Houghton Library , on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library , Lamont Library , and Loeb House, is Harvard University 's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences . The collections of Houghton Library include the Harvard Theatre Collection and the Woodberry Poetry Room , as well as the personal papers and archives of major American and English writers.
5-492: Harvard's first special collections library began as the Treasure Room of Gore Hall in 1908. The Treasure Room moved to the newly built Widener Library in 1915. In 1938, looking to supply Harvard's most valuable holdings with more space and improved storage conditions, Harvard College Librarian Keyes DeWitt Metcalf made a series of proposals which eventually led to the creation of Houghton Library, Lamont Library , and
10-475: The 54th Massachusetts during the Civil War, and was killed during the assault on Fort Wagner . Houghton mounts periodic exhibitions, open to the public, of various of its holdings. Houghton has five main curatorial departments: 42°22′23.5″N 71°06′57.4″W / 42.373194°N 71.115944°W / 42.373194; -71.115944 Gore Hall Gore Hall was a historic building on
15-604: The Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts , designed by Richard Bond . Gore Hall was Harvard's first dedicated library building, a Gothic structure built in 1838 of Quincy granite and named in honor of Harvard graduate and Massachusetts Governor Christopher Gore . In 1846, Harvard President Edward Everett was asked to design a seal for the newly incorporated City of Cambridge, and he identified Gore and Washington Elm as two icons encircled by
20-711: The New England Deposit Library . Funding for Houghton was raised privately, with the largest portion coming from Arthur A. Houghton Jr. , in the form of stock in Corning Glass Works . Construction was largely completed by the fall of 1941, and the library opened on February 28, 1942. Along with much else, Houghton holds collections of papers of Samuel Johnson , Emily Dickinson , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Margaret Fuller , John Keats , Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family, Amos Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott , along with
25-399: The papers of other notable transcendentalists . Significant collections include those relating to Theodore Roosevelt , T.S. Eliot , E.E. Cummings , Henry James , William James , James Joyce , John Updike , Jamaica Kincaid , Tennessee Williams , The Cockettes , John Lithgow , Gore Vidal , and many others. Houghton also holds the letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw , who commanded
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