College Hall Fire collection

Collection

Identifier: 1VF-College Hall Fire

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Collection consists of records relating to the 1914 College Hall fire and subsequent reconstruction and community reflection on the event, dating from 1914 to 1974. Includes personal accounts of the fire, telegrams of condolence and offers of help following the fire, related letters to President Ellen Fitz Pendleton and alumnae, records of fundraising and reconstruction efforts, news articles covering the fire, scrapbooks of Eleanor Blair (Class of 1917) and Barbara Bach Phipps (Class of 1916), and material from a 1945 exhibition on the fire.

Dates

1914-1974

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research. To make an appointment to view materials, please contact the Archives staff by email at archives@wellesley.edu or by phone at (781) 283-3745.

Conditions Governing Use

The Wellesley College Archives welcomes researchers to use materials in the public domain, to make fair use of copyrighted materials as defined by copyright law, and to request permission to use works whose copyright is held by Wellesley College. All materials from the Archives, regardless of copyright status, should be attributed to the Wellesley College Archives, Library and Technology Services when cited, quoted, or reproduced.

Biographical / Historical

Records pertaining to College Hall Fire of March 17, 1914; dating 1914-1915, 1925, 1945, 1971-1974; consisting of correspondence, magazine and newspaper accounts, scrapbooks, desk calendar page, progams; concerning College Hall Fire, expressions of sympathy, and offers of help from others, efforts to replace facilities lost; including personal accounts, and letters to Myrtilla Avery, Alice Van Vechten Brown Mary Whiton Calkins, Mary T. Caswell, President Ellen Fitz Pendleton, Edith Tufts.

Extent

5 Linear Feet (2 document boxes and 3 oversize boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Arrangement

1VF College Hall Fire collection is an artificial collection. Artificial collections are created by Archivists bringing together multiple smaller acquisitions to the archives from multiple creators, and organizing them based on their subject. This is unlike most archival collections which are organized by provenance, meaning by the original creator, and which maintain the original creator’s arrangement of the collection.