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player ready...The Morton Arboretum is best known for its majestic oaks, elms and plant collections from around the world, but the Sterling Morton Library on the arboretum grounds also is home to thousands of horticultural treasures.
Since 1922, the year the arboretum was founded, the Morton Library has been accumulating rare botanical books and prints, including herbal manuscripts dating to the 1500s and the largest North American museum collection of original gouache paintings by 18th Century botanical artist Barbara Regina Dietzsch. But in recent years, as the library has mushroomed to include more than 26,500 volumes and 8,500 artworks, the special collection has fallen prey to a space crunch.
“A lot of the folios have been crowded and stacked on top of each other, and that isn’t good for their spines,” said Michael T. Stieber, reference librarian and administrator for the Sterling Morton Library. “They need breathing room.”
Soon, the arboretum’s rarest books and prints will have a climate-controlled, fireproof space of their own. Ground recently was broken for a $1 million Special Collections Library addition to house the historic horticultural materials and provide easier public access to the museum’s holdings.
Funded entirely by a donation from Charles C. Haffner III, a retired vice chairman of R.R. Donnelly & Sons and current chairman of the arboretum board of trustees, the 2,100-square-foot addition will be on the north side of the Sterling Morton Library. The new facility, which will house the artworks collection and 5,000 of the rarest books, is expected to be completed by early 1999. The Morton Library will remain open during most of the construction.
The addition also will include exhibit areas and a research room with security surveillance for the rarest items.
“We want to encourage people to view the collection,” Stieber said. “Anybody can come in and use the library, though only arboretum members are allowed to borrow books from the circulating collections.”
Library hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.