Phillips Library (Massachusetts)

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Phillips Library
Peabody Essex Museum Collection Center and Phillips Library, Rowley, MA.jpg
Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum Collection Center in 2018
Country United States
Type Special library
Established2018 (2018)
Location306 Newburyport Turnpike, Rowley, Massachusetts
Coordinates 42°42′49.02″N70°54′30.85″W / 42.7136167°N 70.9085694°W / 42.7136167; -70.9085694 Coordinates: 42°42′49.02″N70°54′30.85″W / 42.7136167°N 70.9085694°W / 42.7136167; -70.9085694
Collection
Items collected books, journals, newspapers, magazines, ephemera, maps, and manuscripts, art
Other information
Staff8
Website https://www.pem.org/visit/library
Map
Phillips Library (Massachusetts)
Phillips Library
Phillips Library (Massachusetts)
General information
Location Rowley, Massachusetts
Address306 Newburyport Turnpike
Town or city Rowley, Massachusetts
Country United States
Inaugurated2018
Owner Peabody Essex Museum
Design and construction
Architecture firmEnnead Architects

The Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is a rare books and special collections library. It is made up of the collections of the former Peabody Museum of Salem and the Essex Institute (which merged in 1992 to form the Peabody Essex Museum). Both had libraries named for members of the Phillips family. [1] [2]

Contents

Locations

The Phillips Library and Reading Room moved in 2018 to the Peabody Essex Museum Collection Center in Rowley, Massachusetts, a building which had once been the headquarters for the Schylling toy company. [3] [4]

Plummer Hall and Daland House c. 1906 Plummer Hall & Daland House.jpg
Plummer Hall and Daland House c. 1906

Formerly located in the Essex Institute Historic District of Salem, Massachusetts, the Phillips Library was in Plummer Hall on Essex Street, with offices in the connected John Tucker Daland House. [5] Plummer Hall was originally built for the Salem Athenaeum in 1857. The Athenaeum provided for space for the Essex Institute and several other groups, and sold the building to the Essex Institute in 1907. [6] The reading room, with its gold-leaf pillars and busts of Nathaniel Bowditch and George Peabody, underwent restoration in 1998. [7] The library closed in November 2011 for an extensive $20 million "renovation and restoration of the library's John Tucker Daland House and Plummer Hall. The project also included the digitization of the library's catalog." [8] Slated for completion in 2013, the Phillips Library reading room reopened in August 2013 at a temporary location—with limited access to materials—at 1 Second Street, Peabody, Massachusetts. [9] [10] On August 31, 2017, the library's temporary location in Peabody closed, noting: "all access to collections will be suspended from September 1, 2017, through March 31, 2018." [11]

On December 8, 2017, Dan L. Monroe, PEM's Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, director and CEO, issued a press release announcing that the 42,000 linear feet of historical documents will be permanently relocated to Rowley, Massachusetts, and that Plummer Hall and Daland House, the two historic buildings which had housed the Phillips Library, will be utilized as office and meeting space. [12] The move to Rowley allows the PEM to "provide the highest standards of preservation, care, and protection for the library collection" while offering space for its 1.8 million objects not currently on display at the museum. [13] PEM "sank $15 million in the Rowley property between the site purchase and renovations. Many areas are still under construction, including a conservation lab, library digitization space, and a photography studio." The Phillips Library reading room opened in June 2018, with space for up to 14 researchers at a time. [14]

The announcement of the planned movement of the Salem documents collection to the town of Rowley—located about 17 miles (27 km) north of the Peabody-Essex Museum—has sparked protests by historians and interested Salem citizens who don't accept that unique documents regarding Salem's history should reside outside the city. The Friends of Salem's Phillips Library formed in December 2017 after PEM announced it was moving Salem's largest and oldest archival collection from its permanent home at Plummer Hall to a collections center 40 minutes away and not accessible by public transportation. [15]

Collections

The Phillips Library is best known for holding the majority of the original 1692 Salem witchcraft trials papers (on deposit from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives) and early works by Nathaniel Hawthorne. [16] Collection subjects include art and architecture, Essex County, maritime history, natural history, New England, voyages and travels, Asia, Oceania, and Native American culture. [17] Some featured collections include the C. E. Fraser Clark Collection of Hawthorniana, the Frederick Townsend Ward Collection of Western-language materials on Imperial China, and the Herbert Offen Research Collection. [18] [19]

Related Research Articles

Essex County, Massachusetts County in Massachusetts, United States

Essex County is a county in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the total population was 809,829, making it the third-most populous county in the state, and the eightieth-most populous in the country. It is part of the Greater Boston area. The largest city in Essex County is Lynn. The county was named after the English county of Essex. It has two traditional county seats: Salem and Lawrence. Prior to the dissolution of the county government in 1999, Salem had jurisdiction over the Southern Essex District, and Lawrence had jurisdiction over the Northern Essex District, but currently these cities do not function as seats of government. However, the county and the districts remain as administrative regions recognized by various governmental agencies, which gathered vital statistics or disposed of judicial case loads under these geographic subdivisions, and are required to keep the records based on them. The county has been designated the Essex National Heritage Area by the National Park Service.

Salem, Massachusetts City in Massachusetts, United States

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Samuel McIntire American architect and craftsman

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John Tucker Daland House

The John Tucker Daland House (1851–1852) is an imposing, Italianate house designed by architect Gridley James Fox Bryant and is located at 132 Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts, United States in the Essex Institute Historic District and now owned by the Peabody Essex Museum as home for the Essex Institute.

Massachusetts's 6th congressional district is located in northeastern Massachusetts. It contains most of Essex County, including the North Shore and Cape Ann, as well as part of Middlesex County. It is represented by Seth Moulton, who has represented the district since January 2015. The shape of the district went through minor changes effective from the elections of 2012 after Massachusetts congressional redistricting to reflect the 2010 census. The towns of Tewksbury and Billerica were added, along with a small portion of the town of Andover.

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Benjamin Pickman Jr. American politician (1763–1843)

Benjamin Pickman Jr. was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts.

Peabody Museum of Salem United States historic place

The Peabody Museum of Salem (1915–1992), formerly the Peabody Academy of Science (1865–1915), was a museum and antiquarian society based in Salem, Massachusetts. The academy was organized in part as a successor to the East India Marine Society, which had become moribund but held a large collection of maritime materials in a museum collection at the East India Marine Hall, built in 1825 on Essex Street. The Peabody Museum was merged with the Essex Institute to form the Peabody Essex Museum in 1992. The East India Marine Hall, now embedded within the latter's modern structure, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965 in recognition of this heritage, which represents the nation's oldest continuously-operating museum collection.

Chestnut Street District United States historic place

The Chestnut Street District is a historic district bounded roughly by Bridge, Lynn, Beckford, and River Streets in Salem, Massachusetts. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and enlarged slightly in 1978. The district contains a number of architecturally significant works of Samuel McIntire, a builder and woodworker who had a house and workshop at 31 Summer Street, and who designed and built a number of these houses, and others that display the profits made in the Old China Trade by Salem's merchants. The district is a subset of a larger locally designated McIntire Historic District.

Essex Institute Historic District Historic district in Massachusetts, United States

The Essex Institute Historic District is a historic district at 134-132, 128, 126 Essex Street and 13 Washington Square West in Salem, Massachusetts. It consists of a compact group of properties associated with the Essex Institute, founded in 1848 and merged in 1992 into the Peabody Essex Museum. Listed by increasing street number, they are: the Crowninshield-Bentley House, the Gardner-Pingree House, the John Tucker Daland House, and the Phillips Library. The John Ward House, which fronts on Brown Street but shares the 132 Essex Street address, is another National Historic Landmark within the district. The Andrew Safford House at 13 Washington Square West, built in 1819, was said to be the most expensive home in New England at the time.

Dudley Leavitt Pickman American merchant and businessman

Dudley Leavitt Pickman (1779–1846) was a Salem, Massachusetts, merchant who built one of the great Salem trading firms during the seaport's ascendancy as a trading power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pickman was a partner in the firm Devereux, Pickman & Silsbee and a state senator. Among the wealthiest Salem merchants of his day, Pickman used his own clipper ships to trade with the Far East in an array of goods ranging from indigo and coffee to pepper and spices, and was one of the state's earliest financiers, backing everything from cotton and woolen mills to railroads to water-generated power plants. Pickman also helped found what is today's Peabody Essex Museum.

Salem Athenaeum

The Salem Athenaeum, founded in 1810, is one of the oldest membership libraries in the United States. The Athenaeum is located at 337 Essex Street in Salem, Massachusetts in the McIntire Historic District.

Essex Institute

The Essex Institute (1848–1992) in Salem, Massachusetts, was "a literary, historical and scientific society." It maintained a museum, library, historic houses; arranged educational programs; and issued numerous scholarly publications. In 1992 the institute merged with the Peabody Museum of Salem to form the Peabody Essex Museum.

The Essex County Natural History Society (1833–1848) in Salem, Massachusetts, was formed "for the purpose of promoting the science of natural history." It endeavored "to form a complete collection of natural productions, curiosities. &c, particularly of this county; and, to form a library of standard books on the natural sciences." The society incorporated in 1836; Andrew Nichols, William Oakes, and William Prescott served as signatories. Other members included Samuel B. Buttrick, Samuel P. Fowler, John M. Ives, John C. Lee, George Osgood, Charles G. Page, Gardner B. Perry, George Dean Phippen, William P. Richardson, John Lewis Russell, Henry Wheatland. By 1836 some 100 members belonged to the society. In Salem its "cabinets and library were first deposited in Essex Place, then in Franklin Building, then in Chase's Building, Washington Street, and finally removed to Pickman Place, in 1842." In 1848 the society merged with the Essex Historical Society to form the Essex Institute.

The Salem Social Library (1760-1810) or Social Library in Salem was a proprietary library in Salem, Massachusetts. "Twenty-eight gentlemen ... subscribed 165 guineas. ... A Boston minister, [Jeremy Condy], was employed to buy the books in London and the library opened in a brick schoolhouse May 20, 1761, with 415 volumes including gifts given by members. The revolution was a bitter blow to many of the gentlemen who had founded the library. Many of the proprietors fled to England. ... In 1784 the library made a new start in new quarters in the new ... schoolhouse. Here they remained about 15 years, the schoolmaster acting as librarian." "In 1797 they became incorporated;" Edward Augustus Holyoke, Jacob Ashton, Joseph Hiller, and Edward Pulling served as signatories. "There were over 40 proprietors when in 1810 the library was turned over to the [Salem] Athenaeum."

The Salem Philosophical Library (1781–1810) or Philosophical Library Company was a proprietary library in Salem, Massachusetts. Men affiliated with the library included: Tho. Bancroft, Thomas Barnard, William Bentley, Joseph Blaney, Nathaniel Bowditch, Manasseh Cutler, Nathan Dane, Joshua Fisher, Edward Augustus Holyoke, Joseph Mc'keen, B. Lynde Oliver, Joseph Orne, William Prescott, Samuel Page, Joshua Plummer, John Prince, Nathan Read, John D. Treadwell, Ichabod Tucker, and Joseph Willard. "The Library was kept at the house of Rev. Joseph Willard of Beverly, till ... December, 1781. ... His successor was Rev. Dr. Prince, who had the volumes at his mansion" in Salem. "By 1810, many of the members of the [Salem] Social Library also belonged to the Philosophical Library, and the two bodies were merged to create the Salem Athenaeum."

This is a timeline of the history of the city of Salem, Massachusetts, United States.

Michele Felice Cornè American painter

Michele Felice Cornè (1752–1845) was an artist born in Elba who settled in the United States. He lived in Salem and Boston, Massachusetts; and in Newport, Rhode Island. He painted marine scenes, portraits, and interior decorations such as fireboards and murals.

Osgood Carleton (1741–1816) was a cartographer, land surveyor, mathematics and navigation teacher, and author in Boston, Massachusetts.

References

  1. Boston Globe, May 24, 1998
  2. Prior to 1992, the Essex Institute operated the "James Duncan Phillips Library" cf. Boston Globe, Oct 11, 1988
  3. "Artifact collection center unveiled in Rowley".
  4. "Peabody Essex Museum Buys Rowley Property for $7 Million". April 2017.
  5. "The Phillips Library in Rowley, MA | Peabody Essex Museum".
  6. Ashton, Joseph (1917). The Salem Athenaeum 1810-1910. The Berkeley Press. pp. 24–31.
  7. Boston Globe, May 24, 1998
  8. Roy, Matthew K. (September 27, 2011). "A MODERN MAKEOVER". Salem News. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  9. Phillips Library at PEM. Retrieved 05 April 2012.
  10. Michael Kelley. Phillips Library... to Make Holdings Available Online. Library Journal. 27 September 2011. Retrieved 05 April 2012.
  11. daseger (2017-08-31). "Losing our History". streetsofsalem. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  12. "Statement Regarding PEM Phillips Library". Peabody Essex Museum. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
  13. Inc., The Outfit (2018-10-26). "pem.org | Library". pem.org. Retrieved 2018-10-26.
  14. Writer, Dustin Luca Staff. "Collection center for artifacts from Peabody Essex unveiled". Salem News. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  15. "Friends of Salem's Phillips Library". Friends of Salem's Phillips Library | Salem, Massachusetts. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  16. Boston Globe, Mar 28, 2004
  17. Subject Strengths. Retrieved 05 April 2012.
  18. Featured Collections Archived 2017-07-19 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved 05 April 2012.
  19. Offen Collection. Retrieved 05 April 2012.

Further reading

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Salem - 1820