It is significant that William L. Clements did not donate his collection of rare books and manuscripts on American history to dissolve within a large, established, academic library. He chose, instead, to endow a small, free-standing institution, a personalized monument to his own wealth, taste, and sophistication. By creating his own agreement with the UM to build and maintain a separate institution planned expressly to house his collection, Clements ensured that his collection would stay protected from neglect and dispersal.

In so doing, he followed a trend amongst several prominent collectors of the period. Wealthy manufacturers and financiers after the Civil War created huge, consolidated business enterprises, reaping extraordinary profits due to new efficiencies afforded by mechanical production processes and advances in communications and transportation technologies. Businessmen in publishing, oil, steel, minerals, and transportation grew so rich that they could begin to rival the dissolving European aristocracy for the acquisition of Old Master paintings, prints, and sculpture, antique furniture, porcelain, enamels, numismatics, and rare books. Some of the most wealthy, such as J.P. Morgan, Sr., and Henry Clay Frick, did not need to specialize, but could buy across categories, creating world-renowned collections in various fields by the turn of the century. To house these collections and to maintain their integrity, Morgan and Frick decided upon opening their own museums, often laid out on fairly modest domestic scales.

This idea of creating small, independent monuments to the taste of the individual collector caught on, and others can be noted in addition to the Morgan Library and the Frick Museum, including most importantly for the Clements, the John Carter Brown Museum at Brown University (Providence, R.I., 1900), but also the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (established c. 1924) and the Phillips Collection of Modern Art in Washington, D.C. (established in 1924). [6]

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Illustration 8. Clements Library Facade

The period 1910-1930 was a time of great opportunity for wealthy book collectors in the U.S. Members of the European nobility, weakened by wars and revolutionary political movements, increasingly auctioned their libraries to meet debts, redistributing these items to the nouveau riche of the U.S. This twenty year span saw a cluster of landmark rare book and historical document auctions, such as the Hoe (NY, 1911-1912), Huth (London, 1911-1920), and Crane Collections (NY, 1913). These sales dispersed these rare items to collectors enriched by new manufacturing and railroad wealth, men such as Henry Huntington and William L. Clements.

William Lawrence Clements was born in Ann Arbor in 1861, and graduated from UM with a B.S. in engineering in 1882. He took a job as a mechanical engineer in Bay City, MI with the Industrial Works, a company founded by his father in 1873. The Industrial Works manufactured cranes and other heavy machinery, becoming, by 1900, one of the nation's leading producers of this equipment. Clements rose to the presidency in 1898. From this power base, he took over the First National Bank of Bay City and the County National Bank. While not a national figure in terms of wealth and influence (like Morgan or Frick), Clements was a key member of Michigan's power elite, prominent in the affairs of the state Republican Party and the Board of Regents of UM (1910-1933).

Along with other UM Regents Junius E. Beal and Lucius Hubbard, Clements collected rare books, and by the early 1910s, he began to formulate the idea of donating his rapidly expanding collection on early America to his alma mater. At this time, as well, he feared that, if donated, his collection might be misused by irresponsible students and broken up by inept librarians. Clements felt special contempt for the loose management style of UM Library Director, Theodore W. Koch, whom he helped to fire in 1915. In his place, Clements handpicked a young librarian from the Librarian of Congress, William Warner Bishop, who followed the powerful Regent's orders faithfully. Clements was not satisfied with simply installing Bishop as Director, however. He began to plan an institution that would exist outside the library administrative structure, one that had a great deal of operational autonomy.

The Clements Library's administrative independence indicated two things: first, the value of the library as an academic resource overcame any political, bureaucratic objections within the University and State legislature; second, it testified to Clements' power as a Regent-his powers of manipulation of the Library Director, UM President, and other Regents-to guarantee his library such ample protection. During the tenure of Presidents Angell and Hutchins, (1910-1920), the Regents began to exert new power, becoming an important policy-making body within the University. A decisive and somewhat ruthless administrator, Clements took a leading role at a time when President Angell became too old and Hutchins too weak to resist his initiatives.

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Illustration 9. Clements Library Exterior

In the end, the UM voted in 1921 to appropriate $25,000 per annum for the operation of the library, personnel, and for a future accessions budget. Clements donated enough money to erect Kahn's dignified Italian Renaissance building and to equip it. Clements even had enough clout to have an original 1840 university building demolished to have his library built. In the end, the library's architecture and its administrative autonomy reflected William Clements' desire to create an elite institution, to be used only by trained scholars. Kahn designed the interior and exterior of the Clements to suggest an elegant men's club or upper-class urban residence. Rooms were not meant to be radically rearranged, but were filled with paneling and heavy furnishings that were meant to last in perpetuity. In the end, it is an attempt by a newly wealthy man to create the most durable monument possible. The monumental architecture of the building communicated the value of its contents. What better way to protect the integrity of a collection than to go the expense of tailoring a building specifically to it?

6. Accordng to The Clements Library: A Brief Description, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1952), p. 8: "The John Carter Brown Library served as a model for the William L. Clements' Library, not only though the notable rarities included in it….Clements used much of the Carter Brown administrative setup, including an independent director working under a five-man Committee of Management, for his own library."