qTHE uarto No. 35 THE CLEMENTS LIBRARY ASSOCIATES Spring–Summer 2011 FROM THE DIRECTOR “ lovely little library, newly tone that has held true for nearly ninety indeed that we get to do our daily work opened for graduate stu- years. Visitors to the Clements know as here. dents, the Clements Library, soon as they walk up the front steps and This issue of The Quarto looks deserves a visit of its own.” into the Great Room that ours is a spe- at the architecture and three-dimensional cial building, one that matches the ele- collections of the Library. We sprinkled A When Ora B. Cole stopped in gance and ambience of the world’s great illustrations of the building’s architec- Ann Arbor in 1924 as part of a driving libraries. With modern American tural details throughout our new book, tour of the Midwest, the Clements library architecture increasingly dotting An Americana Sampler: Essays on Library had been open for less than the landscape with steel-and-glass rect- Selections from the William L. Clements a year. Although her reaction to the angles reminiscent of the finest apart- Library, and assembling those pictures Library, privately printed in a little vol- ment complexes of Stalin’s Russia, the made us realize that the subject merits ume Cole called The Book of Dorothy beauty and elegance of the Clements more attention. Clayton Lewis writes and Me, got our initial audience wrong becomes more noteworthy every day. It about architect Albert Kahn and his (Mr. Clements did not want either is rare for such remarkable collections to efforts to bring Mr. Clements’s vision to undergraduate or graduate students inhabit such a wonderful structure, and life, painstaking work that Kahn’s son using his collection), it set a reverential my WLCL colleagues and I are thankful later said resulted in his father’s favorite ARCHITECTURE AND ARTIFACTS enerations of University brother, Julius, as chief engineer, of Michigan students he pioneered the use of steel- and alumni have com- reinforced concrete and large mented countless times, glass areas to make huge, natu- “I’ve always wondered what’s rally lit architectural spaces, Gin there,” as they walk past the qualities needed in an expanding Renaissance-style William L. mechanized world. He is known Clements Library. From the ele- for creating much of industrial gant architecture they can see that and residential Detroit as well as this is not just any library. The hundreds of factories, commer- long walk from the street to the cial structures, and educational heavy bronze doors inhibits facilities across the United States many, but those who make the and other countries. journey find themselves vividly Kahn’s industrial complex- transported in time by the beau- es were “artistic buildings” that tiful building and the collection had “done much to beautify the it houses. What the Clements district,” according to contempo- “Albert Kahn Associates. Elevation of Loggia, 1921. William L. Clements Library.” The Renaissance-Revival details are evident in this Library does best is provide the rary news accounts. When a construction drawing. Courtesy, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. deep-dive immersion into rare team of Soviet engineers visited historical materials that inspires Detroit in the 1930s, they were among his hundreds of commissions. $2. The Director recommends that the has set aside for the project is sufficient, great scholarship. The architec- impressed with the numerous Mary Pedley provides details on the Committee present it to Miss Steere.” we might expect to begin in the spring ture is a wonderful prelude to the Kahn projects and hired him as Library’s small but impressive collec- The record is silent on the committee’s or summer of 2012—but if the cost esti- intense research experience. a consultant. A group overseen tion of globes; let me add here that as a decision on this momentous administra- mates are higher than $10 million, the Although the architecture by Albert’s brother Moritz good Vermont boy I am eager to add a tive matter, but you have to hope they Library must raise the balance before has always been one of the supervised the training of over pair of globes by James Wilson, went along with Dr. Adams’s recom- work can start. When all is ready to go, great assets of the Library, it has 1,000 Soviet engineers, who America’s first-globe maker, to our mendation. we will have to move everything out of also presented the staff with would then construct more than holdings. Julie Fremuth, the Library’s This issue’s focus on the building the building, and the architects tell us it daily issues. The design has 500 factories across the U.S.S.R. longest-serving employee, tells readers comes at an appropriate time. The will be at least eighteen months before attracted many admirers, while Albert Kahn was directly about our efforts to preserve the physi- Library and the University have begun we return. The logistics of moving out, intimidating some would-be visi- involved in more than a thousand cal condition of all our treasures. And a serious planning for a renovation project of maintaining services to researchers tors. Originally conceived as an commissions from 1895 to the photo section offers a glimpse of the that will restore the look and feel of the while we are rusticated (to a structure inspiring space for a small, exclu- 1940s. His firm, Albert Kahn good, the bad and the ugly three-dimen- structure and bring our plumbing, wir- four miles south of 909 South sive collection and a few privi- Associates, employed 600 peo- sional items any library that has been ing, fire suppression, security, climate- University), and of moving back will be leged people, the Clements is ple at its peak and is active to collecting for eighty-eight years inevita- control, and other systems into the complicated, to the point that some today the overtaxed and antiquat- this day. It is safe to say that bly accumulates. twenty-first century. If planning goes Clements staff members are now invest- ed home to an expanding, world- Kahn was one of America’s Some things we get are wonderful well and if the $10 million the University ing in time-machine schemes to jump class institution. In spite of its most influential architects. complements to the paper collec- them four or five years into the functional shortcomings, it is a In the early twentieth cen- tions, but others, alas, are not. The future so they can skip all the tur- privilege to work in this great tury, the University of Michigan minutes of the June 10, 1937, moil. When the renovations are architectural setting, even in a was growing apace with the Committee of Management meet- done, however, and we return to basement office. A walk through booming city of Detroit. By ing records, “The gifts of furniture this wonderful structure, it will the Great Hall of the Clements— 1909 Clements was a regent of from Mrs. Clements give the work better—for the staff, for visi- rich in oaken shadows and glints the University, and Kahn was on library an ample supply. We do tors, for researchers, and for gener- of brass and lined with tooled- the verge of transforming the not know what to do with one ations of our successors. That will leather bindings and oil-painted campus. A strong working rela- small, hideous oak desk (ca. 1890) make it all seem worthwhile, my canvases—obliterates the unseen tionship grew between Albert which Mr. Clements once sent to friends. operational and logistical chal- Kahn Associates and the Ann Arbor because he did not — J. Kevin Graffagnino lenges, at least momentarily. University of Michigan that know what else to do with it. Miss Director To fully appreciate the resulted in seventeen Kahn Elizabeth Steere, who has served institution, it is vital to know its buildings on campus, including Printed postcard views of the distinctive Mr. Clements and the Library long George Washington’s coat of arms, history. The remarkable architect from such landmarks as Hill Auditorium, Clements building were available soon and faithfully, offers $10 for the displayed high on the loggia façade, Detroit, Albert Kahn (1869–1942), Burton Memorial Tower, and Angell after the Library opened. These exam- desk, because she wants it as a was inaccurately rendered in stone. plays a starring role. Kahn was an Hall. His proven techniques of factory ples are from its first decades of opera- memento of Mr. Clements. A sec- Mr. Clements recognized the error innovator of the industrial age. With construction made Kahn an excellent tion. ond hand dealer has appraised it at but never told architect Albert Kahn. his University of Michigan alumnus Page 2 The Quarto The Quarto Page 3 choice for the rare the state. The deli- each side of the facade. Imagine the its book and manuscript holdings and way as it regards printed and manuscript book library pro- cacy of the architec- pressure of the assignment—composing added maps, culinary history, and graph- paper in that it is first and foremost a posed by William tural style and detail timeless mottoes to be literally carved in ics. As the use and content of the col- research library that seeks content-rich Clements in 1919. masks the strength stone on a library named for a living lection has changed, so too has the materials. For practical reasons we nor- Looking to of its construction. regent. Although known for his contro- building. Spaces designed to be offices mally shy away from acquiring decora- the John Carter Kahn built a tough, versial opinions on the economic and and reading rooms are now overcrowded tive objects and museum pieces, as they Brown Library at secure vault of steel, social aspects of American slavery, stacks areas, despite growth of the staff take up needed space and can present Brown University concrete, and stone Professor Phillips was rewarded with an from just three to over twenty.