The John Hay Library (known colloquially as the Hay) is the second oldest library on the campus of
Brown University
Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...
in
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Rhode Island, most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The county seat of Providence County, Rhode Island, Providence County, it is o ...
, United States. It is located on Prospect Street opposite the
Van Wickle Gates. After its construction in 1910, the Hay Library became the main library building on campus, replacing the building now known as Robinson Hall. Today, the John Hay Library is one of five individual libraries that make up the University Library. The Hay houses the University Library's rare books and manuscripts, the University Archives, and the Library's special collections.
History
By the early 1890s, Brown's 1878 library building had become insufficient in housing the university's growing collection. In 1906, Andrew Carnegie contributed $150,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) towards the construction of a new library building. At Carnegie's request, the library was named in honor of his late companion Secretary of State
John Hay
John Milton Hay (October 8, 1838July 1, 1905) was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a Secretary to the President of the United States, private secretary for Abraha ...
(Class of 1858).
The building was constructed to a design by the Boston architectural firm of
Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge in the
Beaux-Arts style. The structure was initially intended to be built of limestone, though was ultimately constructed of white marble quarried in
Dorset, Vermont. The library was opened on September 24 and dedicated on November 10, 1910.
In 1939, a new wing was constructed to the north of the original building.
The addition was designed by
Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott in the Georgian style and constructed of red brick. As part of the renovation, the main reading room was split into three areas by bookshelves.
The
John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library became Brown's main library in 1964, with the John Hay Library retaining the university's special collections. The library provided temporary quarters for the Physical Sciences Library until the
Sciences Library was built in 1971. The John Hay Library was completely renovated and rededicated on September 21, 1981. A major renovation of the library headed by
Selldorf Architects began in 2013. The building was closed on June 1, 2013, and reopened in Fall 2014.
The renovation reconfigured the library's main floor, doubled the exhibition space, and returned the main reading room to its original design.
Special collections
The Library houses Brown's Special Collections division, including those materials that require special handling and preservation. Although many of the items in Special Collections are rare or unique, a majority of the materials are part of large subject-oriented collections which are maintained as discrete units. Altogether, Special Collections consists of over 250 separate collections, numbering some 2.5 million items.
Notable collections include:
*
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection – graphics, books and miniature soldiers
* Brown University Archives – official university records, photographs, university publications, student group records, artifacts, and personal papers
* Colonel
George Earl Church Collection – South American explorer and geographer, 3,500 personal manuscripts and letters, plus books
*
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of Weird fiction, weird, Science fiction, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Provi ...
Collection – personal manuscripts and letters; the library houses the largest collection of Lovecraft materials in the world
*
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon sim ...
Collection – books from personal library and journal manuscripts
*
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...
Collection – includes the original manuscript of ''
Nineteen Eighty-Four
''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also published as ''1984'') is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically ...
'' – Orwell's only surviving literary manuscript
*Drowne Collection – the personal library of
Dr. Solomon Drowne, including an engraving by
Paul Revere
Paul Revere (; December 21, 1734 O.S. (January 1, 1735 N.S.)May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith, military officer and industrialist who played a major role during the opening months of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts, ...
*Lownes Collection – Brown's most extensive science collection, contains a copy of ''
Siderius Nuncius'' annotated by Galileo himself
Other notable items include a
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
, the first two editions of Copernicus's ''
De Revolutionibus'' (1543, 1566)'','' a copy of
Giambattista Vico
Giambattista Vico (born Giovan Battista Vico ; ; 23 June 1668 – 23 January 1744) was an Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist during the Italian Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationali ...
’s ''
The New Science'' (1730) annotated by the author,
King George III
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland, Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and ...
’s copy of
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...
’s ''
Notes on the State of Virginia'', a first edition of ''
Leaves of Grass
''Leaves of Grass'' is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. After self-publishing it in 1855, he spent most of his professional life writing, revising, and expanding the collection until his death in 1892. Either six or nine separa ...
'' inscribed by
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...
and
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
(1855),
T.S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
's copy of ''
The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' () is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, a mysterious mi ...
'' (1925)'','' and 27
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...
n clay tablets and cones.
Anthropodermic book collection
The John Hay Library is well known for its collection of
anthropodermic books (books bound in human skin). The Hay acquired the books in the 1960s as gifts from two alumni, at least one an avid book collector. The books were not originally bound in human skin, but were instead rebound for private collectors in the 19th century. The library has four such human-skin books:
* ''
De Humanis Corporis Fabrica'' (
Andreas Vesalius
Andries van Wezel (31 December 1514 – 15 October 1564), latinized as Andreas Vesalius (), was an anatomist and physician who wrote '' De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem'' (''On the fabric of the human body'' ''in seven books''), which is ...
, 1543)
* ''
Dance of Death'' (
Hans Holbein the Younger
Hans Holbein the Younger ( , ; ; – between 7 October and 29 November 1543) was a German-Swiss painter and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style, and is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He ...
, 1816)
*''
Dance of Death'' (
Hans Holbein the Younger
Hans Holbein the Younger ( , ; ; – between 7 October and 29 November 1543) was a German-Swiss painter and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style, and is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He ...
, 1898)
*''
Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife'' (
Adolphe Belot, 1891)
Brown University Archives
The University Archives serves as the institutional memory of the university by collecting, preserving, and making accessible the materials that provide evidence of past University actions and contribute to an understanding of the university's structure and its history. For the definitive reference work on the history, people, and places of Brown University, please consult the ''
Encyclopedia Brunoniana'' by Martha Mitchell.
The records of the Corporation that governs Brown University are in the University Archives. They consist of minutes, correspondence, reports, and committee records of the corporation from 1763 to the present. The earliest Corporation records are part of a collection called Rhode Island College miscellaneous papers. These records document the founding of the university, relocation from Warren to Providence, building of
University Hall, George Washington's visit in 1790, and other business of the college, ending with
Nicholas Brown's letter donating $5,000, which changed the name of the college from Rhode Island College to Brown University and at the same time established the first endowed professorship.
The Archives contains papers of
Brown's presidents, select faculty and alumni papers, student organization records, and university publications. There are over 60,000 photographs depicting campus scenes, buildings, groups, events, student activities, athletic teams and events, and individual faculty members, students, and alumni preserved and accessible in the University Archives. Some have been digitized are available at Images of Brown.
The
Edward North Robinson Collection of Brown Athletics represents over 150 years of
athletics at Brown. Consisting of photographs, moving images, artifacts, posters, drawings, cartoons, administrative records, and publications, this collection traces the earliest days of athletic competition at Brown and
Pembroke up through the modern era. This collection is supported through an endowment created by Jackson Robinson (Class of 1964), the grandson of famed Brown football coach. Edward North Robinson.
The Christine Dunlap Farnham Archive
The Christine Dunlap Farnham Archive identifies collections with materials pertaining to women within Special Collections and University Archives. Collections in the Farnham Archive document the history of women in Brown University and
Pembroke College, the post-graduate lives of Brown alumnae, and the lives of Rhode Island women. The collections document the lives of prominent women but also chronicle the lives and work of ordinary women. In addition to correspondence, diaries, photographs, newspapers, yearbooks, and memorabilia, it also includes a collection of
oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from
people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who pa ...
tapes and videos. A ''Research Guide to the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives'' was published in 1989, which includes more than 1,000 entries describing the collection.
Also included within the Farnham Archive is the
Feminist Theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or Philosophy, philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's Gender role, social roles, experiences, intere ...
Archive, inaugurated in 2002, which preserves the legacies of prominent feminist thinkers. This collection continues the
Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women's commitment to documenting the contributions of feminist scholars to cutting-edge research and making their papers available to scholars.
References
External links
*
Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives
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Library buildings completed in 1910
Brown University libraries
Carnegie libraries in Rhode Island
Literary archives in the United States
Special collections libraries in the United States
University and college buildings completed in 1910
1910 establishments in Rhode Island