Seventy years ago, on October 23, 1952, the Honnold Library building was dedicated in the presence of Caroline Honnold, essentially marking the start of The Claremont Colleges Library’s story. Caroline — along with her late husband William Honnold, a former Pomona College trustee and founding trustee of The Claremont Colleges — gave a generous gift to fund the construction of the new building.
The Honnold Library was the first “central library for the Associated Colleges,” known today as The Claremont Colleges. At the dedication, Harvey S. Mudd, chairman of the Board of Fellows, remarked that this building was “the fulfillment of a prime objective that brought the founders together to launch the plan of a federation of colleges. One of the keystones of that plan was a central and common library to serve the Associated Colleges.” To this day, the Library is still committed to serving as the heart of the consortium and providing services and resources to students, faculty, and other researchers in their academic endeavors.
Construction began in the Summer of 1951 with the building becoming fully operational at the beginning of the 1952-3 academic year. To establish the collection, books were relocated from Pomona’s Carnegie Library, the Claremont College library located in Harper Hall on Claremont Graduate University’s campus, from the library of Claremont Men’s College (now CMC), and some research materials came from Scripps College library.
Read more in this Brief History of the Libraries of The Claremont Colleges and see photos of the construction in The Claremont Colleges Digital Library (CCDL).
Source for quotes and facts: Lyon, Wilson E. The History of Pomona College, 1887-1969. 1977.
Images from The Claremont Colleges Digital Library:
- https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/ccp/id/2476/rec/20
- https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/ccp/id/2466/rec/3
- https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/ccp/id/2463/rec/11