John Berry has made a gift to Dartmouth of $25 million, the core of a $30 million gift, the largest in the College's 223-year history. With it, Dartmouth will build a companion to Baker Library -- which itself will undergo expansion and renovation.
More than 60 years after Baker Library confirmed Dartmouth's position in the upper echelon of education in America, the College approaches the 21st century with another dream about to be realized.
The cornerstone of every college campus is its library. The imagination swirls as architects and planners begin the challenging work that will blend past, present and future thinking into an extraordinary educational resource.
This special edition of The Campaign Report will only brush the surface of a monumental chapter in Dartmouth history. We will touch on some of the facets of this magnificent addition to Dartmouth's academic resources. Consider it merely a prologue to a story that will unfold during the next decade.
The generosity of the Berry family is unparalleled in Dartmouth history, spanning three generations. The principal donor for the new library is John Berry, honorary national chair of The Will to Excel capital campaign. Berry's $25 million commitment is the largest individual donation in the College's history. Additional gifts of $1 million each will be made by his son, George Berry '66, and by the Loren M. Berry Foundation, established by John Berry's father.
Past and present are also combined through the $3 million gift by George F. Baker III, John Berry's friend and business associate, a Harvard graduate. It was his great-grandfather whose gift to Dartmouth made possible the construction of Baker Library.
First, turn the clock back 67 years. In 1925, an Oxford University debater visiting Dartmouth fanned an idea into flame. He identified Dartmouth as the college with the largest gymnasium and smallest library in America. "That burned me up," said President Ernest Martin Hopkins.
At the time, Dartmouth's 200,000-book library resided in Wilson Hall, built in 1885. It was archaic and overflowing.In 1925, the Oxford barb was coincidental to the Trustees' authorization to pursue construction of a million-dollar library. "We were going to borrow the money, or beg it, or steal it," Trustee John R. McLane said later.
Hopkins teamed with two allies, Paris-based banker Edward Tuck 1862, and Henry B. Thayer 1879, president of AT&T, to achieve an honorable solution to the Trustees' mandate. The benefactor they pursued was New York banker George Fisher Baker.
Born in 1840, Baker entered banking at age 16. During a career that spanned more than seven decades -- from the Civil War through the growth of the nation (including several panics, depressions and comparable crises) -- his imagination, daring, sound judgment, and the honor of his word made him one of the nation's most respected and powerful bankers.
During the 1920s, Baker became one of the era's great philanthropists. Of $22 million in recorded gifts, he gave over $12 million to colleges. In 1924, his largest gift -- $5 million -- established Harvard Business School. What drew him to Dartmouth was his friendship with Messrs. Tuck and Thayer and his uncle, Fisher Ames Baker, who graduated from Dartmouth in 1859. Uncle Fisher was only three years senior to George Baker. He died in 1919, leaving his entire estate to his nephew. George Baker's gifts of more than $2 million built and endowed the library named for Fisher Ames Baker.
Designed to hold a million books and surpass all other college libraries in architectural grandeur, Baker opened in 1928. It remains to this day, and will continue to be for many tomorrows, a jewel in Dartmouth's crown.
Six decades have passed and Dartmouth's libraries (Baker is one of nine equally accessible resources) now hold nearly two million volumes. The problem faced by the Trustees and President Hopkins in the 1920s is no different than that facing President James O. Freedman and the Trustees today. It's simply a matter of scale.
In 1988, Freedman appointed a 26-member Planning Steering Committee to "articulate a vision of the College..." In addition to reinforcing a commitment to academic excellence, a related concept plan provided a vision for how the Dartmouth campus might look -- 10, 25 and 100 years from now. The priorities for facilities to support academic programs are many. A library is obvious but so, too, are buildings to replace or upgrade those now serving Dartmouth's 4,200 undergraduates.
While the Planning Steering Committee grappled with the physical and academic needs of the future, others organized the $425 million Campaign to Excel. They established objectives for endowment, facilities and current use. President Freedman gave high priority to a new library. But his list contained other needs of essentially equal importance, though none approached the scale of the library. The library, while obviously needed, would require the support of either a single donor or a limited group acting in concert.
Strategists moved the Campaign forward, leaving the monumental question mark in place. Pursue the stated incremental goals, they advised. Trust hard work, planning, and patience and believe the unique opportunity of a library will strike a resonant chord.
Within the Campaign's table of projected gifts is one for $25 million. John Berry, the man whose father started out selling horseradish and who himself stepped into the family business as a stockroom clerk, now stands atop the list of Dartmouth's largest individual donors.
The idea of a new library at Dartmouth is hardly a secret. Its location has also been discussed. When will it be built? The Berry-Baker gift is, in fact, the enabling act that makes it possible. The planning process is barely begun. The preliminary schedule calls for construction to begin in 1997 and to be complete as Dartmouth enters the next century.
Baker, including Sanborn House and Carpenter Hall, faces the Dartmouth Green and is contained within Wentworth Street (south), North Main Street (west), Elm Street (north) and College Street (east). During the past year the College has been negotiating with the Town of Hanover to purchase the Elm Street right-of-way. This would open the way for a new library to traverse Elm Street and become the cornerstone for further academic development in the block bounded north and south by Maynard and Elm streets. The new building will comprise well over 100,000 net square feet. What isn't easily defined now is the scope of Baker renovation which will be an integral part of the project.
At this juncture, the new library is still undefined, and several academic facility objectives remain targets during the next four years of the Campaign. It amounts to a magnificent, open-ended chess match. The winner will be a stronger Dartmouth.
To say "library" at Dartmouth means "Baker" to most. In fact, the Dartmouth Library system includes Baker (humanities and social sciences), Dana (biomedical), Feldberg (business and engineering), Kresge (physical sciences), Sherman (art), Paddock (music), Cook (mathematics) and Matthews Fuller (health sciences).
The new library will take its place in this cultural pantheon that is largely accessible to the academic community through the Dartmouth College Information Systems (DCIS), a joint project of the Library and Computing Services.
This complex network now includes nearly two million volumes, a far cry from Dartmouth's first library of 305 volumes located in Bezaleel Woodward's home in 1777. Over the next 150 years, the library grew and moved to several campus locations.
The collection stood at 60,000 volumes when Wilson Hall was built in 1885 and more than trebled to 200,000 when Baker, designed to hold a million volumes, opened in 1928. The Library had already begun to develop into a system when the millionth volume arrived in 1970.
Of all the College's academic facilities, none is more vibrant than its library. It is, indeed, a remarkable resource, one that is about to enter an era of technological and physical change, thanks to the vision and generosity of John Berry, his family and friends.
What will the Library of the future look like? Nobody really knows for sure. Will books be replaced by computer screens? Not for a long, long time. Is paper passé? Leave that to the Class of 2050 to ponder.
For a look at what the experts think about libraries of the future, read the major coverage scheduled for publication in the December issue of Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.
Bruce Pipes, the associate provost who is a central figure in organizing the planning process, envisions Dartmouth's new library as a harmonious marriage of various information resources. Changes in how the library is used will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, driven by new technology, pressure to reduce costs, and the need to manage access to the constantly growing body of information contained in Dartmouth's library.
During coming months, Dartmouth will convene a committee of faculty, administrators and students to work with architects and consultants in promoting the collaborative development of information services. By every definition, it will be an absolutely dynamic process.
After the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London was denounced by the Prince of Wales as a "monstrous carbuncle," world-renowned Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi was invited to "walk into a minefield of esthetic politics." Venturi responded with a design for the Sainsbury Wing that tempered the Prince's critical eye and created an architectural solution that today blends gracefully into the classic profile of Trafalgar Square.
Venturi and his partner, Denise Scott Brown, have already made a number of contributions to Dartmouth's architectural profile and to the College's long-term facilities plan. Now, Venturi will have the extraordinary opportunity to create the companion to Baker's Georgian profile sculpted by Jens Larson.
Collaborating with Venturi will be Geoffrey Freeman of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott of Boston. Freeman is a recognized leader in the functional design of modern libraries. For Venturi and Freeman, two of the world's best when it comes to library architecture, it's a dream project.
John W. Berry '44
John Berry tells the story of arriving at Dartmouth in the fall of 1940
and trying out for the freshman football team. After three scrimmages, the
165-pound guard limped back to his dorm room. He concluded that he came to
Dartmouth to be educated, not to be killed on the football field. It was clear
to John Berry that the era of the "watch charm guard" was over.
Not so the career of John Berry, businessman. Following college and wartime service, he returned to Dayton, Ohio in 1946 and joined the telephone directory advertising business founded in 1910 by his father, Loren Berry. Ranking as one of the great American success stories, the Yellow Pages is as much a part of the American lexicon as Kleenex, Xerox and Wheaties.
Father and son worked together for the better part of 40 years, growing the company to international scale. The business was built on the character of the father which was passed to the son. "He was a down-to-earth guy," says John Berry about his father. "He used to have a saying that he always told the truth; that way he didn't have to remember what he said."
In business, John Berry flourished. So, too, did his devotion to Dartmouth. The gift to his college for a new library is a signal chapter in the philanthropy of John Berry and his family. In an age when superlatives are too often used with thoughtless abandon, one can be used with absolute certainty to describe John Berry's generosity: Great.
George W. Berry '66
In his undergraduate years, George Berry studied under Dr. John G.
Kemeny, then head of the Mathematics Department and a pioneer in computer
science, and later president of Dartmouth. He subsequently worked for nearly 20
years in computer software development at Digital Equipment Corporation and now
is a software consultant.
George Berry's business interests in the sophisticated information and research systems that will be an important part of the new library parallel his studies at Dartmouth.
George F. Baker III, Harvard '61
A general partner of Baker, Nye Investments L.P. in New York City, George
Baker is also a financial counselor to John Berry. Like his
great-grandfather, whose gift more than 60 years ago gave Dartmouth its
library, George F. Baker III has a deep commitment to philanthropy,
particularly for the support of secondary and college education in New
Hampshire. In addition to gifts to St. Paul's School in Concord, his family's ties to
Dartmouth are measured by his acknowledgment that "(the gift) for the
renovation of Baker Library is one of the most satisfying ever made by the
(George F. Baker) Trust."
Loren M. Berry (1888-1980)
The story of Dartmouth's next library is incomplete without recognition of Loren Berry.
"I've been fortunate to know many people who have shared with me...a faith in the individual's ability to achieve, a willingness to work hard -- very hard, and a strong belief in the free enterprise system," said Loren Berry on his 90th birthday.
In a special birthday tribute, the Dayton Daily News wrote: "At what point does a man become a legend in his own time? The answer is difficult to pinpoint. Somewhere between bottling and selling horseradish at the age of nine and presiding as vice chairman of the board for a nationally known sales organization at the age of ninety, the Loren M. Berry legend evolved. Ask the newest sales representatives, the youngest clerk typists, or check with the recently hired artists sketching their first piece of ad copy. They've all heard about the man who has always believed....'It CAN be done!"'