The Harvard University Herbarium

During 1954 the Gray Herbarium, the Orchid Herbarium of Oakes Ames, the paleobotanical collections of the Botanical Museum and a portion of the herbarium collections and the library of the Arnold Arboretum were moved into a new building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This move was the culmination of a long period of planning to determine how the best interests of each institution as well as the field of systematic botany could be served best in this period of rapidly developing interrelationship of diverse scientific fields of knowledge. Additional considerations prior to the move were the isolation of the various taxonomic units at Harvard, the duplication of resources, efforts and goals, as well as the more mundane problems of increasing costs of labor, material and demands for additional storage facilities. In 1946 the President and Fellows of Harvard College appropriated from its unrestricted funds the sum of one million dollars to construct and equip a new and modern building to house the systematic work and collections of these institutions in Cambridge, to be in close proximity to the resources of the Department of Biology, the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Farlow Reference Library and Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany. The building, designed around the requirements established by the taxonomists of these institutions, was under construction during 1953 and was finished in the early months of 1954.