JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNALJOURNAL

Widener Library: Youthful at the Core The rejuvenation of Widener Library pro- gresses. The Phillips Reading Room opened for use in October, a major new something-to-see. It is one of two nearly iden- tical reading rooms built within the perimeter of Photograph by Jim Harrison

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the stacks in the former light courts on ei- without Harvard identification ther side of the rotunda at the center of the cards who are granted library building—grand spaces and a valuable en- privileges, people who hereto- hancement to the building Mrs. Widener fore might have been permitted gave to Harvard nine decades ago. access to the stacks. Thus, an Any library patron may use Phillips, Egyptologist visiting from the and will appreciate the room’s quiet and University of Bergen will go to agreeable atmosphere, but it is specifi- an assigned seat in Phillips, and

cally a “controlled” reading room, where material from the Widener COURTESY WIDENER LIBRARY books that are not housed in the open stacks, or from the Harvard Depository, rity in general, the library speeded up stacks and do not circulate—usually, valu- will be brought to that seat for use in the planned installation of machines that able books—may be used under the hawk reading room. The reading matter can be read identification cards at the entrances eye of a librarian. Phillips is intended to held in or near the room for several days to the building and to the stacks. Now thwart thieves and mutilators of books, for the scholar’s return visits. Library one swipes one’s Harvard ID card to gain persons who occasionally in the past have sta≠ promise they will cheerfully bring all admittance. enjoyed the seclusion of the stacks. that is requested so that the Bergenser Phase 1 of the Widener rehabilitation, The room will also—and, again, to pro- will not be wholly denied the opportu- with a project cost of $56 million, should tect the collection—accommodate people nity for serendipitous discoveries that be complete by the end of March. Its browsing the stacks focus is on the stacks and the guts of the allows—and will elderly building. Librarians are moving have a place to sit all the books in an elaborate minuet so while making them. that work on each of the 10 stack levels The room’s name can go forward, and they are dusting the recognizes the gen- books in the process, no small job. A erosity of Charles team is selecting 10 percent of the books Phillips ’70, M.B.A. for o≠-site storage to make room for fu- ’72, and his wife, ture acquisitions. The stacks have better Candace (Robert- lighting, a new sprinkler system, and a son) Phillips. network of new, orange, smoke-detector With heightened pipes. The lighting system enhances per- concern about secu- sonal security because any motion in the stacks turns on the lights. For the first Left and previous page: Filling what was time the air is regulated, with a tempera- formerly the east light ture of 68 degrees Fahrenheit and humid- court is the Phillips ity ranging from a winter minimum of 30 Reading Room. The percent to a summer maximum of 50 per- ceiling is mostly glass—some clear, cent. The favored faculty members with most clouded or “ob- study o∞ces in Widener are now or will scure.” “We put a be similarly aerated. When the work is video camera inside a model of the room,” complete, HOLLIS terminals will be says project manager found on every floor and photocopiers on Jeffrey Cushman, “and every other. All the study carrels will be a computer-generated refurbished, and each will have a data program simulated the movement of shafts of jack. The east side of the stacks is done; sunlight across the workers on the west are moving from the walls with different bottom up. combinations of clear and obscure glass and The second of the two new reading at different seasons. rooms, intended ultimately for the use of We didn’t want direct any patron wishing to leave the stacks sun to hit the tables.” and sit down with a book in comfort, will The controlled reading room offers safety for be used during Phase 2 of operations as books, comfort for hu- temporary quarters for books and library mans. Above: The sta≠ members. These are days of discom- naked stacks. Renova- bobulation, but, notes project manager tions include an up- grade of all building Je≠rey Cushman ’69, Ds ’77, “The books

JIM HARRISON systems. don’t complain when you move them.”

56 January - February 2002

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When a construction crew demolished a wall on the east years,” she wrote,“but fi- side of the level-2 stacks in Widener during Phase 1 of renova- nally those at the sides tions, they came upon a tarnished bronze plaque mounted in a began to grow tall sud- crevice inside the wall. An inscription read: “Here worked denly, reached the middle Addie Frances Rowe, 1860-1938, Friend and Aider of Scholars.” of the high windows, and Research in the Harvard Archives revealed that Rowe kept on growing up….I

worked at Harvard for 45 of her 78 years, helping to prepare have cut off the top of JIM HARRISON the books of University professors and visiting scholars for the tallest plant (over six A plaque discovered in a wall during publication. She had no official title or job description, so far as feet tall and in the same Widener renovations. Below: A neglected vault yielded up treasures, is known, and indeed she may not have been an employee of little pot it started in!) among them a seal used by Isaac Harvard at all, being paid instead by publishers or authors. At twice by a foot at least, Royall, who funded the University’s first she worked in the history department, proofreading and else it would long ago first chair in the law, to emboss his checking references, and then moved over to the English de- have reached the top of family’s arms on documents. partment. In August of 1915 she became the first non-faculty the window and been blossoming in the next stall above.” person to be assigned a study carrel in the stacks of the newly After Rowe’s death, the director of the library readily al- finished Widener—carrel 209.There she sat for 23 years per- lowed the commemorative plaque to be put up in the stacks. fecting the works of others. Now released from its subsequent entombment in a wall, it is English professor Hyder E. Rollins and Rowe teamed on on display with other items of interest concerning the renova- many projects, and she judged him “one of my dearest friends.” tions underway. He urged her to write the story of her life, which she did with Further in the lost-and-found department: a facilities-mainte- great economy of words, and it was printed after her death by nance person from Widener, getting ready for construction in the Harvard University Press in an edition of 55 copies, which the area of the rotunda off the Harry Elkins Widener Room, Rollins distributed largely to her friends and family. He con- came upon a vault in a closet. It contained an arresting array tributed an introduction. of items, and thinking that he had discovered buried trea- “She became progressively more odd-looking,” he wrote. sure—forgotten curiosities, at least—librarians sent up a glad “Style and dress meant nothing to her, as they are popularly shout, noticed in the media. As things turned out, the vault was supposed to mean nothing to all scholars. The quaintness of a storage spot for the Widener Room curators, who are actu- her ‘costumes,’ though it often caused smiles in a neighbor- ally Houghton Library staff members.They were well aware of hood where (according to the libels of outlanders) women are the vault and its contents. The drama of the discovery dissi- noted for their lack of style, would have attracted little, if any, pated.The library’s conservation laboratory made a formal in- attention in the British Museum.” ventory of the vault’s contents, did some preservation work on Rowe had another talent. She kept a signature array of various pieces, and distributed them all to Houghton, the Har- pink and red pelargoniums in her study carrel, and they grew vard Archives, and other libraries. Law School librarians, for in- to heights unprecedented in Rollins’s experience and aston- stance, were pleased to get an iron seal once used by Isaac ishing to Rowe herself. They “were small for a number of Royall, who funded the University’s first chair in the law by a HARVARD LAW SCHOOL BULLETIN gift of land in 1779.The vault also contained, in part, commem- orative medals, postcards, sabers, uniforms, silver spoons and forks, a bronze of Abraham Lincoln, a plaster bust of Mussolini, and a lock of George Washington’s hair. “In collectors’ circles,” says Beth Brainard, the library’s director of communications, “there are as many locks of George’s hair floating around as there are pieces of the Cross.”

that needs to be “This renewal includes not only the done. As with the restoration of the original architectural books, we will re- features and finishes,” says Susan Lee, as- Phase 2, with a project cost of $32 mil- arrange, consolidate, and make sense of sociate librarian for planning and admin- lion, began last June and will run into the administrative and public spaces. The istration, “but also the creation of new 2004. “There’s a lot of marble in this back-o∞ce functions will move down in spaces for programmatic use.” Thus, ref- building,” acknowledges Cushman, “and the building. Busy, interactive services erence services and the periodicals read- it won’t be restored to perfection. But by will be separated from the reading rooms. ing area, which have long encroached on 2004 we will have done just about all else Things will get quieter as one goes up.” the main Loker Reading Room on the

Harvard Magazine 57

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second floor, will be ousted from that impressive cham- ber. A new reference and re- search-services room will be provided adjacent to the Loker Room. In it, patrons will be able to confer with li- brarians without disturbing readers or the somnolent, as now happens. A new periodicals room will be created on the first floor—the level on which visi- tors enter, at the top of the sweep of steps in front—and that floor will become a hub connecting patrons with the various parts of the library. Near the periodicals room will be a new space in which to read microtext files of old Above: In the second phase of the Widener renovation, newspapers. O∞ces for ad- reference services and the periodicals reading area will move, restoring the main reading room to its former dimen- ministrators and for those in sions. Right, top: The new periodicals room. Right, bottom: charge of collection develop- The reference room to be. ment, who have numerous contacts with faculty members and non- main entrance to the stacks and to the Harvard people, will also be on this floor, new reading rooms one floor above will according to Lynda Leahy, associate li- be there, too. brarian for research and instruction. So “When this project is complete,” says will an expanded privileges o∞ce to wel- Lee, “Widener Library will be reestab- come the large number of visiting Egyp- lished as a modern facility that can com- tologists and others, who sometimes fortably accommodate both books and form long lines in today’s facility. The users for decades to come.”

versity of Cambridge as a Mellon Fellow tors, and an annual budget of $1.2 billion. Second in Command in the philosophy of science, earning B.A. Among his priorities there, he cited “re- In his installation address on Octo- and M.A. degrees. After earning his M.D., search that links information about basic ber 12 and in a subsequent talk to alumni he became an intern in medicine at Massa- biological and genetic processes to re- 15 days later, President Lawrence H. Sum- chusetts General Hospital (MGH), a resi- search on behavior,” with the goal of mov- mers emphasized that e≠orts to bring the dent in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, ing information “as quickly as possible University community together intellec- and a postdoctoral fellow in molecular bi- from the laboratory to new clinical uses tually and otherwise, and scientific re- ology. At Harvard Medical School (HMS) and to strategies for preventing mental search and education, would be two he rose to become professor of psychiatry, disorders.” He has also emphasized “enor- themes of his administration. Matching directing the school’s division on addic- mously expanded research on how to im- action to agenda, on October 29 he an- tions from 1992 to 1995 as well as psychia- prove the e≠ectiveness of current treat- nounced the appointment of Steven E. try research at MGH from 1992 to 1996. ments for several major mental disorders” Hyman, M.D. ’80, as provost, Harvard’s Ranging widely across Harvard, too, he in clinical settings, including bipolar dis- second-ranking academic and executive was also the first faculty director of the in- order, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, o∞cer. Hyman was scheduled to begin terdisciplinary mind/brain/behavior pro- and depression. An NIMH colleague said, work on December 10, shortly after this gram (see “Mind, Brain, and Behavior,” “Steve did great things here for those with issue went to press. November-December 1994, page 36). mental disorders by blending scientific Hyman’s career is the archetype of sci- In 1996, Hyman was appointed director opportunity with public-health needs.” entific curiosity and boundary-crossing. A of the National Institute of Mental Health As a public spokesman on mental 1974 Yale graduate in philosophy and the (NIMH), where he has overseen a sci- health, Hyman drew on all the tools in his humanities, he then journeyed to the Uni- entific sta≠ of 1,000, some 300 administra- pedagogical portfolio. In 1997 testimony

58 January - February 2002 Illustrations courtesy Widener Library

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