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Modern Monday: Pusey Library at Harvard University

Posted on June 10, 2019May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Exterior image_Architectural Record_09-1976_Edward Jacoby Photographer — 1976 image included in Architectural Record 09-1976. Edward Jacoby photographer.

Pusey Library Current_Full view steps_HOLLIS — Pusey Library as seen from Widener Library steps.

The Pusey Library in Harvard Yard was conceived from a 1960 report by Harvard, which outlined the needs for future expansion and growth for the university. The potential for expansion of facilities within Harvard Yard was surveyed between 1968 and 1970 by Hugh Stubbins, who examined the 22-acre area for circulation and the possibility for additional structures. Three years later, Stubbins was commissioned to design a new library in Harvard Yard.

Harvard University: An Inventory for Planning, 1960. Copy in CHC Library.

Pusey Library Current_Full view_HOLLIS — Pusey Library viewed from Harvard Yard.

The new library was to be named after Nathan Pusey, president of Harvard University from 1953-1971. President Pusey oversaw one of the largest building programs in Harvard’s history (second only to President Lowell). In 1957, Pusey announced the start of a program for Harvard College, a $82.5 million effort that raised $20 million more and resulted in three additions to the undergraduate House system: Quincy House (1959), Leverett Towers (1960), and Mather House (1970). During the 1960s, the Program for Harvard Medicine raised $58 million. In April 1965, the Harvard endowment exceeded $1 billion for the first time. Pusey left Harvard in June 1971 to become the second president of New York’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Nathan Pusey_1964 portrait, HOLLIS.jpg — 1964 portrait of President Pusey. Courtesy of Radcliffe College Archives.

Hugh Stubbins believed that an above-ground library would be too constricted in the Yard and he began plans for a subterranean structure. From the beginning, the proposed library was envisioned as an interconnecting link among three existing libraries – Widener, Houghton and Lamont, all within close proximity. Its roof serves as a link as well, with paths and landscaping reinforcing the existing circulation network in the yard. From the exterior, the Pusey Library is a slanting grass-covered embankment only visible from some areas in Harvard Yard. Its roof is a stone-rimmed platform of earth containing a lawn, trees and shrubs.

Floor plate plan of Pusey Library_Arch Record 09-1976 — Plan of Pusey Library.

First Floorplan of Pusey Library_Arch Record 09-1976 — Site plan and level one plan of Pusey Library.

The main entrance to the library is built into the slope of the hill with a broad band of brick paving at the ground level which forms a moat between the berm and the window wall. The moat allows for light to reach the interior on the perimeter walls without completely disrupting the landscape. Alexander Calder’s “The Onion” sculpture marks the main entry to the library.

Pusey Library Current_Entrance art1_HOLLIS — Current view of “The Onion” by Alexander Calder.

Exterior artwork_Architectural Record_09-1976_Edward Jacoby Photographer — 1976 image included in Architectural Record 09-1976. Edward Jacoby photographer.

Construction of Pusey Library. Courtesy of Radcliffe Archives.

At the center, a two-story light well between Houghton and Lamont is apparent seemingly to only those who look for it. Sunk down two floors into the ground, the well is home to a Japanese Maple tree, which just peaks out from its subterranean home providing a clear statement of presence for the library.

Pusey Library Current_courtyard and tree_HOLLIS — Interior sunken courtyard with large maple tree.

Stubbins even designed the interior spaces, using a very 70’s design aesthetic. Nylon carpeting was used throughout except in bookstack areas. Most of the furniture was made of oak, as was the trim work. Walls were covered with a textured vinyl fabric with a flat off-white, non-reflective surface to reduce sound reverberation and create a sense of warmth in the otherwise bunker-like building. The interior spaces have since been modernized to meet current needs for the library.

Interior image1_Architectural Record_09-1976 — Interior design by Hugh Stubbins’ office. Photographed by Edward Jacoby, 1976.

Pusey Library Current_interior hall_Hollis
While underground construction is not needed or desirable in every location, it was brilliantly executed at the Pusey Library. Former Director of the Cambridge Historical Commission and historian, Bainbridge Bunting has said, “No other building has added so much to Harvard Yard yet disturbed its integrity so little”. We could not agree more!

Sources:

Architectural Record. September 1976, pages 97-102.

HOLLIS Images http://id.lib.harvard.edu/images/olvsite32606/catalog

Nathan Marsh Pusey, Biography. Harvard University. https://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard/harvard-glance/history-presidency/nathan-marsh-pusey

Radcliffe Archives, Pusey Hall under construction. Images.

Modern Monday: Hayden Memorial Library at MIT

Posted on December 31, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

For today’s #ModernMonday posting, we are highlighting the Hayden Memorial Library at MIT.

Hayden Library PHoto

Located on Memorial Drive, the library is named after Charles Hayden (1870-1937) an MIT alum (1890) who studied “mining investment.” Hayden was a philanthropist who donated vast sums of money for the construction of buildings including; the Hayden Planetarium in New York, the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science, and the Hayden Memorial Library at MIT to name a few. Hayden was involved with philanthropy most of his life. During World War I, he donated $100,000 per year to the American Red Cross. Hayden’s largest philanthropic effort came following his death in 1937 when his will directed roughly $50,000,000 ($853 million in today’s dollars) from his estate be used to create a foundation to advance the education and “moral, mental, and physical well-being” of boys and young men. The organization, known today as “The Charles Hayden Foundation”, distributes grants of between $10,000,000 and $20,000,000 annually to support programs for children in the Boston and New York metropolitan areas.

Charles Hayden Photo — Charles Hayden in 1934, from the American Museum of Natural History Digital Special Collections.

Exterior original drawings_Tech. Review — Architectural drawing included in Architectural Record, Nov. 1946.

Interior drawings_Tech. Review — Architectural drawing included in Architectural Record, Nov. 1946.

Interior drawings_Tech. Review (2) — Architectural drawing included in Architectural Record, Nov. 1946.

The Hayden Memorial Library at MIT was unveiled beginning in 1946 when the Architectural Record highlighted the design of the building. The building was designed by Ralph Walker (MIT Class of 1911) of Voorhees, Walker, Foley and Smith Architects and was completed in 1951 in a Post-WWII Art Moderne Style. Walker was called “The only other honest architect in America” by Frank Lloyd Wright, and “Architect of the Century” by The New York Times when he received the Centennial Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Architects. He was most well known for his Art Deco buildings in New York. “Three years after accepting his award from the New York Times, he resigned from the AIA amid controversy surrounding a member of his firm who was accused of stealing another firm’s contract. Though he was later cleared of all wrongdoing and reinstated, he was apparently never the same afterwards. Ten years later, in 1973, Walker shot himself with a silver bullet, only after destroying his AIA award. His original firm still exists under the name HLW International, but as Walker and his wife had no children, all that remains of his great legacy are the buildings he created” (Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century).

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_Exterior010 — Hayden Library in 1968, photo part of CHC Survey files.

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_Interior012 — Hayden Library in 1968, photo part of CHC Survey files.

The Hayden Library inaugurated the expansion and modernization of MIT’s academic facilities and was one of the first truly Modern buildings on the campus. At the time, vast amounts of technical literature – generated largely by the war – had to be housed, and facilities had to be updated to accommodate recent advances in conservation, storage, and photographic reproduction. The Hayden Library would have to meet those demands. The protruding two-story glass bays allow ample natural light into the library and the limestone façade serves as a nod to the older Beaux Arts MIT buildings nearby.

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_UMichigan Archives — Photo of Hayden Library courtesy of University of Michigan Digital Archives.

Utilizing the Hayden Library’s initial design goal of “flexibility”, Shepley Bulfinch re-imagined the building as the hub of the MIT Library System in 2012 and it now houses collections for science, engineering, humanities, music, and archives.

The 1951 building remains as a great example of Modern architecture in Cambridge and shows how good architectural design can be timeless and adapted to meet future needs.

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_Color Slide CHC017 — CHC Color slide of Hayden Library in 1990s.

The Library Catalog is Live!

Posted on April 11, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

We are pleased to announce that our online catalog is nearly complete and is now live to the public. Cataloging the CHC Research Library has been a long process, but entirely worth it. We are especially grateful for the hard work of our cataloging intern, Becky Shea, whose efforts made it possible to complete the catalog.

Check it out (pun intended) at https://www.librarycat.org/lib/chclibarch831!

library

CHC Research Library Catalog Progress

Posted on August 4, 2017October 24, 2017 by Emily M.

In addition to our archival collections, the CHC is home to a research library containing over 1000 volumes pertaining to Cambridge history, architecture, and residents. While plenty of these books are widely held in other libraries, many are rare volumes not found elsewhere. To increase the usability and accessibility of our collection, both for CHC staff and outside researchers, archives assistant Emily has spent the last several months creating a library catalog. This catalog will eventually be available online through an open source online catalog platform called TinyCat, so stay tuned for the announcement and read on to learn about Emily’s progress.

This project started with a spreadsheet.

Several years ago, a previous CHC archivist started adding books to this spreadsheet. She included fields for the basic bibliographic data needed to identify a book: title, author, publisher, date of publication, etc. However, she left the CHC before this spreadsheet was complete. I took over the project in February, checking the list against the volumes on the shelves of the library, correcting or adding information as necessary, and adding volumes that had been added to the shelves in the period after the previous archivist left and before I started.

The spreadsheet has evolved since then. I added and removed fields, changed classification systems, added call numbers, removed call numbers, added subject headings, removed subject headings, changed collection headings, and color coded EVERYTHING. It’s a work in progress.

Currently, I am almost finished assigning call numbers to every volume on our shelves. (Many more will be added later, but one step at a time.) When this step is finished, it will be time for the Great Reorganization, an all-hands-on-deck event when we will be removing everything from the stacks and reordering the collection by call number. We will be making flags to place in each volume (all 1,000+!) so users can find what they’re looking for. And every volume will be added to our online catalog, available for anyone to use, from anywhere in the world. As an archivist committed to making all information as freely accessible as possible, I am really excited for this thing to go live.

tinycat — Our front-facing online catalog. I’ve added a few volumes already to test it out. The book covers scroll by as a sort of slide show of the collection. It’s pretty neat.

*An Ode to Online Catalogs and the Library of Congress Classification System PDFs*

Many of the call numbers I’ve assigned to each volume were found in other online catalogs. The Library of Congress holds millions of volumes and must employ hordes of catalogers, so they are the definitive source for LC classification standards. WorldCat is a “global catalog of library collections” through which one can search the online catalogs of universities, public libraries, and archival collections all around the world. These sources were invaluable to me in this process. However, some of our materials are so rare they can’t be found in any other catalog. Many others were arranged in a way that didn’t make sense for our collection. For these items, I created call numbers from scratch using the Library of Congress classification schedules, basically guides to the LC Classification System, available as PDFs, that include almost any possible classification.

tinycat2 — In the search results page, you can see the call numbers for the volumes I’ve already added. F74.C1 is the basic classification for anything about the history of Cambridge.

Are you as excited about all of this as I am? Do you want to know more about the Library of Congress Classification System and why it is vastly superior to the Dewey Decimal System? Let us know in the comments!

The Archivists’ Corner: Get to know your CHC archives staff

Posted on May 23, 2017May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

This month, we are highlighting our fabulous archives staff here at the CHC. Our part-time archives assistants, interns and volunteers do it all — from processing collections and writing finding aids, to cataloging the research library, taking care of fragile objects and collections materials, and promoting it all on social media.

Our first staff post features Emily Magagnosc, Archives Assistant.

Emily grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs. Her mom is a librarian and her grandma volunteered in her local public library, so clearly Emily was destined to go into libraries. She went to undergrad at Smith College in Northampton, MA, and while there she worked in the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Museum and Library, which was the best job she’d ever had and led her to apply to the Graduate School of Library Science at Simmons College. She just finished her first year there and is very excited about all of her classes.

Emily lives with three roommates and three cats in Brighton. The most interesting thing she has found on the job is a collection of recorded (written) confessions from the early days of the church in Northampton. When she is not archiving, she is watching Parks and Recreation on repeat, listening to loud punk music, knitting, doing inappropriate embroidery, reading, and petting her cat, Russell.

Emily is working on cataloging the research library at the CHC. She also recently designed posters for the 2017 Cambridge Open Archives, writes blog and Instagram posts, and gets overly excited about the cool stuff in the archive. Her dream job is working in a women’s history collection like the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith or the Schlesinger Library at Harvard.

P0662 — A print from the William Galvin Collection, one of many architectural drawings and designs that Emily cataloged and photographed over the past several months.