The Newberry Library in Chicago is one of the world’s great research libraries. Most other libraries have started with a core collection, or at least a plan for developing one. The Newberry Library, founded in 1887, started with a codicil in the will of Walter L. Newberry, who died in 1868.

There never would have been a library if either of his daughters had borne children. Since they did not, Newberry bequeathed his money to found a public library. His private book collection, which should have formed its nucleus, burned in the Chicago Fire of 1871.

How was anyone supposed to create a library with no books, little instruction, and a big pile of money?

Walter L. Newberry and family

Chicago was founded as a town in 1833, with a population of about 200. The Connecticut-born Newberry arrived there the same year and became a land developer. Later, he branched out into banking, shipping, and railway development and became wealthy.

In addition to his business interests, Newberry was dedicated to reading and education. In 1841, he founded the Young Man’s Association “to establish and maintain a Reading Room and Library, and to procure Literary and Scientific Lectures, and to promote the intellectual improvement of its members.” It was a subscription library, but it kept is fees low so all classes of citizens could afford it. It was a precursor of the Chicago Library Association.

Newberry also served as acting mayor for a while before the Civil War and as president of the Chicago Historical Society from 1860 until his death.

He married Julia Clapp, a native of New York state, in 1842. The couple entertained lavishly. They had six children, but only two daughters, Julia and Mary, survived to adulthood.

After the birth of his daughters, Newberry enlisted the help of Chicago Historical Society co-founder Judge Mark Skinner to draft his will. He simply wanted to divide his goods among his heirs at his death, but he had a family history of poor health. Knowing that and Newberry’s love of books and learning, Skinner suggested a contingency clause. If both his daughters died without issue, Newberry’s fortune could be used to found a public library.

Neither daughter enjoyed particularly good health, but they enjoyed traveling. Mary contracted tuberculosis, then died of a hemorrhage in France in 1874. Julia (the younger) contracted a throat infection in Rome and died there in 1876. The widow spent the rest of her life in Paris, dying there in 1885.

The growth of Chicago and the background of the Newberry Library

Chicago grew rapidly and, in 1837, was incorporated as a city. In the years before the Civil War, it became an economic powerhouse and grew faster than any other city in the world. There seemed to be no reason why it could not surpass New York as America’s largest city.

But early Chicago had no distinguished architecture, parks, or intellectual and cultural life. New York, on the other hand, boasted a major library. The Astor Library, incorporated in 1849, had come about through the money and planning of John Jacob Astor. Boston, an older but smaller city, saw the opening of the first modern public library in 1857.

Newberry’s will specified only that the library, if any, be free and open to the public and located on the north side of Chicago. With no books, no instructions, but a lot of money, the trustees of his estate, E. W. Blatchford and William H. Bradley, could do whatever they wanted.

By that time, the Chicago Public Library had already arisen out of the ashes of the Chicago Fire, established by an act of the Illinois legislature in 1872. The trustees could have donated Newberry’s money to endow it. Instead, on July 1, 1887, they founded an institution they chose to call the Newberry Library. It would be a reference library.

The new library appeared at about the same time as other important new cultural institutions in Chicago. Besides the Chicago Public Library, these include the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (1879), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1890), the University of Chicago (1891), and the John Crerar Library (1894). In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition. A new reference library, therefore, became part of an effort to make Chicago as powerful and influential culturally and intellectually as it had long been economically.

William Frederick Poole, the first librarian of the Newberry Library

Although the trustees were well qualified to determine the direction of the new library and manage its finances, they realized that they were not equipped to build and manage a new collection. For that purpose, they lured the head of the Chicago Public Library, William Frederick Poole.

Poole had formerly been head librarian of the Boston Mercantile Library, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Cincinnati Public Library. In 1887, he was also president of the American Library Association and president-elect of the American Historical Society. While still a student, he had published an index to periodical literature, which had brought him worldwide fame. By 1882, its third edition had appeared.

Because the Chicago Public Library already served the needs of the general public, Poole chose to build a collection to satisfy the needs of scholars. The public library would have no need to acquire expensive books that comparatively few people would want to read. He wrote, “This Library will stand to the Public Library about in the same relation that universities stand to the public schools, one being for higher and the other for general education.”

Poole also planned to make the Newberry Library “complete in all its departments.” At the time, American publishers did not issue many academic monographs, so it seemed reasonable to Poole that he could acquire all of them. Besides books, Poole also acquired pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals, but not yet manuscripts and archival materials.

In 1896, however, two years after Poole’s death, the Newberry Library, the Chicago Public Library, and the newer John Crerar Library made a cooperative agreement not to duplicate each other’s efforts. From that time on, the Newberry Library specialized in the humanities and transferred of its scientific and medical holdings to the Crerar.

Collection development to start the Newberry Library

Instead of relying only on his own expertise as a bibliographer, Poole sought advice from recognized experts in various fields. He did not, however, o build a collection that could appeal to Chicago’s ethnic diversity.

In the first four years, Poole concentrated on three areas: US history (including local history and genealogy), music, and rare books. The music collection received an early boost when, in 1889, Poole purchased 750 volumes of Italian music history and theory from Florentine collector Pio Reese.

The following year, the Newberry Library purchased most of the private book collection of Henry Probasco of Cincinnati, whom Poole knew from his years as library director there. Its 2,500 volumes included Shakespeare folios and early editions of the King James Bible, as well as rare volumes of such major literary figures as Homer, Horace, and Dante.

Over the years, the Newberry Library would acquire several other major private collections, including the Ayer collection of American Indian materials, the Wing collection of the history of printing, the Graff collection of Western expansion, and the Driscoll collection of sheet music.

Designing the Newberry Library building

The Newberry Library operated out of three temporary locations before it had its own building. The trustees hired Henry Ives Cobb, who had already designed the building for the Chicago Historical Society, as architect. At first, they planned to build on Newberry’s former homestead at Pine and Ontario.

Eventually, though, they decided to build on Walton Place between Clark and Dearborn. The lot was considerably larger and close to public transportation. Ironically, building there required demolition of the Mahlon Ogden home, the only house in the path of the Chicago Fire that did not burn.

Many nineteenth-century libraries featured a large central reading room surrounded by towering book stacks. Attached balconies made the books accessible. Neither Poole nor Cobb liked that design. They both realized the necessity of planning for adding to the building in the future as the collection grew, but they agreed on little else.

Poole disliked the single large reading room because it made serious study difficult. He disliked the towering stacks because the high temperatures on the upper stories damaged the books stored there—especially the ones with leather bindings. What’s more, librarians and patrons would have to walk great distances to retrieve those books.

Instead, he wanted smaller reading rooms, each devoted to one subject area, with a specialist librarian who knew the sub-collection well. Readers with similar interests would thus be able to identify each other. Such an arrangement would make more efficient use of the library space and avoid the excessively high temperatures. He proposed a four-story square building with ten reading rooms per floor, surrounding a central courtyard.

Compromises in constructing the Newberry Library building

Cobb, on the other hand, proposed an H-shaped building with a large reading room and a centralized stack area. No longer would the stacks surround the reading room. Librarians would have an easier time of finding the books patrons requested.

The two wrote sharply worded letters to the trustees defending their own views and attacking the other’s. Eventually, the trustees leaned toward Poole’s views and Cobb drew up a plan that reflected them.

When construction was completed, the façade appeared incomplete. Notice in the picture that one stone projects beyond the edge of the building. Below that, there is a blank spot where the start of another arch would be expected. Cobb had left room for the additional wings that Poole had envisioned. They were never built.

Over the years, the librarians abandoned the idea of making the entire collection accessible to all patrons and devised closed stacks from which library staff could retrieve items patrons called for. Poole got his smaller reading rooms. Cobb got his central stacks.

And Poole’s courtyard? That was never built, either. In 1982, the library used that space to add a new stacks building.

Sources:

Chicago’s original “old guard” included the library Newberrys / Megan McKinney, Classic Chicago Magazine
Class and culture in late nineteenth-century Chicago: The founding of the Newberry Library / Paul Finkelman. American Studies (Spring 1974), 5-22
The story behind the stacks: How Newberry Library came to be / Theresa Goodrich, Your Chicago Guide. February 3, 2023
Why does the Newberry Building Look Unfinished? / Matthew Clarke, Newberry Library. February 6, 2019