Gray Herbarium institutional records

Asa Gray began his career at Harvard as the Fisher Professor of Natural History in 1842. When he first moved to Cambridge, he kept his collection of botanical specimens in the closet of the house where he boarded. In 1844 he moved into a house on the grounds of the Botanic Garden, where he had room to grow his collection. By the early 1860s the collection had again outgrown his ability to adequately store it, and he offered his herbarium and library to Harvard University, on the conditions that it would be stored in a fire-proof building, and that the university would provide for its care. In 1864 the herbarium, numbering over 200,000 specimens, was officially transferred to the university and housed in a building furnished by Nathaniel Thayer.

In 1874 Sereno Watson was appointed curator of the herbarium, a position he held until his death in 1892. He was succeeded by Benjamin Lincoln Robinson. By this time the herbarium and the library were outgrowing the building in which they were kept. The number of staff, supplies, acquisitions, and maintenance needed were also surpassing the available budget. In 1897 the President and Fellows of Harvard declared that the herbarium would officially be named the Gray Herbarium. Additionally, the Herbarium Visiting Committee was established to help raise funds. An anonymous donor offered twenty thousand dollars for the herbarium, if the University could raise an additional thirty thousand dollars, to establish the Asa Gray Memorial Fund and fund a professor of descriptive botany, who would also serve as curator of the Herbarium. The fundraising goal was exceeded within two years and Robinson was appointed to the professorship.

In order to make space for a new herbarium building, Robinson oversaw the removal of Gray’s home from the Botanic Garden in 1911. The new building was opened in 1915, built of incombustible materials and steel furnishings and contained lecture rooms, laboratories, rooms for processing specimens, reading rooms, offices, library stacks, and storage spaces. During his time as curator, Robinson was also able to increasethe size of the herbarium collections. When he began the Herbarium held 210,000 sheets of mounted plants and 10,054 books and pamphlets in the library. When Robinson left his position in 1934, the holdings included 865,210 sheets and 39,250 books and pamphlets.

Merritt Fernald became the new curator in 1935. In 1937 the title was changed to director and Fernald held this position until 1947. Lincoln Constance was appointed Interim Director until Reed Clark Rollins was named director in 1948. Rollins oversaw the creation of the Harvard University Herbaria. In 1945 Irving W. Bailey had presented to the president of Harvard a plan to restructure the administration of Harvard’s various botanical institutions, including consolidating the Gray Herbarium, the Orchid Herbarium of Oakes Ames, the herbarium of the Arnold Arboretum, and the paleobotanical collections into one building. In 1954, as the result of this consolidation, the Gray Herbarium’s collections and library were once again moved into a new building at 22 Divinity Avenue. The Herbaria has since seen the addition of the Economic Botany Herbarium of Oakes Ames and the collections of the New England Botanical Club. In 1978 Otto Solbrig served as the final director of the Gray Herbarium, before the creation of the position of director of the combined Harvard University Herbaria.

References: Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries. 2010. Gray Herbarium and Library. https://huh.harvard.edu/book/gray-herbarium-and-library. Accessed December 2022.

Wood, Emily W. 2010. Gray’s Herbarium to the Gray Herbarium to the Harvard University Herbaria. Harvard Pap. Bot. 15(2):321-342.