][93]

In addition, an accident of the building's layout led to the development of two separate card catalogs‍—‌the "Union" catalog and the "Public" catalog‍—‌housed on different floors and having a complex interrelationship "which perplexed students and faculty alike." It was not until the 1990s that the electronic Harvard On-Line Library Information System was able to completely supplant both physical catalogs.[B]: 137,192 

Departmental and special libraries

The building also houses a number of special libraries in dedicated spaces outside the stacks, include­ing:

There are also special collections in the history of science, linguis­tics, Near Eastern languag­es and civiliza­tions, paleogra­phy, and Sanskrit.[108]

The contents of the Treasure Room, holding Harvard's most precious rare books and manuscripts (other than the Harry Elkins Widener Collection itself) were transferred to newly built Houghton Library in 1942.[98]: 15 

In literature and legend

Swim-requirement, ice-cream, and other legends

 
The stacks (seen here from the southeast while under con­struc­tion) double as struc­tur­al ele­ments,[66] mak­ing Wide­ner the last major self-support­ing mason­ry build­ing, with no outer steel frame, built in the US;[40]: 362  its exterior walls are three feet thick.[69]: 316  In the center-left distance are the twin towers of Weld Hall, and to their left is the belltower of Harvard Hall.

Legend holds that to spare future Harvard men her son's fate, Eleanor Widener insisted, as a condition of her gift, that learning to swim be made a requirement for graduation.[9][109] (This requirement, the Harvard Crimson once elaborated erroneously, was "dropped in the late 1970s because it was deemed discriminatory against physically disabled students".)[63] "Among the many myths relating to Harry Elkins Widener, this is the most prevalent", says Harvard's "Ask a Librarian" service. Though Harvard has had swimming requirements at various times (e.g. for rowers on the Charles River, or as a now-defunct test for entering freshmen)[110] Bentinck-Smith writes that "There is absolutely no evidence ... that [Eleanor Widener] was, as a result of the Titanic disaster, in any way responsi­ble for [any] compulsory swimming test." [note 19]

Another story, holding that Eleanor Widener donated a further sum to underwrite perpetual availability of ice cream (purportedly Harry Widener's favorite dessert) in Harvard dining halls, is also without foundation.[9] A Widener curator's compilation of "fanciful oral history" recited by student tour guides includes "Flowers mysteriously appear every morning outside the Widener Room" and "Harry used to have carnations dyed crimson to remind him of Harvard, and so his mother kept up the tradition" in the flowers displayed in the Memorial Rooms.[112]

Literary references

In H. P. Lovecraft's fictional universe Cthulhu Mythos, Widener is one of five libraries holding a 17th-century edition of the Necro­nom­i­con, hidden somewhere in the stacks.[113]

Thomas Wolfe, who earned a Harvard master's degree in 1922,[114] told Max Perkins that he spent most of his Harvard years in Widener's reading room.[31] He wrote of "[wandering] through the stacks of that great library like some damned soul, never at rest‍—‌ever leaping ahead from the pages I read to thoughts of those I want to read";[115] his alter ego Eugene Gant read with a watch in his hand, "laying waste of the shelves." [116]

Historian Barbara Tuchman considered "the single most formative experience" of her career the writing of her undergrad­uate thesis, for which she was "allowed to have as my own one of those little cubicles with a table under a window" in the Widener stacks, which were "my Archimedes' bathtub, my burning bush, my dish of mold where I found my personal penicillin." [5]

Burglary and other incidents

Over the years, Widener has been the scene of various criminal exploits "infamous for their fecklessness and ignominity." [B]: 59 

Joel C. Williams

 
Bookplate placed in 2504 books[117][118]

In 1931 former graduate student Joel C. Williams was arrested after attempting to sell two Harvard library books to a local book dealer. Charles Apted and other Harvard officials visited Williams' home[119] where (posing as "book buyers" to spare the feelings of Williams' family)[B]: 88  they found thousands[119] of books which Williams had stolen over the years,[87]: D  many badly damaged. The "absolutely crazy" Williams would "go to students studying in Widener and ask them what course they were taking. He would then borrow all the books for that course in the library. Then no one could get any to study", library official John E. Shea later recalled.[note 20]

Despite the misleading[121] implication of bookplates placed in the 2504[87]: D  recovered books, Harvard's charges against Williams were dropped after he was indicted on book-theft charges in another jurisdic­tion, which imposed a sentence of hard labor.[122] After the unrelated arrest of a book-theft ring operating at Harvard, there was a "noticeable increase in the number of missing books secretly returned to the library", the Transcript reported in 1932.[B]: 89 

Gutenberg Bible theft

 
"Now I will tell you a secret ... I wish it was for me but it is not." Harry Wide­ner's letter con­fid­ing his grand­father's pur­chase of the Gutenberg bible which the Widener family later gave to Harvard.

On the night of August 19, 1969 an attempt was made to steal the library's Gutenberg Bible, valued at $1 million[123] (equivalent to $6 million in 2021).[32] Equipped with a hammer, pry bar, and other burglarious implements, the 20-year-old would-be thief[123] hid in a lavatory until after closing, then made his way to the roof, from which he descended via a knotted rope to break through a Memorial Room window. But after smashing the bible's display case and placing its two volumes in a knapsack, he found the additional 70 pounds (32 kg) made it impossible for him to reclimb the rope.[87]: D 

Eventually he fell some 50 feet (15 m)[98]: 45  to the pavement of one of the light courts, where he lay semicon­scious[124] until his moans were heard by a janitor;[98]: 45  he was found about 1 a.m.[125] with injuries including a fractured skull.[124] "It looks like a profes­sion­al job all right, in the fact that he came down the rope," commented Harvard Police Chief Robert Tonis. "But it doesn't look very profes­sion­al that he fell off." [123] Tonis specu­lated that the attempt may have been modeled on a similar caper depicted in the 1964 film Topkapi,[125] though a retired Harvard librarian later commented that the thief (who was later judged insane)[126] "evidently knew nothing about books‍—‌or, at least, about selling them ... There was no explanation of what he expected to do with the Bible." [70]: 72 

Only the books' bindings (which were "not valuable [and] did just what a good binding is supposed to do: they protected the inside contents")[123] were damaged.[124] Since the incident only one or the other Bible volume is on display at any given time[87]: E  and a replica has been substituted at times of heightened security concern.[note 21]

"The Slasher"

Around 1990, empty bindings stripped of their pages began to appear in the Widener stacks. Eventually some 600 mutilated books were discovered, the vandal particularly targeting works on early Christianity in Greek, Latin, or unusual languages such as Icelandic.[86] Notes left at Widener, and later at Northeastern University, threatened graphically described mutilations of library workers, cyanide gas attacks,[128] and bombings of libraries and a local bank.[129] Other notes instructed that $500,000 be left in a Northeastern library, demanded that Northeastern "terminate all Jew personnel", and directed that $1 million be left in the Widener stacks: "pUt THe mONEy FucKer BEhiNd THE eLevATOR on D WEST in THE basemENT WhERE tHe 1,000,000.00 dollaRS IN rare GreEK bOOks wAS slASHEd ApARt MIGNE GREEK PATROLOGIA." These "ransom drops" were staked out by the FBI,[128] and surveillance cameras installed in ersatz books, without result.[130]

In 1994 police connected an incident at Northeastern, in which a library worker there (a former Widener employee) was caught stealing chemistry books, with the fact that chemistry texts had been among the works mutilated at Widener.[86] Officials found "a kind of renegade reference room" in the worker's basement,[131] include­ing library books, piles of ripped-out pages, a microfilm camera, and hundreds of unusable microfilms he had haphaz­ardly made of the books (worth $180,000) he had destroyed.[86] At trial "The Slasher" said he had acted in revenge for the eighteen months he had been detained in a state psychiatric hospital after expiration of a six-month jail term he had received for a minor offense.[128]

Artwork

 
One of the two pin­na­cles, sal­vaged from Gore Hall, which now flank Widener's rear entrance

Two of Gore Hall's granite pinnacles were preserved, and flank Widener's rear entrance.[31]: 151 

In the 1920s the university commissioned John Singer Sargent to paint, within the fourteen-foot-high arched panels flanking the entrance to the Memorial Rooms, two murals giving tribute to Harvard's World War I dead: Death and Victory and Entering the War.[note 22] The accompanying inscription, by Lowell, reads: "Happy those who with a glowing faith / In one embrace clasped Death and Victory".[133] With Memorial Church, which directly faces Widener, these constitute what the Boston Public Library calls "the most elaborate World War I memorial in the Boston area." [38]

Above the Memorial Rooms entrance is inscribed:

To the memory of Eleanor Elkins Rice  • whose noble and endearing spirit inspired the conception and completion of this Memorial Library  • 1938.[134]

(Eleanor Elkins Widener became Eleanor Elkins Rice when, in October 1915, she married Harvard professor[135] and surgeon[136]Alexander Hamilton Rice, Jr., a noted South American explorer whom she had met at the library's dedication four months earlier.[58] She died in 1937.)[23]

 
Large bronze plaque in memory of Gore Hall is im­me­di­ate­ly left of tree at lower right, in this 1920 photo; World War I ar­til­lery piece among parked vehicles was used by now-defunct De­part­ment of Military Science and Tactics.[137]

On the second floor is a bronze bust by Albin Polasek of sculptor and muralist Frank Millet, who had also died on the Titanic.[138] In the main reading room is a sculpture of George Washington; on the stairs to the third floor a sculpture of John Elbridge Hudson; and on the ground floor a sculpture of Henry Ware Wales,[139] as well as vaulted hallways‍—‌"just like the Oyster Bar at Grand Central ... astounding", according to historian Thomas Gick‍—‌by Rafael Guastavino, who (with his son) also designed and built domes and vaults in buildings such as Carnegie Hall, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the Boston Public Library.[112]

Three dioramas‍—‌depicting the grounds, buildings, and vicinity of Harvard Yard in 1667, 1775 and 1936‍—‌were installed behind the main stairs in 1947, but removed during renovations in 2004.[140] A six-foot-square bronze tablet, featuring a bas relief of Gore Hall, is at the exterior northwest corner. Its inscription reads in part:

On this spot stood Gore Hall  •  Architect Richard Bond, Supervisor  •  Daniel Treadwell  •  Built in the Year 1838  •  In honor of Christopher Gore Class of 1776.  •  Fellow of the College, Overseer, Benefactor  •  Governor of the Commonwealth.  •  Senator of the United States.  •  The first use of modern book-stacks was in this library. ... [141]

Restrictions on women

 
The main reading room in 1915. By World War II women were allowed enter "to use the en­cy­clo­pe­dias and things like that there, if we stood up, but we couldn't sit down." [142]: 56–57 

The building originally included a separate Radcliffe Reading Room behind the card catalogs‍—‌"barely large enough for a single table"‍—‌to which female students were restricted "for fear their presence would distract the studious Harvard men" in the main reading room. In 1923 a sequence of communications between Librarian William Coolidge Lane and another Harvard official dealt with "the incident of Miss Alexander's intrusion into the reading room",[B]: 37,86  and Keyes Metcalf, Director of University Libraries from 1937 to 1955, wrote that early in his tenure a Classics professor "rushed into my office, looking as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke, and gasped, 'I've just been in the reading room, and there is a Radcliffe girl in there!'" By then female graduate students were permitted to enter the stacks, but only until 5 p.m., "after which time it was thought they would not be safe there". [note 23]

"Even the ever-present problem of inadequate lavatories worked to deny functional access to women", wrote Battles. "Patrons requesting directions to a women's restroom were routinely misled, denied access, or simply told that such things did not exist at a college for men such as Harvard." [B]: 115 

By World War II (Elizabeth Colson recalled years later) "we could go into the [Main Reading Room] and use the encyclopedias and things like that there, if we stood up, but we couldn't sit down",[142]: 56–57  and only by special permission (which even female faculty members had to request in writing) could a woman work in the building in the evening.[B]: 112-4 

Renovation

 
View from southeast of Widener's rear (Massa­chu­setts Ave.) facade c. 1915, before construction of Wiggles­worth Hall to the south and Hough­ton Library to the east

A five-year, $97 million renovation completed in 2004[47] (the first since the building opened)[143] added fire suppression and environ­men­tal control systems, upgraded wiring and communica­tions, remodeled various public spaces, and enclosed the light courts to create additional reading rooms[47] (beneath which several levels of new offices and mechanical equipment were hidden).[144] "Claustro­pho­bia-inducing" elevators were replaced,[93] the bottom shelves on the lowest stacks level were removed in recognition of chronic seepage problems,[143] Widener's "olfactory nostal­gia ... actually the smell of decaying books" was addressed,[145] and unrestricted light and air‍—‌seen as desirable when Widener was built but now considered "public enemies one and two for the long-term safety of old books"‍—‌were brought under control.[note 24]

Some changes required that the Widener family grant relief[146] from the terms of Eleanor Widener's gift, which forbade that "structures of any kind [be] erected in the courts around which the [Library] is constructed, but that the same shall be kept open for light and air".[16]: 79 [B]: 42  The need to relocate each of the building's 3.5 million volumes twice‍—‌first to temporary locations, then to new permanent locations, as work proceeded aisle by aisle‍—‌was turned to advantage, so that by the end of the renova­tion related materials in the library's two classifica­tion systems (see § Parallel classifica­tion systems) were physically adjacent for the first time;[107][93] the chart showing the floor and wing location, within the stacks, of each subject classifica­tion was revised sixty-five times during construction.[47] The project received the 2005 Library Building Award from the American Library Associa­tion and the American Institute of Architects.[147]

Notes

  1. ^ [10][11] The quotation "He labored not for himself only ..." alludes to Ecclesi­as­ti­cus 33:17.
  2. ^ [20]: 88  "When I cease to be President of Harvard College," Lowell wrote around this time, "I shall join one of the mendicant orders, so as to have less begging to do ..." [B]: 23  In May 1911 the Boston American (published by disgraced Harvard dropout William Randolph Hearst) [21] carried a mock adver­tise­ment: "Wanted‍—‌a millionaire. Will some kind millionaire please give Harvard Univer­sity a library building? Tainted money not barred. Mr. Rockefeller, take notice. Mr. Carnegie, please write." [20]: 87 
  3. ^ [25] Stipulations on conditions of storage began to appear in bequests to Harvard's libraries during the nineteenth century.[26] For example, the 1883–84 annual report of Harvard Divinity School's dean noted that Ezra Abbot's widow, in donating four thousand volumes from his personal library, asked for assurance that a better and safer replacement for the existing Divinity School library building be constructed promptly; the dean also wrote that such a replacement would encourage future donors.[27]
  4. ^ [8]: 14 [32] Eleanor Widener expressed vexation at newspapers' misreporting of the circumstances of her gift, writing to Lowell, "I want emphasized ... that the library is a memorial to my dear son, to be known as the 'Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library,' given by me & not his [paternal grandfather P. A. B. Widener] as has been so often stated." [33] Years later her second husband A. H. Rice, Jr. insisted that Lowell do his best "to see that in all official reports, etc. the Library is referred to as the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library‍—‌Widener! Not one cent of Widener money, one second of Widener thought, nor one ounce of Widener energy were expended on either the conception or construction of the Library. [8]: 15 
  5. ^ [34]: 147  Eleanor Widener was not similarly honored, because women were ineligible for Harvard honorary degrees at the time.[19]: 72  The Harvard Graduates Magazine reassured its readers that the admission of ladies, for the first time, to certain Commencement proceedings "will not, however, create any precedent. It was due to the dedication of the Library, which demanded that once, at least, custom should be broken in favor of Mrs. Widener and her friends ..." [35]
  6. ^ [20]: 89 The Library Journal commented: "The building has administrative disadvantages necessitate by its character as a memorial, with a central fane housing the private library collected by young Widener ... This occupies what would otherwise be the central court and cuts off access from the stack except at the two ends, but is scarcely to be criticized in view of the splendor of the gift and the parental affection thus enshrined and perpetuated by Mrs. Widener." [36]
  7. ^ [52] The rug is a Heriz Persian;[53] on the desk is an unsigned Tiffany lamp.[54] In the library's early years, when the Memorial Rooms served as the office of the Widener Collec­tion's curator, fires were sometimes set in the fireplace.[55]
  8. ^ [60] Trumbauer "had no rivals when it came to tempting clients to spend immodest sums", wrote Wayne Andrews,[8]: 16  and Biel wrote that he had "made his name and fortune by knowing that 'only a magnifi­cent setting could hope to satisfy an American with a magnifi­cent income,' and he had already imparted such magnifi­cence to the Widener and Elkins mansions and an assortment of other palaces ... [He] knew who his client was, so he gave elaborate attention to memorial­izing Harry in style" in the Memorial Rooms.[20]: 89 
  9. ^ [63] From the start it was Eleanor Widener's particular instruction that there always be flowers in the Memorial Room,[60] and in March 1916 she reminded George Parker Winship, curator of the Widener Collection (who at the time used the Memorial Room as his office): "Will you please see that at all times fresh flowers are kept on your table by the photograph of my dear son Harry, the same to be paid out of funds set aside for the maintenance of the Memorial Room. This is the only request I make, and I beg of you to see that it is always carried out." [B]: 43 
  10. ^ [7] In the basement (later converted to additional shelving as stacks levels C and D after a further donation by Eleanor Widener in 1928) [67] were
    the dynamos which run the five elevators and two book-lifts, the compressed air machinery for the pneumatic tubes, the dynamo and fan for the vacuum-cleaning system, a pump connected with the steam-heating apparatus, enormous fans which pump warm air into the Reading-Room and the stack, a filter through which passes all water which enters the building, and the connec­tions for electric light and power. The building is to be heated by steam, conveyed through a tunnel from the plant of the Elevated Railroad Company, which also furnishes heat to the other buildings of the College Yard and to the freshman dormitories.[65]: 328 

    The marble floors were polished using a machine "so simple that any laborer of ordinary intelli­gence can operate it to advantage [yet it] can do the work of ten men rubbing by hand." [68]

  11. ^ "The [faculty studies] are not all fully used," Coolidge wrote in 1917, "but you will understand that I can not go to a professor and tell him that I think he is not making use of his space and had better give it up. I have tried in some cases hinting to people that if they did not need their quarters there were others who could make good use of them. These hints have usually met with conspicuously little success." [B]: 72-75 
  12. ^ "At present", Carney continued, "everyone using the stack is obliged to go to the basement to reach the public toilet. This in the case of a man using one of the top floors of the stack is a particularly long trip ... An emergency toilet ... would be a desirable thing." [B]: 59  By 1937 security changes had made the situation even worse, so that someone on the lowest stack level had to climb seven flights of stairs, exit the stack, then descend another set of stairs to reach the basement toilet. Eventually toilets were installed in the stack by Harvard Librarian Keyes Metcalf, who later wrote that "As far as graduate students are concerned, I will go down in history as the man who provided toilet facilities in the Widener stack." [70]: 139–40 
  13. ^ [16]: 102  Even during construction Harvard officials worried about financing the new library's furnishings and equipment, which Eleanor Widener did not undertake to supply except in the case of the building's "great public rooms [which she] handsomely furnished".[71] In early 1914, for example, a series of letters between Lane and Snead & Co. (the builders of the stacks) discussed the design of signs which would direct patrons to the various subject classifications; but in June, Lane apologized for being unable to finalize a planned order for these signs:
    Our situation in regard to this is an embarrassing one ... The College has no means in hand to cover this expense, and we do not see where we are going to get what is needed for this and other similar purposes. We do not feel ourselves in a position to ask Mrs. Widener or Mr. Trumbauer to provide these necessary fittings, indispensable as they are for the proper use of the shelves. The labels for the ends of the stack and the number plates we can of course do without by fastening up cardboard signs ...
    In another letter Lane proposed the economy measure of using bricks wrapped in paper as bookends.[72]
  14. ^ [70]: 27  On any given floor of the stack, it is 400 feet (120 m) from the entrance stairwell to the furthest shelves, and a patron "concerned with material in widely different fields may find that a tiresome amount of walking and stair climbing is involved." [69]: 91,74  English professor Howard Mumford Jones complained in 1950 that in preparing a lecture on Robert Frost, after a long hunt for a bibliography listing works he would need to consult, then locating those works in the complicated catalogs, he found that
    the American Scholar is shelved on Floor A; the New English Quarterly under New England; the Classical Journal is shelved on Floor 5; and College English is in Educ on Floor B. I shall not go into the matter of distribution [of these works among wings] East, South, and West ...[B]: 133–34 
  15. ^ [4] However, "Harvard does not collect all subjects and all types of material ... The holdings in subject areas not represented in the curriculum (such as agriculture) are understandably limited ..." [82]: 352 
  16. ^ [86][87]: E  It was not always so. Originally "school-boys" earning forty dollars per month (equivalent to $540 in 2021)[88] fetched books requested by patrons via slips. "Should a slip be received for a book in a part of the stack where a boy has just been sent‍—‌particularly in the West stack, which is the farthest away from the central station‍—‌the [request] is telephoned across on the internal telephone." [B]: 56  But by about 1930 Widener's stacks "were almost wide open to anyone who wanted to enter", so much so that in a single day a group of thieves was able to steal some one hundred valuable works on American history.[89]
  17. ^ [61] The December 31, 1912 agreement between Eleanor Widener and the President and Fellows of Harvard College provides that "this collection, together with such books as may be added to it by members of the family of the Donor, shall at all times be kept separate and apart from the general library of Harvard ... Harvard is not ... ever to add anything to the said Harry Elkins Widener collection ... [S]aid books shall not be taken or removed from the two rooms specially set apart ... excepting only when necessary for the repair or restoration of any volume ..." [16]: 78–79 
  18. ^ [101] Harry Widener knew his grandfather had bought the Gutenberg Bible, but not that it was intended for him. "I wish it was for me but it is not", he wrote to a friend.[102] After Harry's death, and (soon after) that of his grandfather, the Bible passed to Harry's uncle;[clarification needed] at the uncle's death Harry's brother and sister added the Bible to the Harry Elkins Widener Collec­tion because it "had been bought for Harry and should be among his books." Yale also has a Gutenberg, though not in "quite as fine condition" as Harvard's, according to Harvard officials.[103]
  19. ^ [8] As pointed out by snopes.com: "Harry Elkins Widener didn't die because he couldn't swim: he, like many other Titanic passengers who couldn't be accom­mo­dat­ed by one of the too-few lifeboats, died from immersion in freezing water. The ability to swim wouldn't have helped him, because there was nowhere for him to swim to." [111]
  20. ^ [120]John Shea was for forty years Widener's "guardian and familiar spirit". His mother had been a college "biddy" who (he said) "did professor C. T. Copeland's laundry for years",[120] and he began his own Harvard career in 1905 as a Gore Hall coatchecker. By his 1954 retirement as Widener's Stacks Superin­tendent, he was "perhaps the last of the legendary College characters",[40]: 58  renowned not only for leaving "no stone unthrown"‍—‌as he himself put it‍—‌in locating mis-shelved or otherwise errant books, but also for his "genius for such malaprop­isms [which] in fact, were generally the mot juste". These included references to "venereal blinds" and "osculating fans" in the Catalog Room, equipment that had "outlived its uselessness", a gift of a bottle of wine "as a momentum", and mention that Widener's head janitor "has a maniac for sweeping the basement." [2]
  21. ^ [127] Extensive news coverage of the attempt triggered a flurry of inquiries to Harvard about the potential value of family bibles and Gutenberg-related bric-a-brac.[B]: 146–7 
  22. ^ [132] Eleanor Widener "had originally stipulated that no further memorials would be permitted within her library, but the war had softened her feelings on the matter. Too many Harvard men died in the conflict to ignore their loss‍—‌and further, it seems, Eleanor came to connect Harry's death with their sacrifice." (Battles)[B]: 63 
  23. ^ After his retirement Metcalf wrote that when planning the later Lamont Library, "I was still old fashioned enough to believe that, if women [would be permitted to use it] we should probably not have the small, unsupervised reading rooms that we were planning." [70]: 87 
  24. ^ [47] "Before the renovation, the upper [stacks] floors smelled, in summer, of gently roasted books, while [the lowest floor] year-round offered the sporiferous scent usually associated with grottoes and Roman cellars." (Battles)[B]: 180 

    When Widener was built ventilation for books was emphasized, possibly to prevent mold; thus a slit ran along the base of every row of shelves, allowing air to flow from the floor below. Unfortunately books, papers and objects were prone to fall through these slits,[69]: 135  and "the whole installation might have been regarded as a large collection of chimneys that would help a fire to spread rapidly from floor to floor." The slits were later closed.[70]: 92–93 

Sources and further reading

Further reading

B.
Battles, Matthew (2004). Widener: Biography of a Library. Harvard College Library, 2004. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-674-01668-2.

Other sources cited

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  3. ^ Hanke, Timothy (June 4, 1998). . Harvard Univer­sity Gazette. The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Archived from the original on July 5, 2012.
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  7. ^ a b c Library planning, bookstacks and shelving, with contri­bu­tions from the archi­tects' and librarians' points of view. Snead & Company Iron Works. 1915. pp. 11, 68, 152–58.
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    • Ireland, Corydon (April 5, 2012). "The Widener Memorial Room". Harvard Gazette. The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Widener Library.
  • History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection – Houghton Library, Harvard University
  • Sprinkler Valve Through Door: A peek inside Harvard'd Widener Library – Librarians' blog highlighting Widener's collections, history and architecture
  • Virtual tour

February 05, 2023
widener, library, harry, elkins, widener, memorial, library, housing, some, million, books, vast, cavernous, stacks, center, piece, harvard, college, libraries, libraries, harvard, faculty, arts, sciences, more, broadly, entire, harvard, library, system, honor. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library housing some 3 5 million books in its vast and cavernous 2 stacks is the center piece of the Harvard College Libraries the libraries of Harvard s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and more broadly of the entire Harvard Library system 3 It honors 1907 Harvard College graduate and book collector Harry Elkins Widener and was built by his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener after his death in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 Harry Elkins WidenerMemorial Library You could destroy all the other Harvard buildings and with Widener left standing still have a university G L Kittredge 1 CountryUnited StatesTypeAcademicEstablished1915LocationCambridge Massachusetts U S Coordinates42 22 24 4 N 71 06 59 4 W 42 373444 N 71 116500 W 42 373444 71 116500 Coordinates 42 22 24 4 N 71 06 59 4 W 42 373444 N 71 116500 W 42 373444 71 116500Branch ofHarvard College LibraryCollectionItems collectedPrimarily humanities and social sciencesSize3 5 million onsite 3 million offsite Access and useAccess requirementsHarvard faculty students amp staffCirculation600 000 items yearWebsiteWidener LibraryThe library s holdings which include works in more than one hundred languages comprise one of the world s most comprehen sive research collec tions in the humanities and social sciences 4 Its 57 miles 92 km of shelves along five miles 8 km of aisles on ten levels comprise a labyrinth which one student could not enter without feeling that she ought to carry a compass a sandwich and a whistle 5 At the building s heart are the Widener Memorial Rooms displaying papers and mementos recalling the life and death of Harry Widener as well as the Harry Elkins Widener Collec tion 6 the precious group of rare and wonder fully interesting books brought together by Mr Widener 7 to which was later added one of the few perfect Gutenberg Bibles the object of a 1969 burglary attempt conjectured by Harvard s police chief to have been inspired by the 1964 heist film Topkapi Campus legends holding that Harry Widener s fate led to the institu tion of an undergrad uate swimming proficiency requirement and that an additional donation from his mother subsidizes ice cream at Harvard meals are without foundation 8 9 Tablets in vestibule and foyer This noble gift to learning comes to us with the shadow of a great sorrow resting upon it said Henry Cabot Lodge at the dedica tion But with the march of the years the shad ow of grief will pass while the great memo rial will remain note 1 Contents 1 Background conception and gift 1 1 Predecessor 1 2 Death of Harry Widener 1 3 Terms and cost of gift 2 Building 2 1 Dedication 2 2 Widener Memorial Rooms 2 3 Amenities and deficiencies 3 Collections and stacks 3 1 Harry Elkins Widener Collection 3 2 Parallel classification systems and dual catalogs 3 3 Departmental and special libraries 4 In literature and legend 4 1 Swim requirement ice cream and other legends 4 2 Literary references 5 Burglary and other incidents 5 1 Joel C Williams 5 2 Gutenberg Bible theft 5 3 The Slasher 6 Artwork 7 Restrictions on women 8 Renovation 9 Notes 10 Sources and further reading 11 External linksBackground conception and gift Edit Widener Library s predecessor Gore Hall Harry Widener s will directed that his books go to Harvard when it was capable of caring for them properly Eleanor Widener son George left and archi tect Horace Trum bauer in Harvard Yard c 1912 Predecessor Edit Main article Gore Hall By the opening of the twentieth century alarms had been issuing for many years about Harvard s disgrace fully inadequate 12 276 library Gore Hall completed in 1841 when Harvard owned some 44 000 books 8 5 and declared full in 1863 8 5 Harvard Librarian Justin Winsor concluded his 1892 Annual Report by pleading I have in earlier reports exhaust ed the language of warning and anxiety in rep re sent ing the totally inad e quate accom mo da tions for books and readers which Gore Hall affords Each twelve months brings us nearer to a chaotic condition 13 15 his successor Archibald Cary Coolidge asserted that the Boston Public Library was a better place to write an under grad u ate thesis 14 29 Despite substantial additions in 1876 and 1907 15 in 1910 a committee of architects termed Gore unsafe and unsuitable for its object No amount of tinkering can make it really good Hopelessly over crowded leaks when there is a heavy rain intolerably hot in summer Books are put in double rows and are not infrequently left lying on top of one another or actually on the floor 16 51 52 With university librarian William Coolidge Lane reporting that the building s light switches were delivering electric shocks to his staff 17 and dormitory basements pressed into service as overflow storage 18 for Harvard s 543 000 books 19 50 the committee drew up a proposal for replacement of Gore in stages Andrew Carnegie was approached for financing without success note 2 Death of Harry Widener Edit Main article Harry Elkins Widener Harry Elkins Widener Two electric trucks removed Gore Hall s books for storage during Widener s construction 22 In 1912 Harry Elkins Widener scion of two of the wealthiest families in America 23 a 1907 graduate of Harvard College and an accomplished bibliophile despite his youth 24 died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic His father George Dunton Widener also perished but his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener survived 23 Harry Widener s will instructed that his mother when in her judgment Harvard University shall make arrange ments for properly caring for my collec tion of books shall give them to said University to be known as the Harry Elkins Widener Collection note 3 and he had told a friend not long before he died I want to be remembered in connection with a great library but I do not see how it is going to be brought about 24 To enable the fulfillment of her son s wishes Eleanor Widener briefly consid ered funding an addition to Gore Hall but soon determined to build instead a completely new and far larger library building a perpetual memorial 20 90 to Harry Widener housing not only his personal book collection but Harvard s general library as well 28 with room for growth 29 As Biel has written The Harvard architects committee s Beaux Arts design for Gore Hall s projected replacement with its massiveness and symmetry offered monumen tal ity with nothing more particular to monumen tal ize than the aspira tions of the modern university until the Titanic sank and through delicate negotia tion Harvard convinced Eleanor Widener that the most eloquent tribute to Harry would be an entire library rather than a rare book wing 20 88 89 Terms and cost of gift Edit To her gift Eleanor Widener attached a number of stipulations B 43 including that the project s architects be the firm of Horace Trumbauer amp Associates 30 which had built several mansions for both the Elkins and the Widener families B 27 Mrs Widener does not give the University the money to build a new library but has offered to build a library satisfactory in external appearance to herself Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell wrote privately The exterior was her own choice and she has decided architec tur al opinions 31 167 Harvard historian William Bentinck Smith has written that Gore Hall was reduced to a pile of stones and rubbish to make way for Widener 8 13 To Harvard officials Mrs Widener was a lovely and generous lady whose wealth power and remoteness made her a somewhat terrifying figure who must not be roused to annoyance or outrage Once construction began all financial transactions were the donor s private business and no one at Harvard ever knew the exact cost Mrs Widener was counting on 2 million but it is probable the cost exceeded 3 5 million equivalent to 70 million in 2021 note 4 Though Harvard awarded Trumbauer an honorary degree on the day of the new library s dedication note 5 it was Trumbauer associate Julian F Abele who had overall responsi bility for the building s design 30 which largely followed the 1910 architects committee s outline though with the committee s central circula tion room shifted from the center to the northeast corner yielding pride of place to the Memorial Rooms note 6 After Gore Hall was demolished to make way ground was broken on February 12 1913 and the corner stone laid June 16 By later that year some 50 000 bricks were being laid each day 22 Building Edit View from University Hall Second floor plan north at bottom At Harvard s geographical and intellec tual heart 37 directly across Tercenten ary Theatre from Memorial Church 38 Widener Library is a hollow rectangle of Harvard brick with Indiana limestone traceries 39 250 by 200 by 80 feet high 76 by 61 by 24 m 31 167 and enclosing 320 000 square feet 30 000 m2 37 colon naded on its front by immense pillars with elaborate Corinthian capitals 40 362 all of which stand at the head of a flight of stairs that would not disgrace the capitol in Washing ton 31 Sources describe the building s style as variously Beaux Arts 20 88 Georgian 41 57 42 457 Hellenistic 43 281 or the austere formalistic Imperial or Imperial and Classical style displayed in the Law School s Langdell Hall and the Medical School Quadrangle 40 361 The east south and west wings house the stacks while the north contains administrative offices and various reading rooms including the Main Reading Room now the Loker Reading Room which spanning the entire front of the building and some 42 feet 13 m in both depth and height was termed by architec tur al historian Bainbridge Bunting the most ostenta tious interior space at Harvard 44 154 A topmost floor supported by the stacks framework itself contains thirty two rooms for special collections studies offices and seminars 45 327 8 The Memorial Rooms see Widener Memorial Rooms are in the building s center between what were originally two light courts 28 by 110 ft or 8 5 by 33 m 46 now enclosed as additional reading rooms 47 Dedication Edit Gabriel Ferrier s por trait of Harry Widener hangs in the Memorial Rooms 48 The building was dedicated immediately after Com mence ment Day exercises on June 24 1915 Lowell and Coolidge mounted the steps to the main door where Eleanor Widener presented them with the building s keys 49 The first book formally brought into the new library was the 1634 edition of John Downame s The Christian Warfare Against the Devil World and Flesh 8 18 believed at the time to be the only volume of those bequeathed to the school by John Harvard in 1636 to have survived the 1764 burning of Harvard Hall 50 President Lowell accepting the key from Mrs Widener Even from the very entrance one can glimpse the portrait of young Harry Widener far inside Above the door hallmarks of 15th century printers Caxton Rembolt Aldus Fust and Schoffer 51 Flanking the Memorial Rooms entrance murals by John Singer Sargent honor World War I dead The Memorial Rooms reflect an atmos phere of realism wrote a visitor as if Harry Widener still lived among his books 20 91 The desk at left was Harry Widener s own note 7 In the Memorial Rooms after a benediction by Bishop William Lawrence 11 a portrait of Harry Widener was unveiled then remarks delivered by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge speaking on The Meaning of a Great Library 56 on behalf of Eleanor Widener and Lowell For years we have longed for a library that would serve our purpose but we never hoped to see such a library as this 49 Afterward said the Boston Evening Transcript the doors were thrown open and both graduates and under graduates had an opportu ni ty to see the beauties and utilities of this important univer sity acquisition 11 I hope it will become the heart of the University Eleanor Widener said a centre for all the interests that make Harvard a great university 57 Widener Memorial Rooms Edit The central Memorial Rooms an outer rotunda 58 housing memorabilia of the life and death of Harry Widener 59 and an inner library displaying the 3300 rare books collected by him were described by the Boston Sunday Herald soon after the dedication The rotunda is of Alabama marble except the domed ceiling with fluted columns and Ionic capitals while the library is finished in carved English oak the carving having been done in England the high bookcases are fitted with glass shelves and bronze sashes the windows are hung with heavy curtains and upon the desks are vases filled with flowers The big marble fireplace and the portrait of Harry Widener occupy a large portion of the south wall Standing front of the fireplace one may look through the vista made by the doorways the staircases within and the stairs without and get a glimpse of the green campus note 8 Conversely even from the very entrance of the building one will catch a glimpse in the distance of the portrait of young Harry Widener on the further wall of the Memorial Rooms if the intervening doors happen to be open 45 325 For many years Eleanor Widener hosted Commencement Day luncheons in the Memorial Rooms 8 20 The family underwrites their upkeep 61 including weekly renewal of the flowers 62 originally roses but now carnations note 9 Amenities and deficiencies Edit Touted as the last word in library construction 64 the new building s amenities included telephones pneumatic tubes book lifts and conveyors elevators 7 and a dining room and kitchenette for the ladies of the staff 65 676 Advertisements for the manufacturer of the building s shelving highlighted its dark brown enamel finish harmonizing with oak trim 66 and special interchangeable regular and oversize shelves meant that books on a given subject could be shelved together regardless of size note 10 The Library Journal found especially interesting not so much the spacious and lofty reading rooms 36 as the innovation 69 255 of placing student carrels and private faculty studies directly in the stack reflecting Lowell s desire to put the massive resources of the stack close to the scholar s hand reuniting books and readers in an intimacy that nineteenth century closed stack library designs had long precluded B 45 46 Competition for the seventy 45 327 coveted faculty studies has been a longstanding administrative headache note 11 Nonetheless certain deficien cies were soon noted B 107 A primitive form of air conditioning was aban doned within a few months 69 70 97 The need of better toilet facilities in the stacks has been pressed upon us during the past year by several rather distressing experiences Widener Superintendent Frank Carney wrote discreetly in 1918 note 12 And after a university wide search for castoff furniture left many of the stacks 300 carrels still unequipped 71 Coolidge wrote to J P Morgan Jr There is something rather humiliating in having to proclaim to the world that Widener offers unequalled opportunity to the scholar and investigator who wishes to come here but that in order to use these opportu ni ties he must bring his own chair table and electric lamp A week later Coolidge wrote again Your very generous gift has helped pull me out of a most desperate situation note 13 Later built tunnels from the stacks level furthest underground connect to nearby Pusey Library Lamont Library 73 and Houghton Library 74 An enclosed bridge connecting to Houghton s reading room via a Widener window built after Eleanor Widener s heirs agreed to waive 70 75 her gift s proscription of exterior additions or alterations 16 79 was removed in 2004 75 Houghton and Lamont were built in the 1940s to relieve Widener 76 which had become simultaneously too small its shelves were full 77 and too large its immense size and complex catalog made books difficult to locate note 14 But with Harvard s collections doubling every 17 years by 1965 Widener was again close to full 78 prompting construction of Pusey 79 and in the early 1980s library officials pushed the panic button 80 again leading to the construction of the Harvard Depository citation needed Collections and stacks Edit The shelves are lost in the dark ness above and to either side they run off to in fin i ty wrote Thomas Wolfe 81 Each of the ten lev els has some 187 rows of shelving wbr 65 327 The two lowest stack levels before instal la tion of inter ven ing floor panels The ninety unit Harvard Library system 40 361 of which Widener is the anchor is the only academic library among the world s five megalibraries Widener the New York Public Library the Library of Congress France s Bibliotheque Nationale and the British Library 82 352 making it unambigu ously the greatest univer sity library in the world in the words of a Harvard official 83 According to the Harvard College Library s own description Widener s humanities and social sciences collections include holdings in the history literature public affairs and cultures of five continents Of particular note are the collec tions of Africana Americana European local history Judaica Latin American studies Middle Eastern studies Slavic studies and rich collec tions of materials for the study of Asia the United Kingdom and Commonwealth France Germany Italy Scandinavia and Greek and Latin antiquity These collec tions include significant holdings in linguistics ancient and modern languages folklore economics history of science and technology philosophy psychology and sociology note 15 The building s 3 5 million volumes 37 occupy 57 miles 92 km of shelves 84 4 along five miles 8 km of aisles 85 on ten levels divided into three wings each 84 4 Alone among the megalibraries only Harvard allows patrons the long treasured privilege of entering the general collections stacks to browse as they please instead of requesting books through library staff note 16 Until a recent renovation the stacks had little signage There was the expecta tion that if you were good enough to qualify to get into the stacks you certainly didn t need any help as one official put it 47 so that learning to find books in Widener was like a rite of passage a test of manhood 90 and a 1979 monograph on library design complained After one goes through the main doors of Harvard s Widener Library the only visible sign says merely ENTER 91 At times color coded lines and shoeprints have been applied to the floors to help patrons keep their bearings 92 93 As of 2015 some 1700 persons enter the building each day and about 2800 books are checked out 94 Another 3 million Widener items reside offsite 95 along with many millions of items from other Harvard libraries at the Harvard Depository in Southbor ough Massachu setts from which they are retrieved overnight on request B 170 1 A project to insert barcodes into each book begun in the late 1970s had some 1 million volumes yet to reach as of 2006 95 Harry Elkins Widener Collection Edit The works displayed in the Memorial Rooms comprise Harry Widener s collec tion at the time of his death major monuments of English letters many remarkable for their bindings and illustrations or unusual provenance 8 9 Shakespeare first folios 40 362 a copy of Poems written by Wil Shake speare gent 1640 in its original sheepskin binding 96 an inscribed copy of Boswell s Life of Samuel Johnson Johnson s own Bible used so much by its owner that several pages were worn out and Johnson copied them over in his own writing 61 and first editions presenta tion copies and similarly valuable volumes of Robert Louis Stevenson Thackeray Charlotte Bronte Blake George Cruikshank Isaac Cruikshank Robert Cruikshank 6 and Dickens including the petty cash book kept by Dickens while a young law clerk 97 Book collector George Sidney Hellman writing soon after Harry Widener s death observed that he was not satisfied alone in having a rare book or a rare book inscribed by the author it was with him a prerequisite that the volume should be in immaculate condition 97 Harry Widener died suddenly just as he was beginning to be one of the world s great collectors 57 said the Collection s first curator 55 6 They formed a young man s library and are to be preserved as he left it 57 except that the Widener family has the exclusive privilege of adding to it note 17 Harvard s greatest typographical treasure 98 17 is one of the only thirty eight perfect copies extant 99 of the Gutenberg Bible 100 purchased while Harry was abroad by his grandfather Peter A B Widener who had intended to surprise Harry with it once the Titanic docked in New York 61 and added to the Collection by the Widener family in 1944 note 18 Like all Harvard s valuable books works in the Widener Collec tion may be consulted by researchers demonstrating a genuine research need 104 Parallel classification systems and dual catalogs Edit The original catalog room though mag nif i cent ar chi tec tur al ly looked as though the catalog cases with their 3796 drawers had simply been dropped hap haz ard ly into them 69 225 105 Like many large libraries Widener originally classified its holdings according to its own idiosyncratic system the Widener or Harvard system which writes Battles follows the division of knowledge in its early twentieth century formulation The Aus class contains books on the Austro Hungarian Empire the Ott class serves the purpose for the Ottoman Empire Dante Moliere and Montaigne each gets a class of his own 84 15 In the 1970s new arrivals began to be classified according to a modified version of the Library of Congress system 106 256 B 159 The two systems differences reflect competing theories of knowl edge In a sense the old Widener system was Aristotelian its divi sions were empirical describing and reflecting the languages and cultural origins of books and highlighting their relations to one another in language place and time the Library of Congress system by contrast was Platonic looking past the surface of language and nation to reflect the idealized essential discipline in which each item might be said to belong B 158 9 Catalog card In the Harvard system C denotes Church History and Theology Because of the impracticality of reclassifying millions of books those received before the changeover remain under their original Widener classifications Thus among works on a given subject older books will be found at one shelf location under a Widener classification and newer ones at another under a related Library of Congress classification 107 93 In addition an accident of the building s layout led to the development of two separate card catalogs the Union catalog and the Public catalog housed on different floors and having a complex interrelationship which perplexed students and faculty alike It was not until the 1990s that the electronic Harvard On Line Library Information System was able to completely supplant both physical catalogs B 137 192 Departmental and special libraries Edit The building also houses a number of special libraries in dedicated spaces outside the stacks include ing The Fred N Robinson Celtic Seminar Library The Hamilton A R Gibb Islamic Seminar Library The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature The Herbert Weir Smyth Classical Library The Francis James Child Memorial Library English Department The James A Notopoulos Collection of Modern Greek Ballads and Songs There are also special collections in the history of science linguis tics Near Eastern languag es and civiliza tions paleogra phy and Sanskrit 108 The contents of the Treasure Room holding Harvard s most precious rare books and manuscripts other than the Harry Elkins Widener Collection itself were transferred to newly built Houghton Library in 1942 98 15 In literature and legend EditSwim requirement ice cream and other legends Edit The stacks seen here from the southeast while under con struc tion double as struc tur al ele ments 66 mak ing Wide ner the last major self support ing mason ry build ing with no outer steel frame built in the US 40 362 its exterior walls are three feet thick 69 316 In the center left distance are the twin towers of Weld Hall and to their left is the belltower of Harvard Hall Legend holds that to spare future Harvard men her son s fate Eleanor Widener insisted as a condition of her gift that learning to swim be made a requirement for graduation 9 109 This requirement the Harvard Crimson once elaborated erroneously was dropped in the late 1970s because it was deemed discriminatory against physically disabled students 63 Among the many myths relating to Harry Elkins Widener this is the most prevalent says Harvard s Ask a Librarian service Though Harvard has had swimming requirements at various times e g for rowers on the Charles River or as a now defunct test for entering freshmen 110 Bentinck Smith writes that There is absolutely no evidence that Eleanor Widener was as a result of the Titanic disaster in any way responsi ble for any compulsory swimming test note 19 Another story holding that Eleanor Widener donated a further sum to underwrite perpetual availability of ice cream purportedly Harry Widener s favorite dessert in Harvard dining halls is also without foundation 9 A Widener curator s compilation of fanciful oral history recited by student tour guides includes Flowers mysteriously appear every morning outside the Widener Room and Harry used to have carnations dyed crimson to remind him of Harvard and so his mother kept up the tradition in the flowers displayed in the Memorial Rooms 112 Literary references Edit In H P Lovecraft s fictional universe Cthulhu Mythos Widener is one of five libraries holding a 17th century edition of the Necro nom i con hidden somewhere in the stacks 113 Thomas Wolfe who earned a Harvard master s degree in 1922 114 told Max Perkins that he spent most of his Harvard years in Widener s reading room 31 He wrote of wandering through the stacks of that great library like some damned soul never at rest ever leaping ahead from the pages I read to thoughts of those I want to read 115 his alter ego Eugene Gant read with a watch in his hand laying waste of the shelves 116 Historian Barbara Tuchman considered the single most formative experience of her career the writing of her undergrad uate thesis for which she was allowed to have as my own one of those little cubicles with a table under a window in the Widener stacks which were my Archimedes bathtub my burning bush my dish of mold where I found my personal penicillin 5 Burglary and other incidents EditOver the years Widener has been the scene of various criminal exploits infamous for their fecklessness and ignominity B 59 Joel C Williams Edit Bookplate placed in 2504 books 117 118 In 1931 former graduate student Joel C Williams was arrested after attempting to sell two Harvard library books to a local book dealer Charles Apted and other Harvard officials visited Williams home 119 where posing as book buyers to spare the feelings of Williams family B 88 they found thousands 119 of books which Williams had stolen over the years 87 D many badly damaged The absolutely crazy Williams would go to students studying in Widener and ask them what course they were taking He would then borrow all the books for that course in the library Then no one could get any to study library official John E Shea later recalled note 20 Despite the misleading 121 implication of bookplates placed in the 2504 87 D recovered books Harvard s charges against Williams were dropped after he was indicted on book theft charges in another jurisdic tion which imposed a sentence of hard labor 122 After the unrelated arrest of a book theft ring operating at Harvard there was a noticeable increase in the number of missing books secretly returned to the library the Transcript reported in 1932 B 89 Gutenberg Bible theft Edit Now I will tell you a secret I wish it was for me but it is not Harry Wide ner s letter con fid ing his grand father s pur chase of the Gutenberg bible which the Widener family later gave to Harvard On the night of August 19 1969 an attempt was made to steal the library s Gutenberg Bible valued at 1 million 123 equivalent to 6 million in 2021 32 Equipped with a hammer pry bar and other burglarious implements the 20 year old would be thief 123 hid in a lavatory until after closing then made his way to the roof from which he descended via a knotted rope to break through a Memorial Room window But after smashing the bible s display case and placing its two volumes in a knapsack he found the additional 70 pounds 32 kg made it impossible for him to reclimb the rope 87 D Eventually he fell some 50 feet 15 m 98 45 to the pavement of one of the light courts where he lay semicon scious 124 until his moans were heard by a janitor 98 45 he was found about 1 a m 125 with injuries including a fractured skull 124 It looks like a profes sion al job all right in the fact that he came down the rope commented Harvard Police Chief Robert Tonis But it doesn t look very profes sion al that he fell off 123 Tonis specu lated that the attempt may have been modeled on a similar caper depicted in the 1964 film Topkapi 125 though a retired Harvard librarian later commented that the thief who was later judged insane 126 evidently knew nothing about books or at least about selling them There was no explanation of what he expected to do with the Bible 70 72 Only the books bindings which were not valuable and did just what a good binding is supposed to do they protected the inside contents 123 were damaged 124 Since the incident only one or the other Bible volume is on display at any given time 87 E and a replica has been substituted at times of heightened security concern note 21 The Slasher Edit Around 1990 empty bindings stripped of their pages began to appear in the Widener stacks Eventually some 600 mutilated books were discovered the vandal particularly targeting works on early Christianity in Greek Latin or unusual languages such as Icelandic 86 Notes left at Widener and later at Northeastern University threatened graphically described mutilations of library workers cyanide gas attacks 128 and bombings of libraries and a local bank 129 Other notes instructed that 500 000 be left in a Northeastern library demanded that Northeastern terminate all Jew personnel and directed that 1 million be left in the Widener stacks pUt THe mONEy FucKer BEhiNd THE eLevATOR on D WEST in THE basemENT WhERE tHe 1 000 000 00 dollaRS IN rare GreEK bOOks wAS slASHEd ApARt MIGNE GREEK PATROLOGIA These ransom drops were staked out by the FBI 128 and surveillance cameras installed in ersatz books without result 130 In 1994 police connected an incident at Northeastern in which a library worker there a former Widener employee was caught stealing chemistry books with the fact that chemistry texts had been among the works mutilated at Widener 86 Officials found a kind of renegade reference room in the worker s basement 131 include ing library books piles of ripped out pages a microfilm camera and hundreds of unusable microfilms he had haphaz ardly made of the books worth 180 000 he had destroyed 86 At trial The Slasher said he had acted in revenge for the eighteen months he had been detained in a state psychiatric hospital after expiration of a six month jail term he had received for a minor offense 128 Artwork Edit One of the two pin na cles sal vaged from Gore Hall which now flank Widener s rear entrance Two of Gore Hall s granite pinnacles were preserved and flank Widener s rear entrance 31 151 In the 1920s the university commissioned John Singer Sargent to paint within the fourteen foot high arched panels flanking the entrance to the Memorial Rooms two murals giving tribute to Harvard s World War I dead Death and Victory and Entering the War note 22 The accompanying inscription by Lowell reads Happy those who with a glowing faith In one embrace clasped Death and Victory 133 With Memorial Church which directly faces Widener these constitute what the Boston Public Library calls the most elaborate World War I memorial in the Boston area 38 Above the Memorial Rooms entrance is inscribed To the memory of Eleanor Elkins Rice whose noble and endearing spirit inspired the conception and completion of this Memorial Library 1938 134 Eleanor Elkins Widener became Eleanor Elkins Rice when in October 1915 she married Harvard professor 135 and surgeon 136 Alexander Hamilton Rice Jr a noted South American explorer whom she had met at the library s dedication four months earlier 58 She died in 1937 23 Large bronze plaque in memory of Gore Hall is im me di ate ly left of tree at lower right in this 1920 photo World War I ar til lery piece among parked vehicles was used by now defunct De part ment of Military Science and Tactics 137 On the second floor is a bronze bust by Albin Polasek of sculptor and muralist Frank Millet who had also died on the Titanic 138 In the main reading room is a sculpture of George Washington on the stairs to the third floor a sculpture of John Elbridge Hudson and on the ground floor a sculpture of Henry Ware Wales 139 as well as vaulted hallways just like the Oyster Bar at Grand Central astounding according to historian Thomas Gick by Rafael Guastavino who with his son also designed and built domes and vaults in buildings such as Carnegie Hall the Cathedral of St John the Divine and the Boston Public Library 112 Three dioramas depicting the grounds buildings and vicinity of Harvard Yard in 1667 1775 and 1936 were installed behind the main stairs in 1947 but removed during renovations in 2004 140 A six foot square bronze tablet featuring a bas relief of Gore Hall is at the exterior northwest corner Its inscription reads in part On this spot stood Gore Hall Architect Richard Bond Supervisor Daniel Treadwell Built in the Year 1838 In honor of Christopher Gore Class of 1776 Fellow of the College Overseer Benefactor Governor of the Commonwealth Senator of the United States The first use of modern book stacks was in this library 141 Restrictions on women Edit The main reading room in 1915 By World War II women were allowed enter to use the en cy clo pe dias and things like that there if we stood up but we couldn t sit down 142 56 57 The building originally included a separate Radcliffe Reading Room behind the card catalogs barely large enough for a single table to which female students were restricted for fear their presence would distract the studious Harvard men in the main reading room In 1923 a sequence of communications between Librarian William Coolidge Lane and another Harvard official dealt with the incident of Miss Alexander s intrusion into the reading room B 37 86 and Keyes Metcalf Director of University Libraries from 1937 to 1955 wrote that early in his tenure a Classics professor rushed into my office looking as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke and gasped I ve just been in the reading room and there is a Radcliffe girl in there By then female graduate students were permitted to enter the stacks but only until 5 p m after which time it was thought they would not be safe there note 23 Even the ever present problem of inadequate lavatories worked to deny functional access to women wrote Battles Patrons requesting directions to a women s restroom were routinely misled denied access or simply told that such things did not exist at a college for men such as Harvard B 115 By World War II Elizabeth Colson recalled years later we could go into the Main Reading Room and use the encyclopedias and things like that there if we stood up but we couldn t sit down 142 56 57 and only by special permission which even female faculty members had to request in writing could a woman work in the building in the evening B 112 4 Renovation Edit View from southeast of Widener s rear Massa chu setts Ave facade c 1915 before construction of Wiggles worth Hall to the south and Hough ton Library to the east A five year 97 million renovation completed in 2004 47 the first since the building opened 143 added fire suppression and environ men tal control systems upgraded wiring and communica tions remodeled various public spaces and enclosed the light courts to create additional reading rooms 47 beneath which several levels of new offices and mechanical equipment were hidden 144 Claustro pho bia inducing elevators were replaced 93 the bottom shelves on the lowest stacks level were removed in recognition of chronic seepage problems 143 Widener s olfactory nostal gia actually the smell of decaying books was addressed 145 and unrestricted light and air seen as desirable when Widener was built but now considered public enemies one and two for the long term safety of old books were brought under control note 24 Some changes required that the Widener family grant relief 146 from the terms of Eleanor Widener s gift which forbade that structures of any kind be erected in the courts around which the Library is constructed but that the same shall be kept open for light and air 16 79 B 42 The need to relocate each of the building s 3 5 million volumes twice first to temporary locations then to new permanent locations as work proceeded aisle by aisle was turned to advantage so that by the end of the renova tion related materials in the library s two classifica tion systems see Parallel classifica tion systems were physically adjacent for the first time 107 93 the chart showing the floor and wing location within the stacks of each subject classifica tion was revised sixty five times during construction 47 The project received the 2005 Library Building Award from the American Library Associa tion and the American Institute of Architects 147 Notes Edit 10 11 The quotation He labored not for himself only alludes to Ecclesi as ti cus 33 17 20 88 When I cease to be President of Harvard College Lowell wrote around this time I shall join one of the mendicant orders so as to have less begging to do B 23 In May 1911 the Boston American published by disgraced Harvard dropout William Randolph Hearst 21 carried a mock adver tise ment Wanted a millionaire Will some kind millionaire please give Harvard Univer sity a library building Tainted money not barred Mr Rockefeller take notice Mr Carnegie please write 20 87 25 Stipulations on conditions of storage began to appear in bequests to Harvard s libraries during the nineteenth century 26 For example the 1883 84 annual report of Harvard Divinity School s dean noted that Ezra Abbot s widow in donating four thousand volumes from his personal library asked for assurance that a better and safer replacement for the existing Divinity School library building be constructed promptly the dean also wrote that such a replacement would encourage future donors 27 8 14 32 Eleanor Widener expressed vexation at newspapers misreporting of the circumstances of her gift writing to Lowell I want emphasized that the library is a memorial to my dear son to be known as the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library given by me amp not his paternal grandfather P A B Widener as has been so often stated 33 Years later her second husband A H Rice Jr insisted that Lowell do his best to see that in all official reports etc the Library is referred to as the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library Widener Not one cent of Widener money one second of Widener thought nor one ounce of Widener energy were expended on either the conception or construction of the Library 8 15 34 147 Eleanor Widener was not similarly honored because women were ineligible for Harvard honorary degrees at the time 19 72 The Harvard Graduates Magazine reassured its readers that the admission of ladies for the first time to certain Commencement proceedings will not however create any precedent It was due to the dedication of the Library which demanded that once at least custom should be broken in favor of Mrs Widener and her friends 35 20 89 The Library Journal commented The building has administrative disadvantages necessitate by its character as a memorial with a central fane housing the private library collected by young Widener This occupies what would otherwise be the central court and cuts off access from the stack except at the two ends but is scarcely to be criticized in view of the splendor of the gift and the parental affection thus enshrined and perpetuated by Mrs Widener 36 52 The rug is a Heriz Persian 53 on the desk is an unsigned Tiffany lamp 54 In the library s early years when the Memorial Rooms served as the office of the Widener Collec tion s curator fires were sometimes set in the fireplace 55 60 Trumbauer had no rivals when it came to tempting clients to spend immodest sums wrote Wayne Andrews 8 16 and Biel wrote that he had made his name and fortune by knowing that only a magnifi cent setting could hope to satisfy an American with a magnifi cent income and he had already imparted such magnifi cence to the Widener and Elkins mansions and an assortment of other palaces He knew who his client was so he gave elaborate attention to memorial izing Harry in style in the Memorial Rooms 20 89 63 From the start it was Eleanor Widener s particular instruction that there always be flowers in the Memorial Room 60 and in March 1916 she reminded George Parker Winship curator of the Widener Collection who at the time used the Memorial Room as his office Will you please see that at all times fresh flowers are kept on your table by the photograph of my dear son Harry the same to be paid out of funds set aside for the maintenance of the Memorial Room This is the only request I make and I beg of you to see that it is always carried out B 43 7 In the basement later converted to additional shelving as stacks levels C and D after a further donation by Eleanor Widener in 1928 67 were the dynamos which run the five elevators and two book lifts the compressed air machinery for the pneumatic tubes the dynamo and fan for the vacuum cleaning system a pump connected with the steam heating apparatus enormous fans which pump warm air into the Reading Room and the stack a filter through which passes all water which enters the building and the connec tions for electric light and power The building is to be heated by steam conveyed through a tunnel from the plant of the Elevated Railroad Company which also furnishes heat to the other buildings of the College Yard and to the freshman dormitories 65 328 The marble floors were polished using a machine so simple that any laborer of ordinary intelli gence can operate it to advantage yet it can do the work of ten men rubbing by hand 68 The faculty studies are not all fully used Coolidge wrote in 1917 but you will understand that I can not go to a professor and tell him that I think he is not making use of his space and had better give it up I have tried in some cases hinting to people that if they did not need their quarters there were others who could make good use of them These hints have usually met with conspicuously little success B 72 75 At present Carney continued everyone using the stack is obliged to go to the basement to reach the public toilet This in the case of a man using one of the top floors of the stack is a particularly long trip An emergency toilet would be a desirable thing B 59 By 1937 security changes had made the situation even worse so that someone on the lowest stack level had to climb seven flights of stairs exit the stack then descend another set of stairs to reach the basement toilet Eventually toilets were installed in the stack by Harvard Librarian Keyes Metcalf who later wrote that As far as graduate students are concerned I will go down in history as the man who provided toilet facilities in the Widener stack 70 139 40 16 102 Even during construction Harvard officials worried about financing the new library s furnishings and equipment which Eleanor Widener did not undertake to supply except in the case of the building s great public rooms which she handsomely furnished 71 In early 1914 for example a series of letters between Lane and Snead amp Co the builders of the stacks discussed the design of signs which would direct patrons to the various subject classifications but in June Lane apologized for being unable to finalize a planned order for these signs Our situation in regard to this is an embarrassing one The College has no means in hand to cover this expense and we do not see where we are going to get what is needed for this and other similar purposes We do not feel ourselves in a position to ask Mrs Widener or Mr Trumbauer to provide these necessary fittings indispensable as they are for the proper use of the shelves The labels for the ends of the stack and the number plates we can of course do without by fastening up cardboard signs In another letter Lane proposed the economy measure of using bricks wrapped in paper as bookends 72 70 27 On any given floor of the stack it is 400 feet 120 m from the entrance stairwell to the furthest shelves and a patron concerned with material in widely different fields may find that a tiresome amount of walking and stair climbing is involved 69 91 74 English professor Howard Mumford Jones complained in 1950 that in preparing a lecture on Robert Frost after a long hunt for a bibliography listing works he would need to consult then locating those works in the complicated catalogs he found that the American Scholar is shelved on Floor A the New English Quarterly under New England the Classical Journal is shelved on Floor 5 and College English is in Educ on Floor B I shall not go into the matter of distribution of these works among wings East South and West B 133 34 4 However Harvard does not collect all subjects and all types of material The holdings in subject areas not represented in the curriculum such as agriculture are understandably limited 82 352 86 87 E It was not always so Originally school boys earning forty dollars per month equivalent to 540 in 2021 88 fetched books requested by patrons via slips Should a slip be received for a book in a part of the stack where a boy has just been sent particularly in the West stack which is the farthest away from the central station the request is telephoned across on the internal telephone B 56 But by about 1930 Widener s stacks were almost wide open to anyone who wanted to enter so much so that in a single day a group of thieves was able to steal some one hundred valuable works on American history 89 61 The December 31 1912 agreement between Eleanor Widener and the President and Fellows of Harvard College provides that this collection together with such books as may be added to it by members of the family of the Donor shall at all times be kept separate and apart from the general library of Harvard Harvard is not ever to add anything to the said Harry Elkins Widener collection S aid books shall not be taken or removed from the two rooms specially set apart excepting only when necessary for the repair or restoration of any volume 16 78 79 101 Harry Widener knew his grandfather had bought the Gutenberg Bible but not that it was intended for him I wish it was for me but it is not he wrote to a friend 102 After Harry s death and soon after that of his grandfather the Bible passed to Harry s uncle clarification needed at the uncle s death Harry s brother and sister added the Bible to the Harry Elkins Widener Collec tion because it had been bought for Harry and should be among his books Yale also has a Gutenberg though not in quite as fine condition as Harvard s according to Harvard officials 103 8 As pointed out by snopes com Harry Elkins Widener didn t die because he couldn t swim he like many other Titanic passengers who couldn t be accom mo dat ed by one of the too few lifeboats died from immersion in freezing water The ability to swim wouldn t have helped him because there was nowhere for him to swim to 111 120 John Shea was for forty years Widener s guardian and familiar spirit His mother had been a college biddy who he said did professor C T Copeland s laundry for years 120 and he began his own Harvard career in 1905 as a Gore Hall coatchecker By his 1954 retirement as Widener s Stacks Superin tendent he was perhaps the last of the legendary College characters 40 58 renowned not only for leaving no stone unthrown as he himself put it in locating mis shelved or otherwise errant books but also for his genius for such malaprop isms which in fact were generally the mot juste These included references to venereal blinds and osculating fans in the Catalog Room equipment that had outlived its uselessness a gift of a bottle of wine as a momentum and mention that Widener s head janitor has a maniac for sweeping the basement 2 127 Extensive news coverage of the attempt triggered a flurry of inquiries to Harvard about the potential value of family bibles and Gutenberg related bric a brac B 146 7 132 Eleanor Widener had originally stipulated that no further memorials would be permitted within her library but the war had softened her feelings on the matter Too many Harvard men died in the conflict to ignore their loss and further it seems Eleanor came to connect Harry s death with their sacrifice Battles B 63 After his retirement Metcalf wrote that when planning the later Lamont Library I was still old fashioned enough to believe that if women would be permitted to use it we should probably not have the small unsupervised reading rooms that we were planning 70 87 47 Before the renovation the upper stacks floors smelled in summer of gently roasted books while the lowest floor year round offered the sporiferous scent usually associated with grottoes and Roman cellars Battles B 180 When Widener was built ventilation for books was emphasized possibly to prevent mold thus a slit ran along the base of every row of shelves allowing air to flow from the floor below Unfortunately books papers and objects were prone to fall through these slits 69 135 and the whole installation might have been regarded as a large collection of chimneys that would help a fire to spread rapidly from floor to floor The slits were later closed 70 92 93 Sources and further reading EditFurther reading B Battles Matthew 2004 Widener Biography of a Library Harvard College Library 2004 p 42 ISBN 978 0 674 01668 2 Other sources cited Buck Paul Herman 1964 Williams Edwin E ed Libraries amp universities addresses and reports Belknap Press of Harvard University Press p 50 ISBN 9780674530508 a b Primus IV September October 1998 The College Pump Sheavian Slips Harvard Magazine Hanke Timothy June 4 1998 Counting Libraries at Harvard Not as Easy as You Think Harvard Univer sity Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College Archived from the original on July 5 2012 a b Harvard College Library 2009 Widener Library Collec tions Overview hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 a b Tuchman Barbara W 2011 Practicing History Selected essays Random House Publishing Group p 15 ISBN 978 0 307 79855 8 a b Harvard College Library 2009 Harry Elkins Widener Collec tion Overview hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 a b c Library planning bookstacks and shelving with contri bu tions from the archi tects and librarians points of view Snead amp Company Iron Works 1915 pp 11 68 152 58 a b c d e f g h i j k William Bentinck Smith 1980 a Memorial to My Dear Son Some Reflec tions on 65 Years of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library Harvard College Library a b c Mann Elizabeth December 9 1993 The First Abridged Dictionary of Harvard Myths The Harvard Independent pp 10 11 Ireland Corydon April 5 2012 The Widener Memorial Room Harvard Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College Kelley Milburn Deborah March 25 2013 What are the inscriptions to Harry by his mother in the entrance to the memorial library at Harvard Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 14 2014 a b c Harvard Commencement Widener Is Dedicated Senator Lodge Makes the Speech of Presenta tion President Lowell Accepts Gift for Harvard In Presence of Many Distinguished Guests Mrs Widener Donor Delivers the Keys Bishop Lawrence in Benedic tion and Prayer Exercises are in Library Memorial Room Univer sity Marshal Warren Is in Charge Boston Evening Transcript June 24 1915 p 2 Samuel Atkins Eliot 1913 The Harry Elkins Widener Library A history of Cambridge Massachusetts 1630 1913 together with biographies of Cambridge people Cambridge Massachusetts Cambridge Tribune pp 273 76 subscription required Harvard Univer sity Library 1892 Fifteenth Report 1892 of Justin Winsor Librarian of Harvard Univer sity pp 1 15 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Coolidge Archibald Cary September 1915 The Harvard College Library The Harvard Graduates Magazine Vol 24 Harvard Graduates Magazine Association pp 23 31 Leighton Philip D Weber David C 1999 Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings American Library Association pp 13 14 ISBN 978 0 8389 0747 4 a b c d e Bentinck Smith William 1976 Building a great library the Coolidge years at Harvard Harvard Univer sity Library ISBN 978 0 674 08578 7 Lane William Coolidge November 8 1909 Persons about the library report manuscript Letter to W S Burke Records of Harvard College Library William Coolidge Lane 1877 1929 Harvard Inspector of Grounds and Buildings UAIII 50 8 10 2 Harvard University Archives a href Template Cite press release html title Template Cite press release cite press release a CS1 maint location link From a Graduate s Window Harvard Graduates Magazine Harvard Graduates Magazine Associa tion 12 45 23 25 September 1903 a b Bethell John T 1998 Harvard Observed An Illustrated History of the University in the Twentieth Century Harvard University Press p 72 ISBN 978 0 674 37733 2 a b c d e f g h Steven Biel 2012 Down with the Old Canoe A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster W W Norton amp Company p 89 ISBN 978 0 393 34080 8 William Randolph Hearst Encyclo paedia Britannica July 29 2013 Retrieved June 17 2014 a b Ireland Corydon April 5 2012 Widener Library rises from Titanic tragedy Harvard Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College a b c Mrs A H Rice Dies in a Paris Store New York and Newport Society Woman Wife of Explorer Noted for Philanthropy A Survivor of Titanic Lost First Husband and Son in Disaster Gave Library to Harvard Univer sity New York Times July 14 1937 a b A Edward Newton September 1918 A Remembrance of Harry Elkins Widener The Atlantic Monthly Vol 122 pp 351 56 Harvard College Library 2009 The Memo rial Library Will of Harry Elkins Widener History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memo rial Collec tion The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 Burke Sarah K Harvard University Library Weissman Preservation Center Library Preservation at Harvard Bookish fires the legacy of fire in the Harvard libraries PDF Report Harvard Divinity School Andover Harvard Theological Library The New Library The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2016 Harvard College Library 2009 The Memo rial Library The Gift to Harvard History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memo rial Collec tion The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 Harvard s new library Presented by Mrs George D Widener to House the Valuable Collection of Books Left by Her Son Harry Elkins Widener PDF The New York Times September 22 1912 p 14 a b Julian Abele Sprinkler Valve Through Door A peek inside Harvard s Widener Library February 18 2014 a b c d e Shand Tucci Douglas 2001 The Campus Guide Harvard Universi ty Princeton Architectural Press pp 165 69 ISBN 9781568982809 a b Johnston Louis Williamson Samuel H 2023 What Was the U S GDP Then MeasuringWorth Retrieved January 1 2023 United States Gross Domestic Product deflator figures follow the Measuring Worth series Harvard College Library 2009 The Memo rial Library Mrs Widener to President Lowell History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memo rial Collec tion The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 Meister Maureen 2003 Architecture and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston Harvard s H Langford Warren UPNE ISBN 978 1 58465 351 6 Commencement Exercises in Sanders Theatre The Harvard Graduates Magazine Vol 24 Harvard Graduates Magazine Association September 1915 pp 78 81 a b Martel Charles May 1915 The preparations for the A L A conference at Berkeley The Library Journal 40 5 305 a b c Charles Forrest Fall 2005 2005 AIA ALA Library Building Awards Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library Renova tion Library Administra tion amp Manage ment 19 4 197 205 a b Sargent s Harvard murals Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston and the President and Fellows of Harvard College 2003 Retrieved 2014 05 24 Sargent s Harvard Murals Entering the War The Widener Memorial Library Stone Vol 36 December 1915 p 650 a b c d e f Bethell John T Hunt Richard M Shenton Robert 2004 Harvard A to Z Harvard Universi ty Press ISBN 978 0 674 02089 4 Lacock John Kennedy 1923 Boston and vicinity including Cambridge Arlington Lexington Concord Quincy Plymouth Salem and Marblehead Historic landmarks and points of interest and how to see them Boston Chapple Publishing Company British Univer sities Encyclo paedia pt 1 2 World s libraries and librarians London British Univer sities Encyclo paedia Limited and the Athenaeum Press 1939 Whiffen Marcus Koeper Frederick 1983 American Architecture 1860 1976 Vol 2 MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 73070 9 Bainbridge Bunting 1985 Margaret Henderson Floyd ed Harvard An Architectural History Belknap Press of Harvard Univer sity Press pp 152 57 ISBN 978 0 674 37291 7 a b c Lane William Coolidge May 1915 The Widener Memo rial Library of Harvard College The Library Journal 40 5 325 Potter Alfred Claghorn 1915 The Library of Harvard University Descriptive and Historical Notes p 32 a b c d e f Potier Beth September 30 2004 Widener Library renova tions On time on budget Harvard Gazette Kelley Milburn Deborah February 25 2013 What can you tell me about the portrait in the Widener Memorial Room Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 15 2014 a b Commencement Dedication of the Library The Harvard Graduates Magazine Vol 24 Harvard Graduates Magazine Association September 1915 pp 81 82 Tomase Jennifer November 1 2007 Tale of John Harvard s Surviving Book Harvard Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College Mason Hammond Fall 1988 A Carved Tablet Showing Early Printers Marks on the Widener Library Harvard Library Bulletin XXXVI 4 373 80 Kelley Milburn Deborah April 1 2011 Over the front door of Widener there is a carving Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 16 2014 Kelley Milburn Deborah October 3 2011 Did the furniture in the Widener Memorial Room belong to Harry Elkins Widener Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 15 2014 Kelley Milburn Deborah October 3 2011 What is the rug that s in the Widener Memorial Room Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 15 2014 Kelley Milburn Deborah October 3 2011 Is the lamp in the Widener Memorial Room a real Tiffany Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 15 2014 a b Whitehill Walter Muir 1969 George Parker Winship Analecta biographica a handful of New England portraits Stephen Greene Press pp 1 14 ISBN 9780828901031 Lodge Henry Cabot September 1915 The Meaning of a Great Library The Harvard Graduates Magazine Vol 24 Harvard Graduates Magazine Association pp 31 38 a b c George Parker Winship June 16 1915 The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library The Widener Collection of Books Harvard Alumni Bulletin Harvard Alumni Associa tion XVII 36 668 70 a b Harvard College Library 2009 The Memo rial Library The Rotunda History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memo rial Collec tion The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 Harvard College Library June 10 2014 Houghton Library Collec tions Harry Elkins Widener Collec tion History hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 a b A browse amongst the books in the new Widener Memorial Library at Harvard Boston Sunday Herald October 10 1915 p 1 a b c d Halberstam David April 7 1953 The Widener Memorial Room Harvard Crimson Kelley Milburn Deborah October 3 2011 Is it true that fresh flowers are delivered daily to the Widener Memorial Room Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Archived from the original on 2015 02 17 Retrieved April 30 2014 a b Schaffer Sarah J February 18 1995 Bibliophobia Harvard Crimson Contract for new library to be let soon Specifications call for building of most modern type Harvard Crimson December 9 1912 a b c Lane William Coolidge May 1915 The Harry Elkins Widener Memo rial Library The Widener Memorial The Library Journal 40 5 672 77 a b Martel Charles December 1915 The Newly Completed Widener Memorial Library Harvard Univer sity is equipped with Snead Standard Stack and Snead Standard Steel Shelving The Library Journal 40 12 Advertising supplement p 9 New Addition Affords Widener Shelving Room Recent Gift of Mrs Hamilton Rice Increases Stack Space Two Levels Added Below Present Stack Harvard Crimson September 22 1928 Improved Machinery An Electric Floor Surfacing Machine The Engineering Magazine iv June 1916 a b c d e f Metcalf Keyes DeWitt 1965 Planning academic and research library buildings McGraw Hill ISBN 9780070416574 a b c d e f g Metcalf Keyes DeWitt 1988 Williams Edwin E ed My Harvard Library years 1937 1955 A sequel to Random recollections of an anachronism Harvard College Library Harvard University Press pp 24 30 a b Report of Archibald Cary Coolidge Director of the University Library Reprinted with additions from the Report of the President of Harvard University for 1914 1915 1915 p 31 Records of Harvard College Library William Coolidge Lane 1877 1929 Snead Co UAIII 50 8 10 2 Harvard University Archives Theodore Elisabeth S November 14 2001 Widener Beefs Up Security Harvard Crimson Kent A Lancour Harold Daily Jay E et al eds 1976 Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science Vol 19 CRC Press p 318 ISBN 978 0 8247 2019 3 HCL Communica tions November 6 2003 Houghton bridge is coming down Harvard Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Seward Zachary M November 18 2003 Widener Library Bridge Coming Down Harvard Crimson Goodman Ellen P November 8 1983 Legendary Librarian Dies Planned Lament sic and Pusey Harvard College Library 2008 Houghton Library History hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2015 01 11 Harvard College Library September 26 2014 Widener Library History hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2015 01 11 Widener Space Deficit Reaching Danger Point Harvard Crimson December 4 1965 Stop Gap Measures Ease Pinch in Widener Library Harvard Crimson November 30 1967 Lemann Nicholas March 26 1973 The New Pusey Library Yard Beautification Harvard Crimson Charles T Kurzman May 25 1983 Weeding Out in Widener The Harvard Crimson Mitchell Ted 2006 Thomas Wolfe An Illustrated Biography Pegasus Books p 78 ISBN 978 1 933648 10 1 a b Stam David H 2001 International Dictionary of Library Histories Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 1 57958 244 9 Speaking Volumes Harvard Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College February 26 1998 Archived from the original on September 9 1999 a b c Battles Matthew 2004 Library An Unquiet History W W Norton ISBN 978 0 393 32564 5 Fox Dov 2004 The Truth about Harvard A Behind the Scenes Look at Admissions and Life on Campus The Princeton Review p 100 ISBN 978 0 375 76435 6 a b c d Hightower Marvin March 28 1996 Destroyer of Books Gets Stiff Sentence Harvard Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College a b c d e Reed Christopher March 1997 Biblioklepts Harvard Magazine Part A Part B Part C Part D Part E 1634 1699 McCusker J J 1997 How Much Is That in Real Money A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States Addenda et Corrigenda PDF American Antiquarian Society 1700 1799 McCusker J J 1992 How Much Is That in Real Money A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States PDF American Antiquarian Society 1800 present Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Consumer Price Index estimate 1800 Retrieved April 16 2022 Metcalf Keyes DeWitt 1980 Random Recollections of an Anachronism or Seventy Five Years of Library Work Readex Books pp 264 65 ISBN 9780918414021 Rolbein Seth April 13 1997 Deep in the stacks Besides 3 5 million books Harvard s Widener Library harbors scholars thieves eccentrics and a tale or two The Boston Globe Magazine p 14 Pollet Dorothy Haskell Peter C 1979 Sign systems for libraries solving the wayfinding problem Bowker pp 169 71 ISBN 9780835211499 Fifteen Minutes Blue Line Harvard Crimson September 30 1999 Marks Stephen M October 24 2002 Dazed and Confused In Widener Library Harvard Crimson a b c d Gewertz Ken October 17 2002 Widener s main entrance to close for renova tion Harvard Gazette The President and Fellows of Harvard College Zhang Zara June 24 2015 At 100 Widener Opens Its Arms Wider Harvard Magazine a b HCL s Smart Barcoding Project Under Way in Widener Harvard University Library Notes March 2006 James E Homans ed 1918 Harry Elkins Widener The Cyclopaedia of American Biography a b George S Hellman June 2 1912 Harvard To Get Harry Widener s Famous Library Titanic Victim Though Hardly Out Of College Acquired A Fine Collection Of Books That He Willed To His Alma Mater His Grandfather Adds A Memorial Wing To House It PDF The New York Times a b c d Hugh Amory Nancy Finlay 1992 A Houghton library chronicle 1942 1992 Harvard College Library ISBN 9780914630067 Harvard College Library 2012 Houghton Library Collec tions Harry Elkins Widener Collec tion The Gutenberg Bible hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 23 Harvard College Library 2012 Houghton Library Collections Harry Elkins Widener Collection The Gutenberg Bible hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 06 01 Kelley Milburn Deborah Feb 7 2012 Does Harvard have a Gutenberg Bible Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 15 2014 Widener Harry Elkins March 10 1912 Just a few lines to tell you that I am about to take a quick trip to England manuscript Letter to Luther Samuel Livingston Widener Gutenberg Bible Near Best Outstanding Specimen In Harvard Scarce Volume Collec tion Harvard Crimson November 10 1949 Harvard College Library 2007 Widener Library Collec tions Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collec tion hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 16 Martel Charles May 1915 Special card catalog cases The Library Journal 40 5 Advertising supplement p 7 Wayne A Wiegand Donald G Davis eds 1994 Encyclo pedia of Library History Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 0 8240 5787 9 a b Harvard College Library 2009 HCL News Widener Stacks Division Com pletes the Movement of Millions of Volumes Not an Easy Trick hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 Harvard College Library 2009 Widener Library FAS Departmental Libraries hcl harvard edu The President and Fellows of Harvard College Retrieved 2014 05 15 Mooney Carolyn J October 12 1994 Swim or Sink Chronicle of Higher Educa tion A35 A36 Kelley Milburn Deborah February 22 2012 Is it true that Harvard students must pass a swimming test because of Harry Elkins Widener s death aboard the Titanic Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved April 30 2014 The Swim Test Did a university implement swim tests at the behest of a benefactor whose child had drowned snopes com a b Primus V July August 2003 The College Pump Lies about Harry Harvard Magazine David Cort June 12 2012 Does Harvard have a copy of the Necronomicon Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 13 2014 History of the Necronomicon Sprinkler Valve Through Door A peek inside Harvard s Widener Library April 1 2014 April Fools Sprinkler Valve Through Door A peek inside Harvard s Widener Library April 2 2014 Bilstad T Allan 2009 The Lovecraft Necronomicon primer a guide to the Cthulhu mythos Llewellyn Worldwide ISBN 978 0 7387 1379 3 Lovecraft H P 1977 A history of the Necronomicon 2nd ed Necronomicon Press ISBN 978 0 686 19141 4 Kelley Milburn Deborah April 1 2014 Who was the Harvard student who famously was stunned to realize that he couldn t read all the books in Widener Library Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 5 2014 Thomas Wolfe at Harvard Damned Soul in Widener Harvard Crimson October 18 1958 David Herbert Donald 2002 Look Homeward A Life of Thomas Wolfe Harvard Univer sity Press pp 72 73 ISBN 978 0 674 00869 4 Katherine P States October 15 1977 Don t Steal These Books 1932 Inscriptions Warn Harvard Crimson The bookplates of Harvard men Modern Books and Manuscripts Houghton Library Harvard Univer sity May 29 2013 a b Indict Book Thief on Twenty Counts Former Prepara tory School Teacher Arrested Two Weeks Ago Had Home Stocked With Library Books Harvard Crimson November 4 1931 a b Cronin Philip M December 12 1951 Faculty Profile Sleuths in the Stacks Harvard Crimson Colleen Bryant Jul 19 2012 I found a disturbing bookplate in a Widener book Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Archived from the original on 2015 02 17 Travis McDade 2013 Thieves of Book Row New York s Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It Oxford Univer sity Press p 117 ISBN 978 0 19 992266 6 a b c d Snow Crocker Jr August 21 1969 Suspect Falls 50 Feet With Gutenberg Bible 1 Million Harvard Theft Fails Boston Globe p 1 a b c Burglar Slips as He Tries to Remove Gutenberg Bible From Widener Library Harvard Crimson September 18 1969 a b Cat Burglar Steals Bible Before Fall From Grace St Petersburg Times August 21 1969 p 2 A Bond W H March April 1986 The Gutenberg Caper Harvard Magazine pp 42 48 Officials Add New Security For Widener Fire Threat Bible Theft Spur Action Harvard Crimson September 23 1969 a b c Reed Christopher March April 1997 The Slasher Harvard Magazine Calder Mari M February 28 1996 Verdict Nearing In Slasher Trial Harvard Crimson Wilkie Everett C 2011 Guide to Security Considerations and Practices for Rare Book Manuscript and Special Collection Libraries Association of College amp Research Libraries p 27 ISBN 978 0 8389 8592 2 Semerjian Laura November 16 1996 HUPD Dept Focuses on Investigations Zoll Rachel April 14 1996 Libraries throw the book at their abundant looters South Coast Today Kelley Milburn Deborah June 14 2013 Where are the John Singer Sargent paintings in Widener Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 14 2014 Smith Richard Norton 1986 The Harvard Century The Making of a University to a Nation Simon amp Schuster p 80 Kelley Milburn Deborah October 8 2011 What is the inscrip tion over the door to the Widener Library in memory of Mrs Hamilton Rice Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 14 2014 Explorer Rice Weds Mrs G D Widener Law Requiring Five Days Delay After Securing License Waived by a Court Order Plans for Secrecy Fail Bishop Lawrence Officiates at Ceremony in Emmanuel Church Vestry Witnessed by Twelve Persons PDF New York Times October 7 1915 Harvard Class of 1898 Report 2 Harvard University 1907 New field piece arrives 155 mm G P F Rifle Now In Battery In Front of Widener Harvard Crimson September 23 1919 Memorial Bust of Titanic Victim Placed in Widener Francis Davis Millet 69 Honored by His Classmates Was Prominent Mural Decorator Harvard Crimson June 4 1920 Dienstag John May 3 2004 Widener Reading Room Reopens Harvard Crimson Kelley Milburn Deborah May 19 2016 What happened to the dioramas of Cambridge that used to be in Widener Harvard Library Ask a Librarian Retrieved June 3 2016 Tablet Erected to Gore Hall Placed by Library Committee on Front of Widener Harvard Crimson September 26 1917 Widener Library Tablet Commemorates Gore Hall Cambridge Tribune Vol XL no 29 September 15 1917 a b Colson Elizabeth 2002 Anthropology and a Lifetime of Observation Regional Oral History Office The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley Oral history conducted in 2000 2001 by Suzanne Riess a b Danuta A Nitecki Curtis L Kendrick eds 2001 Library Off site Shelving Guide for High density Facilities Libraries Unlimited p 129 ISBN 978 1 56308 885 8 Big Doings at Widener Library Harvard Magazine July August 1999 Goins Jason M March 23 1999 Needed Renova tions Planned For Widener Harvard Crimson Wilkinson B C October 21 1999 Fifteen Minutes Breaking the Rules at Widener Harvard Crimson Library Leadership and Management Association Previous Winners of the AIA ALA Library Buildings Award Program American Library Association External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Widener Library History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection Houghton Library Harvard University Sprinkler Valve Through Door A peek inside Harvard d Widener Library Librarians blog highlighting Widener s collections history and architecture Virtual tour Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Widener Library amp oldid 1134661419, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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