Walking along the Brandywine Creek as it meanders past the Hagley Museum, the beauty of the softly changing leaves is striking, the laughter of kids running amok through the outdoor exhibits is energizing and the history buried in the now-silent powder mills is almost palpable.
Immersed in the surroundings, it’s easy to forget that the 235-acre museum is home to a world-renowned library where the chronicles of corporate America are literally stacked to the ceiling.
Hagley is a fitting spot for a library – the du Ponts were scholars in their native France and company-founder Irenee was a member of the enlightenment movement, said Terry Snyder, Library Administration deputy director.
Du Pont brought those well-educated ideals to America in 1799, but it wasn’t until 1953 that Pierre S. du Pont founded the library. Eight years later, it relocated to its creek-side home, and was quickly stocked full of tomes and manuscripts documenting the Mid-Atlantic’s industrial prowess, she said.
The museum has expanded its scope since then, she said, but still holds firmly to its business-centric archives.
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By the numbers See behind the stacks with Adam's photo gallery |
“We give scholars the opportunity to understand the impact business has on culture,” she said.
Case in point: one of the library’s recent collections chronicles the history of Wawa. The famed convenience store got its start as a New Jersey manufacturer in the 1800s, where employees worked with forge and furnace instead of cold cut and hoagie roll. The company eventually moved into dairy production, she said, making the leap to food markets years later.
But the library’s collections reach back much farther than the industrial revolution.
Hagley’s oldest book, which dates to 1500, is only eight pages long. The thin volume – in French and painstakingly illustrated – details manor and plantation gardening and was gleaned from P.S. du Pont’s collection, explained Max Moeller, Imprint Department head.
Other old volumes include a book on pyrotechnics published in 1635, an account of Pennsylvania fireplaces signed by Benjamin Franklin and published in 1744, as well as a 1791 government report by Alexander Hamilton on the importance industry should play in the new United States.
But access separates Hagley from many libraries that hold historic books – anyone can request a volume and thumb through it, no matter how old it is or how many founding fathers have signed it.
“That’s the point of it being here – it’s not a warehouse, it’s a library,” said Moeller.
Hagley takes good care of its collections. Thousands of unpublished letters and manuscripts are meticulously stacked in the museum’s archives, a spacious room kept at a brisk, humidity-controlled 65 degrees, said archivist Lynn Catanese. The manuscripts are handled with extreme care because many are one-of-a-kind.
Nearly seven miles of manuscripts include letters written by Napoleon, architectural drawing of the Washington Monument and documents detailing the colors of the spring fashion season in 1932, Catanese explained.
However, not all the materials are delivered in pristine condition, which is where Hagley’s restorers step in.
They carefully clean the books, which sometimes come covered in mold or dirt, explained Laura Wahl, such as a collection of stinky safety trade catalogues stacked under the lab’s fume hood, waiting to be dealt with.
Hagley’s staff carefully washes the pages in a solution that makes them easier to flip through, she explained. Sometimes, they must delicately rebuild whole volumes.
But in fact, older books tend to hold up better than their newer counterparts, Snyder said, because the pages were made from cloth rags before the Civil War, as opposed to flimsy modern paper made from tree pulp.
That’s the kind of historical tidbit one would expect to learn in a library like Hagley’s.
Researchers from around the world often visit the picturesque study room to plumb the depths of corporate sagas, she said, but book worms are not their only customers.
Golf course architects study Hagley’s collection of aerial course photos, model train enthusiasts soak in the details of intricate train station drawings and genealogists try and trace the pop culture past of their ancestors, Snyder said.
A couple from West Virginia recently visited, looking for records of a former du Pont explosives plant – shuttered in 1944 – that is on land they now own, said Jon Williams, curator of prints and photographs.
While searching the photographs, the wife came across a picture of her grandfather, who worked at the plant, and got an unprecedented peek into what his life had been like, Williams said.
It’s a story not uncommon at the Hagley Library.
“It gives you a window into the cultural experience of different times,” Snyder said. “And it illuminates qualities of the American experience that you wouldn’t expect.”
