Word: gores
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...solution to the space problem is departmental growth. Departmental libraries grew up under Winsor when Gore Hall was overcrowded. Today, they exceed the main collection in size, and include 60 percent of today's acquisitions...
Sibley soon had filled the library with his purchases. After President Eliot announced in 1877 that, "The want of space in Gore Hall is a more and more oppressing evil," the building got its first renovation and a new librarian, Mr. Justin Winsor, as well. He revolutionized the library by installing stacks, the first in America, and starting a more frugal and practical policy of book purchasing...
Despite his efforts, the library was overcrowded again by 1895. A member of the Corporation came to the rescue and offered to build a new reading room, but died before contributing the cash. Finally, drawing from its unrestricted funds, Harvard remodeled again. Tearing down Gore's clustered columns, and a vaulted plaster ceiling, workmen made the reading room into an example of "uncompromising bareness and Spartan simplicity of furnishing...
...change was only a makeshift. After ten more years, library conditions had once again become intolerable. When the Widener family offered to build a new library. University officials painfully decided to demolish Gore but used some of Gore's granite to help build Widener...
Three years later, in 1916, the new Gore Hall arose, and Christopher Gore's name lingered on as he had wished. But all that now remains to remind us of the first Gore Hall is some granite in the Walls of Widener, a piece of the reading room wall--preserved in Harvard archieves, and a squabble over its younger brother by the river...