The Farnsworth Room
After the Farnsworth Room left the hands of Florence Milner, a librarian named Keyes D. Metcalf was managing the Farnsworth Room, with jobs such as selecting new librarians and searching for the funding for the room. In 1940, Ms. Magrath was selected as a successor of Mrs. Milner, and followed by Mrs. Roberts in 1946. K. D. Metcalf was very considerate and put much effort in deciding a librarian for the Farnsworth Room, looking for specific “qualifications that apply to the position.”. His effort in picking the best one for the librarian of the Farnsworth Room shows that the room held its significance even after Mrs. Milner’s era. However, no other librarians could replace Mrs.Milner and the Farnsworth Room began to suffer from a lack of funding from the late 1930s. As a result, K.D. Metcalf sent many letters to Mrs. Loomis, a relative of Henry Farnsworth seeking for more generous funding for the Farnsworth Room. At that time in the 1940s, Mrs. Loomis was the only member of the family of Henry Farnsworth who was funding the room since “the other relatives were not at all enthusiastic about Henry Farnsworth and his method of life.” The lack of money to buy new books and give salaries for the librarians in the Farnsworth Room was a huge problem, but with the help of Mrs. Loomis, who generously granted her money for the funding of the Farnsworth Room, the room could overcome this problem.
However, the downtime for the Farnsworth Room came again from January 1943 to September 1946, when the room was closed down due to a huge decline of users during the World War 2 period.
In 1950, four years after the room reopened, the Farnsworth Room moved from Widener Library to Lamont library, a library that was built specifically for the undergraduate population. As Mrs. Loomis supported the Farnsworth Room financially, her voice had much influence in the room’s general furniture and atmosphere when it was newly built in Lamont. Mrs. Loomis was “anxious of making the room different from any other rooms in the building,” which shows that not only the book collection but also the furniture and facilities of the Farnsworth Room were under careful attention from earlier days. Mrs. Loomis specifically wanted the furniture of the room to be generally dark shades of brown while including some “strong colors that can stir imagination” such as red leather sofas.
Even though, after its symbolic mother Mrs. Milner had left, the Farnsworth Room had to suffer from some problems such as a lack of funding or its closure during the War, its history from 1939 to the 1950s illustrates how the Farnsworth Room was regarded as an important asset of Harvard library and continued to hold its own value as a pleasure reading room.