Leaping on a remarkable opportunity to bolster its importance as a major research facility, the Chicago Botanic Garden has purchased one of the world’s premier collections of rare botanical books and journals.
The acquisition of 2,219 books and 2,000 horticultural journal titles is another step to prominence for the 30-year-old garden, a museum park in Glencoe that in recent years has bulked itself up with an impressive array of research and educational programs.
But for the seller, the venerable but financially strapped Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Boston, the sale is another blow to what once was one of New England’s most sterling institutions.
Both institutions declined to disclose the sale price but letters filed with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office in July put it at about $3 million.
The sale, bitterly opposed by some former board members of the Boston society, included books published as early as 1483 and complete series of early scientific journals spanning decades and centuries. Library and rare book experts say the purchase immediately establishes the Botanic Garden as a major academic research center.
“Books like this just don’t turn up on the market anymore,” said Peter Fortsas, a Chicago rare book dealer who appraised the Massachusetts collection for the botanic garden before the sale.
“It would take me 50 years and millions of dollars to put together that collection of books, if it could be done at all. And I don’t know anybody who could put together that periodicals collection today, it is so in depth. The value is outstanding.”
Much of the rare material was amassed in the 19th Century, when the Massachusetts Horticultural Society–known affectionately as “Mass Hort”–was the nation’s premier horticultural center.
Once, membership in the 173-year-old society was nearly de rigueur for such proper Bostonian families as the Saltonstalls, Crowninshields, Bradlees, Cabots, Hoveys and Endicotts. But in the last 30 years or so, sagging support for the society has forced it to sell off many of its assets to keep afloat, including its stunning building, Horticulture Hall, across the street from Symphony Hall in the heart of downtown Boston.
Now the books are going too.
The oldest in the collection is “The History of Plants,” published in 1483 in Treviso, Italy, a Latin translation of a Greek text written by Theophrastus, Aristotle’s favorite student and the father of botany.
Some of the most beautiful and prized volumes include an original 1601 edition of “History of Rare Plants” by Carolus Clusius, a pioneering Dutch botanist who introduced the tulip to Holland; Englishman Sir Hugh Plat’s “The Garden of Eden” of 1659, describing early gardening techniques and tools; a 1727 catalog to the great University of Leiden plant collection compiled by Herman Boerhaave, teacher and a mentor to noted botanist Carl Linnaeus; and a 1732 edition of German botanist Hannss von Carlowitz’s warning and plea to conserve European forests, history’s first blueprint for sustainable development through tree nurseries.
Journals prized most
The collections of old journals acquired in the sale filled two 18-wheel rigs. They are less glamorous than the rare books, but to scientists they are the most important acquisition.
“There are complete runs of journals going over decades, some going back to the 17th and 18th Century. It’s the history of horticulture as an academic discipline,” said Edward Valauskas, Chicago Botanic’s library manager.
“They are remarkable records of the earliest scientific descriptions of plants and their distribution, many of which are now extinct.”
Much of what makes the old books so valuable is their original woodcuts, drawings and paintings, which are highly prized by art dealers who cut apart the books and sell the artwork as individual pieces, a process known as “breaking.”
When rumors first surfaced in May that the society was putting its library up for sale to raise money, Valauskas said many botanical book specialists feared the collection would be ravaged by breakers.
It turned out that John Peterson, the Boston society’s president, and other society officials were hoping they could sell the book holdings intact, as a collection. After Valauskas contacted Peterson, he and Larry DeBuhr, the garden’s vice president of education, soon found themselves in Boston.
“This collection fits into the collections of Chicago-area libraries such as the Newberry, Morton Arboretum and the Field Museum, as if it were a missing puzzle piece,” DeBuhr said.
“With this collection, Chicago libraries and libraries at the great Universities of Chicago, Northwestern and Illinois can proudly claim to have one of the strongest natural history book collections in the world.”
Money from `private sources’
The Chicago group was so eager that Mass Hort never seriously courted any other institutional buyer, DeBuhr said.
He said money for the collection is coming from “private sources.” A stipulation of the sale was that neither institution would reveal the amount paid, he said, because of potential legal ramifications in Boston.
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The Chicago Botanic Garden is owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and managed by the Chicago Horticultural Society.
The garden’s existing library has 20,000 volumes, including 2,000 rare books. All of the new material, which fills 2,700 linear feet of shelving, will be here by Thanksgiving. Much of it will have to be warehoused while garden officials find funds to enlarge its facility.
Garden officials had to pass on about 130 books in the Boston collection that were too expensive. Featuring extraordinarily fine illustrations, those books are valued at tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and will be auctioned Dec. 18 by Christie’s in New York.
“My fear is that they will be bought by breakers,” Valauskas said.
“We have an endowment fund expressly dedicated to the purchase of rare books,” he said. “And we intend to be at the December auction. I don’t know if we will be able to get any of them.”
Mass Hort’s library will retain its working collection of horticultural books and journals, and about 500 rarer old books whose sale was barred when they were donated.
While Boston society officials express satisfaction that so much of its collection is going to the Chicago garden, the sale has infuriated some former trustees and board members, who are calling for Peterson’s resignation as society president.
“This is a huge loss for Massachusetts,” said Fred Good, a Boston-area businessman who had been a Mass Hort trustee and treasurer until he resigned this year. “The book sale is very controversial here.”
When the board first discussed selling the rare books a year ago this month, the board’s chairman, Paul Rogers, resigned in protest.
Mass resignations in Boston
Since then, he said, half of the Mass Hort board of directors has resigned, including its entire finance committee, to protest Peterson’s management.
Peterson was hired to turn things around in 1992. In his defense, Peterson’s supporters say he has had to struggle with diminishing resources while trying to make the society programming more open and relevant to all of Boston.
In August, the society’s financial crisis forced Peterson and his board into court to seek permission to sell the book collection. They said the society had taken on too many projects and was “suffering from a chronic operating shortfall and lack of available cash.”
The society has been trying to raise money for a $60 million indoor garden downtown and get funds to build up facilities at its new home, a 36-acre former estate in suburban Wellesley.
Good heads a committee of former board members now demanding Peterson’s resignation. He cites the book sale as the latest debacle under Peterson’s stewardship.
“You must appreciate the frustration,” Good said. “It’s not the sale of the library, it’s the issue of ongoing mismanagement and loss of money. If the books had to be sold, we had all been hopeful that they would go to a place like the Chicago Botanic Garden, where they will be used and protected.
“But how is it that Boston can’t operate a successful horticulture society, that it has to sell a priceless asset like this to a similar botanic organization that manages to be thriving?”