Rogers Memorial Collection: Rogers Memorial Room records
Overview
Records kept by the Harvard Theatre Collection concerning the administration of the Rogers Memorial Collection donated by Henry Munroe Rogers and Clara Kathleen Rogers.
Dates
- Creation: 1930-1966.
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
This series is not housed at the Houghton Library but is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
1 linear feet (2 boxes)This collection consists of records kept by the Harvard Theatre Collection concerning the administration of the Rogers Memorial Collection, including bookplates, catalog cards, inventories, memoranda, a rubber stamp, and a visitors' book, as well as papers concerning the publication of The Rogers Memorial Room : an account of the nature, origin, and significance of the memorabilia presented to Harvard College in 1930 by Clara Kathleen & Henry Munroe Rogers ([Boston] : Cosmos Press, 1935).
Biographical / Historical
Henry Munroe Rogers (1839-1937) was a Boston lawyer, best known as a patron of local theater. Born in Boston, he was one of six children of John Hicks Rogers and Lucy Catherine Smith. He attended Harvard College (A.B. 1862; L.L.B. 1867) and served as a paymaster in the United States Navy during the Civil War. He became a successful Boston lawyer and a charter member in the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. After his marriage in 1878 to the English opera singer Clara Kathleen Barnett (daughter of the English composer John Barnett), the couple entertained many theatrical, literary and musical luminaries in their home.
Henry Munroe Rogers and Clara Kathleen Rogers amassed a substantial collection of theatrical and military memorabilia over the course of their long lives, mostly as part of their personal papers. In 1930, they donated these papers to Harvard College Library, where they were first arranged by Edward Bass Hall and his mother Lillian Arvilla Hall of the Harvard Theatre Collection. The Rogers Memorial Room on the top floor of Widener Library was set aside to house the collection, and opened in 1935. The Rogers Memorial Room was relocated to the Harvard Theatre Collection's space in Lamont Library in 1949. Building renovations required that the room be vacated in 2006, but the Rogers Memorial Collection is still maintained as a unified whole.
Arrangement
Arranged alphabetically by title.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Custodial History
The core of the collection arrived in 1930, but Henry Munroe Rogers continued to add material informally through 1937, and the Rogers Memorial Room continued to generate records after that point.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
No accession number. Gift of Clara Kathleen Rogers and Henry Munroe Rogers; received: 1930.
Separated Materials
The Rogers Memorial Collection, of which this is Series IX, contains literary, musical and historical material from Boston circa 1860-1937, and memorabilia of the English composer John Barnett (1802-1890). A master list of the Rogers Memorial Collection series can be found in HOLLIS 10104119.
General note
This series is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. See access restrictions below for additional information.
Processing Information
Processed by: Rick Stattler
- Title
- Rogers, Henry Munroe, 1839-1937, collector. Rogers Memorial Collection: Rogers Memorial Room records, 1930-1966: Guide.
- Author
- Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou01910
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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