Michigan Today - September 2007

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U-M heritage

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U-M's great library of American history

by James Tobin

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Clements Library

Editor's Note: Welcome to U-M Heritage, a monthly column by historian and writer James Tobin. We're delighted to have Mr. Tobin aboard—he's a Pulitzer Prize nominee and the winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Ernie Pyle's War. But he's not the only person who knows about U-M history. Every alum has his or her own stories, tales that shed light on who we were and who we are. We'd love to hear from you. Go to Your U-M History to submit your story and to read U-M history from the people who lived it.

Thousands of Michigan students have passed within a few yards of the loveliest room on the campus without ever seeing inside. It's the exhibition hall of the William L. Clements Library on South University, a hushed, light-filled cavern paneled in oak and lined with tall cases of rare books bound in leather.

The library's early stewards lived in fear of what ordinary people might do in there.

"At one time," Randolph Adams, the library's first director, wrote in 1930, "two of the handsome chairs, upholstered in light blue silk velvet, were placed inside the silken ropes which separate the Main Room from that part to which visitors are admitted. A lady sought refuge in the Library from a rainstorm and sat down in one of these chairs in a drenching wet raincoat. As long as there are ladies of that sort – the Library must protect itself against them."

Actually, Adams and his patron – the founder, William L. Clements – were of two minds about the library and its visitors. On the one hand, they wanted, quite sensibly, to preserve priceless treasures against overuse. On the other, Clements' whole purpose in creating a great library of rare books was to make a haven safe from the bulldozer of modern civilization, where people could cultivate an appreciation for fine artifacts of the past.

Clements' own love affair with books had begun very close by. Born in 1861, Clements grew up in a big house just west of the campus. There, he recalled, "I was literally apprenticed, before my teens, to 'Poor Richard's Almanac.' American history…starting as my task, just naturally extended into a pleasure which seemed to become absolutely my chiefest joy."

Yet he was educated as an engineer, not a historian, graduating from the University in 1882. (He was the first student of Mortimer Cooley, U-M's first professor of engineering and later the first dean of engineering.) Before long Clements was running his father's company, Bay City Industrial Works. His steamshovels and cranes helped to build the Panama Canal—and a substantial fortune. In the meantime, he found a hobby.

In Bay City he made friends with an elderly Civil War veteran named Aaron Cooke, who introduced Clements to the pleasures of collecting Americana—the old books and papers that document the evolution of American culture. In 1903 Clements bought Cooke's personal library of 1,000 books. That was the core of what would become one of the world's great book collections.

Trapped in an unhappy marriage, Clements found an escape through his books. He not only read deeply but treasured the volumes themselves—the bindings, the typefaces, the paper, all of them tangible links to the lost world of early America. Night after night he examined them until all hours. "I do not know what I would do if I did not have this interest," he told a friend.

He worried that Americans in an age of factories and cities were losing touch with the past. So, at about the time he joined the Board of Regents in 1909, he decided to build a massive collection of rare Americana, then give it to the University, along with a library to house it. It would not be an effete "book museum," like some rare-book libraries, but a vital workshop for students of history.

"Most large educational institutions…are like sausage factories, with little or no knowledge of what real culture means," he wrote. His library would be "built for the correction…of this defect. A rare and important book which influenced literature or history should arouse a feeling of reverence, and such a library should produce a sentimental and aesthetic feeling."

All through the 1910s, Clements prowled book shops and cultivated key dealers. In New York, a great bookman named Lathrop Harper led him to treasures such as the Latin translation of Christopher Columbus's 1493 letter to Isabella and Ferdinand; the first English-language description of Virginia (1588); and the 1814 History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark. In all, Clements bought some 10,000 books. Soon after he announced his gift to the University, President Marion LeRoy Burton spent a few hours browsing at Bay City. "I am simply amazed and overwhelmed by the wealth of your collection," he told Clements. "It seemed to me that I wanted to spend months and years just sitting down and reading…"

A building to house the books, designed by the Detroit architect Albert Kahn in the style of the Italian Renaissance, was dedicated in 1923. Clements went back to Bay City bereft. "The dedication of the new library building at Ann Arbor has taken place," he wrote to a friend, "and I have returned home to a house empty of nearly all books… It is needless to tell you how totally lost I am."

He recovered his spirits in a new collecting spree, concentrating this time on the original letters, maps and other papers that document the British side of the American Revolution. After his death in 1934, those papers, too, went to Ann Arbor, making the Library a world-class collection of rare books and rare manuscripts alike.

Since 1923, only three directors have led the Library—Randolph Adams, Howard Peckham, and John C. Dann, who vastly expanded the Library's holdings, extended its collecting scope into the 20th century, and opened its doors to far more students.

Dann retired in June after 30 years as director. A national search is underway to name his successor. William Clements, speaking in the sexist idiom of his day, put the requirements for the job this way: "No man can be educated to it; if he has not in his soul [the] esthetic and sentimental appreciation of books that stand for something, then he is not the man in my opinion that is wanted. There are not many men born with such feelings, I admit."

Clements Library's Crown Jewels on display:
As a finishing touch to his tenure as director, John C. Dann created a major exhibit, "Growth and Evolution of the Clements Library, 1903 to 2007." Included are many of the library's "crown jewels," for example: the Latin translation of Christopher Columbus’s 1493 letter to Isabella and Ferdinand, describing his first visit to the New World; the Hacke Atlas, circa 1690, the so-called “Pirate Atlas” that guided buccaneers through their pillaging careers; a letter from the American traitor Benedict Arnold to his British contact; a detailed description of the final illness and death of George Washington, by his private secretary; and Amelia Simmons' American Cookery (1796), one of the earliest American cookbooks.

The exhibit will be on display at the Clements Library until February 1, 2008. Hours are Monday through Friday, 1 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. For more information, click here.

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James Tobin is an author and historian. His most recent book is To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight.