Widener Library

By the opening of the twentieth century alarms had been issuing for many years about Harvard's "disgrace­fully inadequate" [10]^: 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";[11]^: 15 his successor Archibald Cary Coolidge asserted that the Boston Public Library was a better place to write an under­grad­u­ate thesis.[12]^: 29 Despite substantial additions in 1876 and 1907,[13] 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 ...[14]^: 51–52

With university librarian William Coolidge Lane reporting that the building's light switches were delivering electric shocks to his staff,[15] and dormitory basements pressed into service as overflow storage[16] for Harvard's 543,000 books,[17]^: 50 the committee drew up a proposal for replacement of Gore in stages. Andrew Carnegie was approached for financing without success.[note 1]

Harry Elkins Widener

Two electric trucks removed Gore Hall's books for storage during Widener's construction.[20]

In 1912, Harry Elkins Widener‍—‌scion of two of the wealthiest families in America,[21] a 1907 graduate of Harvard College, and an accomplished bibliophile despite his youth[22]‍—‌died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic. His father George Dunton Widener also perished, but his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener survived.[21]

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 2] 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." [22]

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" [18]^: 90 to Harry Widener, housing not only his personal book collection but Harvard's general library as well,[26] with room for growth.[27] 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." [18]^: 88-89

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,[28] 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." [29]^: 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 3]

Though Harvard awarded Trumbauer an honorary degree on the day of the new library's dedication,[note 4] it was Trumbauer associate Julian F. Abele who had overall responsi­bility for the building's design,[28] 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 5]

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.[20]

Gabriel Ferrier's por­trait of Harry Widener hangs in the Memorial Rooms.[46]

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.[47] 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 1638, to have survived the 1764 burning of Harvard Hall.[48]

"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.[49]

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." [18]^: 91 The desk at left was Harry Widener's own.[note 6]

In the Memorial Rooms, after a benediction by Bishop William Lawrence,[54] a portrait of Harry Widener was unveiled, then remarks delivered by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (speaking on "The Meaning of a Great Library" [55] 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").[47] 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." [54]

"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." [56]

The central Memorial Rooms‍—‌an outer rotunda[57] housing memorabilia of the life and death of Harry Widener,[58] 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 7]

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." [43]^: 325

For many years Eleanor Widener hosted Commencement Day luncheons in the Memorial Rooms.[8]^: 20 The family underwrites their upkeep,[60] including weekly renewal of the flowers[61]‍—‌originally roses but now carnations.[note 8]

Touted as "the last word in library construction",[63] 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".[64]^: 676 Advertisements for the manufacturer of the building's shelving highlighted its "dark brown enamel finish, harmonizing with oak trim",[65] and special interchangeable regular and oversize shelves meant that books on a given subject could be shelved together regardless of size.[note 9]

The Library Journal found "especially interesting not so much the spacious and lofty reading rooms" [34] as the innovation[68]^: 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[43]^: 327 coveted faculty studies has been a longstanding administrative headache.)[note 10]

Nonetheless, certain deficien­cies were soon noted.^[B]: 107 A primitive form of air conditioning was aban­doned within a few months.[68][69]^: 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 11] And after a university-wide search for castoff furniture left many of the stacks' 300 carrels still unequipped,[70] 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 12]

Later-built tunnels, from the stacks level furthest underground, connect to nearby Pusey Library, Lamont Library,[72] and Houghton Library.[73] An enclosed bridge connecting to Houghton's reading room via a Widener window‍—‌built after Eleanor Widener's heirs agreed to waive[69]^: 75 her gift's proscription of exterior additions or alterations[14]^: 79‍—‌was removed in 2004.[74] (Houghton and Lamont were built in the 1940s to relieve Widener,[75] which had become simultaneously too small‍—‌its shelves were full[76]‍—‌and too large‍—‌its immense size and complex catalog made books difficult to locate.[note 13] But with Harvard's collections doubling every 17 years, by 1965 Widener was again close to full,[77] prompting construction of Pusey,[78] and in the early 1980s library officials "pushed the panic button"[79] again, leading to the construction of the Harvard Depository.)

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;[38]^: 362 a copy of Poems written by Wil. Shake-speare, gent. (1640) in its original sheepskin binding;[95] 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");[60] 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.[96] 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." [96]

Harry Widener "died suddenly, just as he was beginning to be one of the world's great collectors," [56] said the Collection's first curator.[53]^: 6 "They formed a young man's library, and are to be preserved as he left it" [56]‍—‌except that the Widener family has the exclusive privilege of adding to it.[note 16] Harvard's "greatest typographical treasure" [97]^: 17 is one of the only thirty-eight perfect copies extant[98] of the Gutenberg Bible,[99] 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)[60] and added to the Collection by the Widener family in 1944.[note 17]

Like all Harvard's valuable books, works in the Widener Collec­tion may be consulted by researchers demonstrating a genuine research need.[103]

The original catalog room, "though mag­nif­i­cent ar­chi­tec­tur­al­ly, looked [as though the catalog cases, with their 3796 drawers] had simply been dropped hap­haz­ard­ly into them." [68]^: 225[104]

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." [83]^: 15

In the 1970s new arrivals began to be classified according to a modified version of the Library of Congress system.[105]^{: 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).[106][92]

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}

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

There are also special collections in the history of science, linguis­tics, Near Eastern languag­es and civiliza­tions, paleogra­phy, and Sanskrit.[107]

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.[97]^: 15

The stacks (seen here from the southeast while under con­struc­tion) double as struc­tur­al ele­ments,[65] mak­ing Wide­ner the last major self-support­ing mason­ry build­ing, with no outer steel frame, built in the US;[38]^: 362 its exterior walls are three feet thick.[68]^: 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][108] (This requirement, the Harvard Crimson once elaborated erroneously, was "dropped in the late 1970s because it was deemed discriminatory against physically disabled students".)[62] "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)[109] 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 18]

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.[111]

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.[112]

Thomas Wolfe, who earned a Harvard master's degree in 1922,[113] told Max Perkins that he spent most of his Harvard years in Widener's reading room.[29] 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";[114] his alter ego Eugene Gant read with a watch in his hand, "laying waste of the shelves." [115]

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]

Bookplate placed in 2504 books[116][117]

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[118] where (posing as "book buyers" to spare the feelings of Williams' family)^[B]: 88 they found thousands[118] of books which Williams had stolen over the years,[86]^: 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 19]

Despite the misleading[120] implication of bookplates placed in the 2504[86]^: 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.[121] 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

"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[122] (equivalent to $6 million in 2021).[30] Equipped with a hammer, pry bar, and other burglarious implements, the 20-year-old would-be thief[122] 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.[86]^: D

Eventually he fell some 50 feet (15 m)[97]^: 45 to the pavement of one of the light courts, where he lay semicon­scious[123] until his moans were heard by a janitor;[97]^: 45 he was found about 1 a.m.[124] with injuries including a fractured skull.[123] "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." [122] Tonis specu­lated that the attempt may have been modeled on a similar caper depicted in the 1964 film Topkapi,[124] though a retired Harvard librarian later commented that the thief (who was later judged insane)[125] "evidently knew nothing about books‍—‌or, at least, about selling them ... There was no explanation of what he expected to do with the Bible." [69]^: 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")[122] were damaged.[123] Since the incident only one or the other Bible volume is on display at any given time[86]^: E and a replica has been substituted at times of heightened security concern.[note 20]

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.[85] Notes left at Widener, and later at Northeastern University, threatened graphically described mutilations of library workers, cyanide gas attacks,[127] and bombings of libraries and a local bank.[128] 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,[127] and surveillance cameras installed in ersatz books, without result.[129]

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.[85] Officials found "a kind of renegade reference room" in the worker's basement,[130] 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.[85] 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.[127]