Library of the Gray Herbarium
| Phone Numbers: |
| phone | (617) 495-2366 |
| fax | (617) 495-8654 |
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| Email Addresses: |
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| Address: | Library of the Gray Herbarium
22 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge MA 02138 |
| Access Policy: |
| Open to qualified researchers. |
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| Extent of Collections: | 300 cu. ft. |
| Dates: | Early 19th century to present, chiefly after 1850 |
| Holdings Description: | Primarily 19th- and 20th-century botany. Correspondence files of Gray Herbarium include letters to Asa Gray from many major
19th-century botanists, including Charles Darwin, Joseph and William Hooker, Alphonse de Candolle, and John Torrey, as well as letters to more recent herbarium staff members. Topics treated include plant exploration; identification, distribution, preservation, and exchange of plant specimens; botanical nomenclature; phytogeography; Gray Herbarium finances. Gray Herbarium organizational records, mostly
1890-1930, including minutes of the Overseers visiting committee, summaries of financial and employee records, blueprints and plans of buildings. A very few early records of the Harvard Botanic Garden. Manuscripts, travel journals, scrapbooks, and artifacts of Asa Gray. Papers of Walter Deane, Sereno Watson, Charles Alfred Weatherby. Plant lists, field notebooks, and letters of staff and non-staff botanists. Photographs, daguerreotypes, and lithographs of botanists.
Photographs, paintings, and drawings of plants, including original drawings for published illustrations. Photographs of Gray Herbarium, Botanic Garden, and their staffs. |
| History: | Asa Gray (1810-1888) is well known as the "Father of American Botany" and champion of Charles Darwin. He was called to Harvard in 1842 as the new Fisher Professor of Natural History. At that point there was no herbarium, no library, and only a small greenhouse and garden. Whatever cash Gray could spare from his salary went into the cultivation of his library and herbarium, which soon took over his house.
In 1864 he offered his collections to Harvard with the stipulation that they build a suitable building to house them. That same year a small brick building was built and the collections were moved. At that point it is estimated that there were about 200,000 specimens in the herbarium and approximately 2,200 books and pamphlets in his library.
Today the Library of the Gray Herbarium, numbers more than 63,000 volumes and 455 periodical titles. The collection specializes in botanical history, floras of the new world, and Linnaeana and pre-Linnean sources*. It also has a rich archival component and an on-line Gray Herbarium Index of the New World Plants, that lists new taxa, names, and combinations. |
| Printed Guides & Catalogs: | Hamer; NHPRC; NUCMC; Historical Records Survey, Division of Professional and Service Projects, Works Progress
Administration, Calerular of the Letters of Charles Robert Darwin to Asa Gray (Boston: Historical Records Survey, 1939); A. Hunter Dupree, Asa Gray (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). |
| Online Guides & Catalogs: | HOLLIS Catalog - all repository holdings cataloged in the HOLLIS Catalog
OASIS - All finding-aids are available in OASIS |
| Contact for permission to publish requests: | Reference Librarian & Archivist |
| Reproduction services: |
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| Items allowed in Reading Room: |
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Please address comments and updates to archinfo@hulmail.harvard.edu.
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