William Allan Neilson Library - Smith College - Northampton, MA - People-Named Places on Waymarking.com

The Place:

In 1905, Andrew Carnegie gave $62,500 to Smith College to build the library. The funds were used to construct the Italian Renaissance Revival style Neilson Library which was designed by the architectural firm of Lord & Hewlett, completed in 1909, and named after the third president of the college William Allan Neilson. The library was dedicated on May 27, 1910. Smith College then enlarged the library in 1937, 1962 and 1982. The central portion of the current library maintains the original appearance of the 1909 library.

The building is constructed of red brick with brownstone trim. It has a hipped roof and a central entrance set within a rounded keystone arch and flanked by a pair of Doric columns. Above the entrance is the inscription NEILSON LIBRARY.

On the lower level, to the left and right of the entrance are three multi-pane window set within rounded arches. There are a total of eight white medallions arranged near the tops of the six arches. The upper level has a group of six windows on either side of a triple window that has a balcony below. A central gable above the triple window has a cross shaped brownstone medallion. The sides of the building have two windows within rounded keystone arches on the lower level and a group of four windows on the upper level on either side of newly constructed wings.

The Person:

William Allan Neilson was born on March 28, 1869 in Doune, Perthshire, Scotland. He graduated in the University of Edinburgh in 1891 and and was awarded a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1898. Between 1917 and 1939 he was the third president of Smith College in Northampton, MA.

In addition to his academic career he was a acclaimed author of mostly British subjects and the editor of Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition published in 1934. According to Goodreads he is the author of 114 distinct works. Link

Wikipedia Link lists the following works by William Allan Neilson:

The Origins and Sources of the "Court of Love" (1899)
Milton's Minor Poems (1909); 1919 edition
Essentials of Poetry (1912)
The Facts About Shakespeare (1913) (with Ashley Horace Thorndike)
Lectures on the Harvard Classics (1914)
Robert Burns, Project Gutenberg books.google (1917)
Sir Gawain And The Green Knight (transl. by William Allan Neilson) (1917)
History of English Literature (1920) (with Ashley Horace Thorndike)

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