Dudley House's Old Home Christened Coolidge Hall

Harvard's red brick building at 1737 Cambridge Street, the old home of Dudley House and still the residence of the East Asian and Russian Research Centers, has been newly christened "Archibald Cary Coolidge Hall."

The buildings's new name honors the memory of one of Harvard's particularly gifted and loyal Victorians, a man described by his brother and biographer as "a quarter Bostonian, a quarter Victorian, and one half a product of Essex Country at its best."

Not only was Coolidge a summa cumlaude Harvard graduate in history, a scholar in international affairs, and a planner of Widener Library, but he was also a great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson.

In 1910, twenty-three years after he graduated from Harvard, Coolidge became the first director of the Harvard Library, whose growth he continued to direct for 18 years.

The creation of Widener Library was forwarded by Coolidge, who left it the fifth largest library in the world. A fellow historian, Professor Roger B. Merriman, noted that the characterization of Widener Library as the best, place to work in he world, if justified, "is due first and foremost to Archibald Cary Coolidge."

Paid For Collections

Coolidge, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg in 1892, not only sought out collections of Slavic, German, Latin American, and Asian works, but also paid for some of them out of his own pocket.

Returning to Harvard after a brief service in the diplomatic corps, he taught history until his death in 1928. During the war years, he went on official missions to Archangel and Vienna, served with the Peace Conference at Versailles, and with the Hoover famine-relief expedition in Russia in 1921.

Coolidge's actions manifested a real concern for Harvard students. It was his plan that resulted in Randolph Hall, a "perhaps premature attempt to introduce what is now called the 'House Plan'," according to Coolidge's brother. Randolph Hall is now a part of Adams House, which has a room memorializing him. The Coolidge Professorship of Modern History was founded by his bequest.

Merriman said, "Every teacher and scholar in the University is Coolidge's debtor, and will continue to remain so for generations to come."