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Katherine McNamara

McNamara, Katherine, 1896-1977

Katherine McNamara became the librarian of the Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning Department at Harvard University in 1924, where she had served on staff since 1918. McNamara compiled expert bibliographies on city planning, for which she was well known. She expanded the collections of the library beyond the realm of technical reports. McNamara was only the second librarian of the Landscape Architecture and City Planning library on the Harvard campus, which was established as a separate library in 1911. For a time, she and Ruth Cook served as librarians of dual collections until the library of the Graduate School of Design was finally merged with the Landscape Architecture library in 1956. McNamara retired in 1963 and was succeeded by Caroline Shillaber. At Dumbarton Oaks, some of McNamara's bibliographies served to guide Mildred Bliss as she built the Garden Library.

 

Reference:

Alofsin, Anthony. The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002.