Newberry Library
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Newberry Library is a research library for the humanities and social sciences in Chicago, Illinois, established in 1887 by a bequest by Walter Loomis Newberry. The building was designed by Henry Ives Cobb (1859-1931). It is located at 60 West Walton Street across from Washington Square Park.
Although it is a private, non-circulating library, it is free and open to the public. The Library houses more than 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages, and 300,000 historic maps. Collection strengths include materials on the Renaissance, genealogy, American Indians, early music, cartography, the history of printing, Chicago history, railroad archives, Luso-Brazilian history, and Midwestern authors' manuscripts. Their manuscript holdings include work by Mike Royko and Ben Hecht.
The Library also offers teacher programs, seminars, programming and exhibits.
The Library was the primary institution responsible for the production of the 2004 Encyclopedia of Chicago, a landmark single-volume work that covered Chicago's history from 1630 to 2000.
Henry DeTamble, one of the fictional protagonists in Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife, is said to work in the Newberry Library.
