page_title: John Crerar (industrialist)
section_title: John Crerar Library
hierarchical_section_title: John Crerar (industrialist) / Philanthropy / John Crerar Library
caption_attribution_description: English: Cholera, Its Protean Aspects and Its Management, Volume 2, 1893. Copied from the work shown. Frontispiece for a book from the John Crerer Library in Chicago.
context_page_description: John Chippewa Crerar was a wealthy American industrialist and businessman from Chicago whose investments were primarily in the railroad industry. Although he had a successful business career he is most well known for his philanthropic efforts, his activism in the Presbyterian Church, and his investment in the John Crerar Library.
context_section_description: This literary bequest was, of course, shadowed, by his posthumous gift of a library to the city of Chicago, in the form of a two million dollar bequest:
  I give, devise, and bequeath and all the rest, remainder and residue of my estate both real and personal for the erection, creation, maintenance and endowment of a Free Public Library to be called The John Crerar Library and to be located in the city of Chicago, Illinois, a preference being given to the South Division of the city inasmuch as the Newberry Library will be located in the North Division…I desire the building to be tasteful, substantial and fireproof and that a sufficient fund to be reserved over and above the cost of its construction to provide, maintain, and support a library for all time. I desire that the books and periodicals be selected with a view to create and sustain a healthy moral and Christian sentiment in the community and that all nastiness and immorality be excluded. I do not mean by this that there shall be nothing but hymn books and sermons, but I mean that dirty French novels and all skeptical trash and works of questionable moral tone shall never be found in this library. I want its atmosphere that of Christian refinement, and its aim and object the building up of character, and I rest content that the friends I have named will carry out my wishes in those particulars.
  It was not he but his executors who chose to make the John Crerar Library primarily a library of scientific, medical and technical reference, as a means of avoiding the literary lure of prurient Parisian prose. As specified in the will, Norman Williams, Crerar's friend and executor, became the first president. The library is now affiliated with the University of Chicago and contains over one million volumes.
caption: Frontispiece from a book in the library.
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