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Gore Hall continued...
Great efforts were undertaken to rebuild Harvard Hall
and its collection. By 1781, the collection had reached
10,059 volumes and was growing every year.
In the 1830's Harvard Hall had reached its limit and
the valuable collection, much of it irreplaceable,
was still not secure from fire. In 1836, the Corporation
committed the greater part of Christopher Gore's $100,000
bequest to erect "a building for the library
that would bear his name." Gore Hall received
the collection in 1841 and it served as Harvard's
library until it was razed in 1913, making way for
the present Widener Library.
Traces of Gore Hall still remain: the image appears
on the Seal of the City of Cambridge and
the same view also appears in the logo for the Harvard
Archives. Most notably, the building appears in bas-relief
on a tablet placed at the entrance to Widener Library.
Harvard still honors the memory of Christopher Gore.
A dormitory bears his name, his portrait hangs in
the Governor’s Room of Loeb Hall, and a bust
of Gore sits in Alumni Hall at Sanders Theater. Gore's
legacy to his alma mater can be found in his love
of books, of the knowledge they contain, and his sense
of duty in service to the college so instrumental
in the formation of his character.
Excerpts from The Harvard Book, Frederick O. Vaille
and Henry Alden Clark.
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