History
Widener Library, which opened with a solemn ceremony on June 24, 1915, commemorates Harry Elkins Widener (born January 3, 1885 in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania), a 1907 Harvard graduate, who was a book collector and victim of the Titanic disaster. His mother, Eleanor Elkins, made a $3.5 million donation to Harvard University to build a library named after him. The library was designed by Horace Trumbauer & Associates, the architect of many private houses for the intertwined Elkins and Widener families of Philadelphia including the renowned Lynnewood Hall. The Associate responsible for designing Widener Library was the chief designer of the firm, architect Julian F. Abele, the first major African American architect.
From approximately 1997 to 2004, Widener Library underwent a comprehensive renovation costing $97 million that included: adding fire suppression systems, adding air conditioning, enclosing light courts, and remodeling the stacks and public spaces. According to a campus legend, under the terms of the Widener family donation, the exterior of the library is never to be altered, or else ownership of the building reverts to the city of Cambridge. Because of this, Harvard has always been limited and creative in its renovation options, including the building of a causeway to neighboring Houghton Library through what was a large window (though this bridge existed well before the present renovation).
Read more about this topic: Widener Library
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)