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Biography, Thomas Lamont: the Ambassador from Wall Street eA Library The Boston Letter from eAthenteum No. 105 JUNE 1994 Work Proceeds on 14 Beacon Street Wing OR those readers who missed the announcement in the Annual Report for 1993, it bears repeating that the Athenreum recently signed papers purchasing parts of the basement and sub-basement of the Congregational Building at no. 14 Beacon Street, which abuts the Athenreum's current residence at no. 10'h. It will come as no surprise to those of you who have over the years put up with wails and moans in these pages about dwindling space at lOlh that this announcement was greeted with a collective sigh of relief from the hearts and souls of both the staff and the Trustees. For now (or at least in an imaginable future) most, if not all, of our vol­ umes stored off -site in places such as Allston and Lawrence will be reunited with the rest of the collection, and many members of the staff who have worked for years in offices the size of closets will be able to spread out and breathe. And the Conservation Department will expand into new and enlarged space, enabling its staff to increase in number and more efficiently service some of our ailing books that have long been pa­ tiently waiting for treatment. The move is a milestone, representing the first real estate the A thenreum has pur­ chased in nearly 100 years. And, although much noise, dust, and some inconvenience will lie ahead, the initial phase of renovation is already complete, in the form of a "demising wall" which was installed in the 14 Beacon Street building to isolate the Athenreum's space from the upper floors of that building. What has been described by Associate Director Norman Tucker as a "Titanic-sized" cast iron water tank has been removed (in pieces) from the basement, along with a collection of other metal odd­ ments that accumulated there during the years when the Thomas Todd Printing Com­ pany used some of the space for their n1assive printing presses. Some services to this basement space have been installed, notably a rudimentary wiring connection between 2 ~ nos. 10~ and 14, a project that required a clattering slow grind through the six feet of solid granite that separate the two buildings. Next on the agenda will be the creation of an access portal between the two buildings to enable the serious renovations to begin. Mr. Tucker and James Righter, Chair of the Trustee Building Committee, are continuing to refine renovation plans with our architects, Schwartz/ Silver. When completed, the new wing will house two large levels of compact shelving with the capacity to accomodate 200,000 books, sunny new offices overlooking the Granary burial site, and, as mentioned above, an enlarged and much improved facility for our Conservation Department workers. Items readers will be kept up to date as this work progresses. Welcome to Two New Trustees At its February meeting the Board of Trustees elected two new members to its ranks, Jill Ker Conway and John G. L. Cabot. Jill Conway is well known to Athenreum members from her books, which are usually read here to the point of disintegration. Born in New South Wales, which she describes so wonderfully in The Road From Coorain, she was educated at the University of Sydney, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard. From 1975 to 1985 she was president of Smith College, and since 1985 has been a Visiting Scholar and Professor at M.I. T. John G. L. Cabot was born in Rio, educated at Groton and Harvard, and is Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of the Cabot Corporation. According to his Harvard Class Report, he is an avid flyer, fond of transporting himself around the country in a Cessna P337. His expertise in computers will serve him well on our Board, as the Athenreum almost daily expands and refines its stable of electronic systems. We warmly welcome both of these new trustees. New Circulation and Fine Policies At its meeting on 15 March, the Trustee Library Committee voted to extend the circulation time for all "old" books (owned by the Athenreum for six months or more) to 60 days. "New" books (owned by the Library for six months or less) will continue to circulate for 14 days. Both new books and old books may be renewed (in person or by telephone) if no other reader is on the waiting list. At the same meeting the Committee voted to increase the fines for all overdue books from $.05 per day to $.25. Fines will accrue from the date stamped on the due slip. Book Mailing Services With the coming of summer, and the departure of many of our members for parts far from Beacon Street, our requests for books by mail pick up. Stephen Nonack, head of our Reference Department, has provided Items with a guide to the highways and byways of ordering books by mail. ~3 Requests for books by mail may be placed with the Reference Department either by telephone or by mail. To assure that requests reach the source that provides the quickest service, please direct them to the attention of Mr. N onack, Trevor 1ohnson, or Rebecka Persson, all of the Reference Department staff. Circulation Regulations are the same as for books checked out in person at the Front Desk, except for over­ sized books and volumes in fragile condition, which are seldom mailed, and materials from Special Collections, which do not circulate. When books requested are posted, or if they cannot be mailed, are on reserve, or on order, readers are informed by post­ card. The Athenceum is responsible for books mailed to readers until the books reach their destination. Replacement costs for books lost or damaged en route to the reader will be assumed by the Athenreum. Replacement costs for books damaged while in the bands of the borrower, or lost on the return trip to the Athenceum, will be charged to the borrower. Books sent by mail are wrapped in corrugated cardboard and brown paper, sealed with adhesive tape. Return labels are provided. When returning books, readers are requested to use the sa1ne or equivalent packaging material; padded envelopes (jiffy bags) are not considered sufficient protection. Also note that the U.S. Post Office no longer allows packages to be secured with string. There will be a handling fee of $.50 added to the cost of postage for each package mailed. Readers will be billed twice a year and are asked not to include remittances when they make book requests. The Athenceum pays outbound postage; the borrower is responsible for postage on all packages returned. A Mysterious Gift On the 20th of January the Director's Office received a very much appreciated con­ tribution which came in the form of a Shawmut Bank cashier's check. It arrived in one of our remittance enveolpes, but unfortunately lacked any indication of the gen­ erous donor's name. We do, of course, respect any donor's request for anonymity, but we would like to thank this particular contributor, and if he or she is so inclined we'd like to ask them to contact the Director's Office. However, if complete anonymity is desired, please accept our grateful thanks here for your thoughtful gift. I've Written a Letter .. There are five new postcards and a new notecard available at the circulation desk on the first floor. Four of the postcards reproduce pages from illustrated books in­ cluded in the exhibition "50 Books": a crimson morocco binding by Henry Bilson Legge for George Washington's own copy of his collected speeches from his library at Mt. Vernon, a sheet of butterflies from a mid-eighteenth century Dutch book illustrated by Pieter Cramer, a watercolor of scarlet tanagers by John James Au­ dubon, and two pages from a scrapbook compiled in the nineteenth century by 4 ~ James Hunnewell, which has also been reproduced as a notecard. The fifth postcard reproduces a witty photograph by Diane Asseo Griliches of the scrolls at the feet of the plaster "Lateran" Sophocles beside a stack of modern magazines, which comes from the series The Drama Within: Libraries and Their Inhabitants. Among My Souvenirs The exhibition of "Body Parts" which recently took place in the Reading Room on the first floor set its curator musing about other bits and pieces of things in the collection which are best described as "objects of curiosity," or eccentric souvenirs. The Athenreum has acquired its share of such things over the years, and Michael Wentworth has gathered some of them together in the Reading Room cases for a display guaranteed to dazzle even the most jaded gallery goer. Here, a piece of the floating battery at Fort Sumter, a chunk of the USS Kearsage, and a piece of the first transatlantic cable. There, a scrap of Pizzaro's flag from the conquest of Peru, George Washington's spur, and Mrs. McKinley's dancing shoes. And, as the auction­ eers say, much, much more. Only a piece of Dante's tomb, sent from Italy by a mem­ ber of the Perkins family in the nineteenth century, is missing-having surely long since, alas, been confused with an ordinary piece of marble and consigned to the rock pile. A correction to the January I terns article about "Body Parts": Homer, or at least the Curator of Painting and Sculpture, nodded while writing this article and, thinking Powers, wrote Greenough instead, referring to Hiram Powers' sculpture of his daughter Loulie's hand praised by Hawthorne in The Marble Faun.
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