PIRC Collection Highlights
Horace Trumbauer
Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library,Three Sections
October 30, 1912
Sepia
This drawing, dated October 30, 1912, shows three sections of Widener Library, the largest of the 90 libraries comprising the Harvard University Library system. The top drawing is a melding of two half sections, one looking from the North and other from the South. Note that at the center and heart of the building on the mezzanine level between the first and second floors is the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Room housing his personal collection of 3,500 rare books. The main reading room, shown in the middle drawing, extends nearly the entire width of the library. Unprecedented in scale, this space provides an impressive environment for library patrons. The bottom drawing clearly shows the nine levels of stacks located on the east and west sides of the building. Today, these shelving units house more than 4 million volumes.
The Harry Elkins Widener Library was presented by Mrs. Eleanor Elkins Widener as a memorial to her son who lost his life in the Titanic disaster of 1912. As a condition of her gift, Mrs. Widener stipulated that the library should be designed by Horace Trumbauer (1869-1938). A life-long resident of Philadelphia, Trumbauer was self-trained as an architect and established his own firm in 1892. He completed many other commissions for the Widener family, including Lynwood Hall at Elkins Park (1898), Widener Home for Crippled Children (1904), Widener Office Building (1915) and the Widener Memorial Training School (n.d.). Widener Library was built on the site of Gore Hall, the previous library which was far too small to house the growing collections. Unlike Gore Hall, Widener was oriented away from Massachusetts Avenue and toward Tercentenary Theater, making this green a center of the university.
Sert, Jackson and Gourley, Architects
Holyoke Center, South Elevation
October 25, 1961
Pencil on vellum
Holyoke Center, the main administrative building on Harvard's campus, was designed by Josep Lluis Sert and constructed in two phases. This drawing, dated October 25, 1961, shows the south or Mt. Auburn Street elevation which was completed during Phase I. This drawing details the combination of diffused, clear, translucent, opaque and patterned glass that combines to create the building's facade. In an effort to integrate Holyoke Center with its environment, the fenestration was scaled to match the windows of the neighboring Georgian structures. The large, open doorway in the center of the first floor opens into the arcade which runs the length of the building, one city block. Holyoke Center was intended as a connector between Harvard Yard and the River Houses, the dorms situated along the Charles.
Sert played a crucial role in the shape of Harvard architecture in the 1960's, completing numerous projects, including Holyoke Center, Peabody Terrace, the Science Center and the Center for the Study of World Religions. A student of Le Corbusier, Sert was deeply interested in the relationship between humans and the built environment, creating strong geometric forms and striking facades perhaps better suited for the intense sunlight of his native Spain than the often gray skies of Massachusetts. Nonetheless, Sert's buildings responded with intelligence and innovation to the pressing issue of land scarcity in Cambridge, preserving green spaces by building high-rise blocks with wings on a scale with neighboring buildings.
Ware and Van Brunt
Memorial Hall, Detail of Memorial Transept
n.d., Ink on paper
Memorial Hall was the generous gift of a group of alumni, known as the Committee of Fifty, who wanted to present the University with a memorial to the 136 Harvard students and graduates who lost their lives while defending the Union in the Civil War. At the same time, they wanted to provide a practical solution to the University's pressing need for space to accommodate alumni gatherings and literary events. The architects selected for the commission, Walter Ware and Henry Van Brunt, were both recent Harvard graduates. Their tripartite design successfully accomplished the alumni's multiple goals by dividing the building into Memorial Transept, Sanders Theatre, and Alumni (later Annenberg) Hall, each distinct, yet unified by an ornamented, Ruskinian Gothic exterior of polychromatic slate and brick. The interior is further embellished with painted surfaces, stone carvings, tiles, woodwork, and stained glass windows, many donated by individual Harvard classes.
This drawing shows a partial section of an interior wall of the Memorial Transept. Note the legend located in the lower left hand corner of the drawing which details the various colors and materials to be used. The colonnade occupying the lower third of the wall frames commemorative plaques inscribed with the names of those fallen in the war, only loosely sketched in this drawing. Presumably the notes in the left-hand margin are by one of the Harvard officials that reviewed and closely monitored Memorial Hall's design as it progressed.
Peabody and Stearns
Newell Boat House, East elevation
n.d., Blueprint
Begun in 1899 and rebuilt in 1900 following a devastating fire during its original construction, the Newell Boat House was the first permanent structure for such use at Harvard. Funded by the Harvard Club of New York City and designed by Robert Peabody of Peabody and Stearns, the boathouse is notable for its red and gray slate exterior and the then state of the art interior, including two indoor tanks for practice rowing and several "ergs" or stationary rowing machines.
Peabody and Stearns were both graduates of Harvard College and students of Henry Van Brunt. Following the death of H. H. Richardson in 1886, their Boston firm was perhaps the most important architectural office in the city, producing a vast number of office buildings, town and city halls, academic buildings, and houses. The firm, in general, and Robert Peabody, in particular, practiced a wide variety of styles ranging from Renaissance to Georgian and from Queen Anne to Colonial Revival. A testament to their fame, Peabody and Stearns were commissioned to design Machinery Hall at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Peabody was apparently influenced by the remarkable Japanese Pavilion which he encountered at the Columbian Exposition, as the roofline of this structure closely resembles the gently curved lines of the Newell Boat House roof.
McKim, Mead and White
Proposed Fence Harvard University
c. 1899, Ink on linen
This drawing, dating probably from 1899, shows McKim's proposal for the Memorial Fence on the northwest side of the Harvard Yard stretching from Johnston Gate to Meyer Gate, both designed by McKim and built in 1889-90 and 1890-91 respectively. Following the University's adoption of his plans for enclosing the Yard, McKim took special interest in the northwest side, insisting that the height of the fence be coordinated with the Phillips Brooks House, designed by A. W. Longfellow and then under construction. As demonstrated in the drawing, McKim believed that the fence "should be diminished...from that of the lower side panels of the front [Johnston] gate." Interestingly, not all the gates McKim has included in this drawing were built. While the gate west of Holworthy Hall was designed by McKim and built in 1901, those depicted at the center of Stoughton Hall and Hollis Hall were not. Instead, McKim designed a gate for the Class of 1870 that was built in 1901 directly in front of Holden Chapel. Over the next few years, McKim and his assistants would design eleven more commemorative gates for Harvard Yard.
McKim, Mead and White was one of the most important architectural firms of the late 19th century, and for nearly thirty years the world's largest practice. The firm rose to prominence designing summerhouses for the wealthy before switching to civic architecture designed with a strict regard for historical precedence particularly of America, the restrained use of ornament to articulate space and functionality, utilitarian interior spaces, and fine workmanship and materials.
Charles Follen McKim, a Harvard alumnus, had a significant impact on the architectural environment of Harvard, completing many important commissions such as Robinson Hall (1900), the Harvard Union (1901), and the campus plan for Radcliffe College (1897). As early as 1888, McKim proposed and designed an enclosure of Harvard Yard much as it appears today, recommending brick piers and wrought iron fences interrupted at critical points by memorial gates in a Georgian style. McKim sought to replace the low rustic fence then surrounding the Yard with a more stately, formal enclosure that would restore a sense of order and repose. While it took ten years to gain Harvard's acceptance, McKim eventually succeeded not only in shaping the identity of Harvard Yard, but in returning architecture to a Georgian style in harmony with the University's oldest buildings, a phase in Harvard's building history that would prevail for the next two generations.