The Newberry Library is an independent

research library A research library is a library which contains an in-depth collection of material on one or several subjects.(Young, 1983; p. 188) A research library will generally include an in-depth selection of materials on a particular topic or set of to ...

, specializing in the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

and located on Washington Square in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. It has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics related to the history and cultural production of

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

and the Americas over the last six centuries. The Library is named to honor the founding bequest from the estate of philanthropist

Walter Loomis Newberry Walter Loomis Newberry (September 18, 1804 – November 6, 1868) was the son of Amasa and Ruth (Warner) Newberry. He was an American businessman and philanthropist, whose bequest provided for the creation of the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illi ...

. Core collection strengths support research in several subject areas, including maps, travel, and exploration; music from the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

to the early twentieth century; early contact between Western colonizers and Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere; the personal papers of twentieth-century American journalists; the history of printing; and genealogy and local history. Although the Newberry is a noncirculating library, it welcomes researchers into the reading rooms who are at least 14 years old or in the ninth grade, and have a research topic corresponding to the nature of the collections. Additional public services are offered through exhibitions, meet-the-author lectures, adult education seminars, and other programming.

History

The Newberry was established in 1887 as the result of a bequest by

, an early Chicago resident and business leader involved in banking, shipping, real estate, and other commercial ventures. Newberry died at sea in 1868, while on a trip to France. He included in his will a provision of funds for the creation of a "free public library" should his daughters die without heirs. They did, and so, following the death of Newberry's widow, Julia Butler Newberry, in 1885, it was up to Newberry estate trustees William H. Bradley and Eliphalet W. Blatchford to bring the library to fruition. Without much direction (Newberry did not leave behind many details regarding his vision for the library) and without its founder's personal collection as a foundation (Newberry's own collection of books perished in the

Great Fire of 1871 The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned in the American city of Chicago during October 8–10, 1871. The fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly of the city including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 10 ...

), the first officers and staff members were instrumental in forming the character of the Newberry. The Newberry's first librarian,

William Frederick Poole William Frederick Poole (24 December 1821, Salem, Massachusetts – 1 March 1894) was an American bibliographer and librarian. Biography He graduated from Yale University in 1849, where he assisted John Edmands, who was a student at the Brothe ...

, was a major figure in the library world when he came to the Newberry. Poole saw the Newberry as a blank canvas on which he could project his ideas, which included and perhaps found their most impassioned articulation in the design and construction of libraries. In 1887–88 it was located at 90 La Salle Street, in 1889–90 at 338 Ontario Street, and in 1890-93 at the northwest corner of State and Oak Streets. The present building, designed by Poole and architect

Henry Ives Cobb Henry Ives Cobb (August 19, 1859 – March 27, 1931) was an architect from the United States. Based in Chicago in the last decades of the 19th century, he was known for his designs in the Richardsonian Romanesque and Victorian Gothic style ...

(1859–1931), opened in 1893. It is located at 60 West Walton Street, across from Washington Square. It is a structure in the Spanish Romanesque architectural style, built of Connecticut granite. Poole and Cobb feuded bitterly over their different visions for the library building. Poole favored a number of reading rooms with open shelving of materials that could be easily accessed by patrons; Cobb preferred the majestic grandiosity in vogue in Europe and the centralization of collection items. Poole's influence with the library's trustees coerced Cobb to temper the grand staircase he had envisioned and to accommodate open shelving. Over time, however, the open shelving would put too much strain on the Newberry's staff and the security of its collections, and the library would convert to a centralized storage system. Poole served as Newberry librarian until his death in 1894. Under his leadership, the library built broad reference collections that would be useful to many different Chicagoans, especially professionals and tradespeople. The Newberry's medical department, created in 1890, is an example of this emphasis. Poole also steered the Newberry toward the acquisition of rare materials for use by professional scholars. Two ''en bloc'' acquisitions made during his tenure, the private collections of Henry Probasco and Count Pio Resse, yielded notable rarities in music and early printed specimens (

incunables In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside (printing), broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 150 ...

), as well as Shakespeare folios and editions of Homer, Dante, and Horace. To focus its own collecting and to avoid the duplication of resources in Chicago at large, the Newberry entered into a cooperative agreement in 1896 with the

Chicago Public Library The Chicago Public Library (CPL) is the public library system that serves the City of Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois. It consists of 81 locations, including a central library, two regional libraries, and branches distributed throughout the ...

and the

John Crerar Library The John Crerar Library is a research library, which after a long history of independent operations, is now operated by the University of Chicago. Throughout its history, the library's technology resources have made it popular with Chicago-area b ...

, by which each institution would specialize in certain fields of knowledge and areas of service. As a consequence, the Newberry came to specialize in the humanities, and the natural sciences became the province of the Crerar. The Newberry immediately transferred its holdings in this area, including its copy of Audubon's ''Birds of America''. The Newberry's medical department was transferred to the Crerar in 1906.

Stanley Pargellis Stanley McCrory Pargellis (June 25, 1898–January 6, 1968) was an American historian and librarian. His work as a historian focused mainly on the military history of the American colonial era. From 1942 to 1962, he was director of the Newber ...

, the fifth Newberry librarian (1942–1962), emphasized not just the "passive" collection of materials but also the active orchestration of programs and events to encourage scholarly inquiries into the insights those materials might contain. Under Pargellis, a fellowship program was inaugurated and academic conferences were held at the Newberry, out of which emerged new scholarship using the library's collections. Pargellis also expanded the scope of the collection. Understanding the important role corporations played in American life and believing that those corporations could only be properly assessed if their records were freely accessible, Pargellis started a trend across the library world with the acquisition of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company's private archives. Since this acquisition, in 1943, the Newberry would continue to add to its CB&Q archives, while collecting the records of other major corporations of the Midwest. Between 1962 and 1986, the library was greatly expanded under the leadership of president Lawrence William "Bill" Towner. During this time, the Newberry acquired many important collections and a stacks building dedicated to the storage of collection items was constructed. Four new research centers were formed with support from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

. The research centers continue to support and produce important scholarship in their fields, while providing programming for more general audiences. They are the Center for Renaissance Studies, the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, and the William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture. Under Towner the library assembled a major collection on

Herman Melville Herman Melville ( born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a rom ...

and co-sponsored the Northwestern-Newberry Melville Edition. The Newberry cooperated with the

Chicago Historical Society Chicago History Museum is the museum of the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). The CHS was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. The museum has been located in Lincoln Park since the 1930s at 1601 North Clark Street at the int ...

in creating the 2004 '' Encyclopedia of Chicago,'' a landmark single-volume work that covered the city's history from 1630 to 2000. In 2017–18, the lobby spaces of the library underwent a $12 million renovation to improve visitor access and exhibition space.

Services

The library houses more than 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages, and 500,000 historic

map A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

s. Collection strengths include materials on the European

genealogy Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

Indigenous peoples of the Americas The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the A ...

, early music,

cartography Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an i ...

, the history of

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

history,

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

archives, Luso-Brazilian history, and

Midwestern The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

authors' manuscripts. The Newberry's Modern Manuscript Collection includes work by Mike Royko,

Elmo Scott Watson Elmo is a red Muppet monster character on the long-running PBS/ HBO children's television show ''Sesame Street''. A furry red monster who has a falsetto voice and illeism, he hosts the last full five-minute segment (fifteen minutes pr ...

, Ben Hecht,

Floyd Dell Floyd James Dell (June 28, 1887 – July 23, 1969) was an American newspaper and magazine editor, literary critic, novelist, playwright, and poet. Dell has been called "one of the most flamboyant, versatile and influential American Men of Letters ...

Sherwood Anderson Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...

Malcolm Cowley Malcolm Cowley (August 24, 1898 – March 27, 1989) was an American writer, editor, historian, poet, and literary critic. His best known works include his first book of poetry, ''Blue Juniata'' (1929), his lyrical memoir, ''Exile's Return ...

, John T. McCutcheon, and Fanny Butcher. Among its items are a Shakespeare

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 ...

, correspondence from

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...

, Oswald Cooper's sketches for the Cooper Black typeface, original woodblocks made by

Thomas Bewick Thomas Bewick (c. 11 August 17538 November 1828) was an English wood-engraver and natural history author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving cutlery, making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating ch ...

, a fur trade contract from 1692 containing one of the earliest references to "Chicagou," and the oldest copy in existence of the

Popol Vuh ''Popol Vuh'' (also ''Popol Wuj'' or ''Popul Vuh'' or ''Pop Vuj'') is a text recounting the mythology and history of the Kʼicheʼ people, one of the Maya peoples, who inhabit Guatemala and the Mexican states of Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatan and ...

. It also houses a series of occult books, including the Book of Magical Charms, the Commonplace-Book, and the Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcrafts, which it invites visitors to its website to translate and transcribe. The Newberry also offers a variety of exhibitions, meet-the-author lectures, continuing education classes, concerts, teacher programs, and other public programming related to its collections. Exhibitions have featured

Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the '' Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been, "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ...

's famous ''Plan of Chicago'' of 1909, artifacts of World War I, and a crowd-sourced aggregation of materials related to love, from heart-shaped Renaissance maps to early twentieth-century American sheet music. The Newberry's Research and Academic Programs Division offers short- and long-term fellowships for local, national, and international scholars, in addition to managing two separate semester-long seminars for undergraduate students. The four research centers foster, generate, and disseminate scholarship in their areas of focus: medieval, early modern, and Renaissance studies; American Indian and Indigenous Studies; the history of cartography; and American history and culture. Reference staff are available in the Newberry's two reading rooms and in its third-floor reference room whenever the library is open. Reference librarians work with all readers and offer orientation, in-depth bibliographical instruction, and specialized assistance as needed. The library is open to all researchers over 14 years of age.
The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries Project
a historical GIS project that aims to map every county boundary configuration in the United States from the early seventeenth century to the present, is also based at the Newberry. The Newberry Bookstore, located in the lobby of the library, curates a selection of books reflecting the Newberry's collection strengths and upcoming public programming, while offering other goods such as cards, posters, and literary action figures.

Newberry Library Award

In 1987, the Newberry established the Newberry Library Award in honor of its 100th anniversary. The Newberry Library Award is an honor bestowed to individuals, and in the case of the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...

, organizations, who have made "outstanding contributions to the humanities, particularly in fields of endeavor related to the Newberry’s collection." The award itself is a scale-sized model of the full-sized

Virginio Ferrari Virginio Ferrari (born 19 October 1952) is an Italian former professional Grand Prix motorcycle road racer. His best season was in the 1979 500cc world championship, when he finished second to Kenny Roberts. Motorcycle racing career Ferrari ...

sculpture created in 1987 called ''Umanitá'' that greets visitors as they enter the Newberry Library. * 1987:

Paul Oskar Kristeller Paul Oskar Kristeller (May 22, 1905 in Berlin – June 7, 1999 in New York, United States) was an important scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Colu ...

* 1990:

Jaroslav Pelikan Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Jr. (December 17, 1923 – May 13, 2006) was an American scholar of the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and medieval intellectual history at Yale University. Early years Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Jr. was born on Dec ...

* Richard J. Franke * Ann Ida Gannon *

Lawrence Stone Lawrence Stone (4 December 1919 – 16 June 1999) was an English historian of early modern Britain, after a start to his career as an art historian of English medieval art. He is noted for his work on the English Civil War and the history of marr ...

* 2006:

Hanna Holborn Gray Hanna Holborn Gray (born October 25, 1930) is an American historian of Renaissance and Reformation political thought and Professor of History ''Emerita'' at the University of Chicago. She served as president of the University of Chicago, from 197 ...

* 2007: Richard M. Daley * 2008:

Anthony Grafton Anthony Thomas Grafton (born May 21, 1950) is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He i ...

* 2009:

William Cronon William Cronon (born September 11, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an environmental historian and the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madi ...

* 2010: Jonathan Spence * 2011:

Robert Darnton Robert Choate Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specializes in 18th-century France. He was director of the Harvard University Library from 2007 to 2016. Life Darnton was born in New York ...

* 2012: Francis Christopher Oakley * 2013:

David McCullough David Gaub McCullough (; July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States ...

* 2014: Roger Baskes * 2015: Stacy Schiff * 2016:

* 2017: Martin E. Marty * 2018:

Carla Hayden Carla Diane Hayden (born August 10, 1952) is an American librarian and the 14th Librarian of Congress. Since the creation of the office of the Librarian of Congress in 1802, Hayden is both the first African American and the first woman to hold th ...

* 2019:

Marilynne Robinson Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and t ...

* 2021: Lonnie G. Bunch III

References

External links

*
Digital Newberry
– online access to more than one million digitized items from the Newberry's collections

on Encyclopedia of Chicago
Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey selected news articles from the foreign language press from 1855 to 1938.
{{Authority control Library buildings completed in 1893 Libraries established in 1887 Libraries in Chicago Literary archives in the United States Research libraries in the United States Romanesque Revival architecture in Illinois Tourist attractions in Chicago Rare book libraries in the United States Special collections libraries in the United States

History

Services

Newberry Library Award

See also

References

Further reading

Primary sources

External links