Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Veblens' Desire for a Library and Museum

While the Veblen House has been sitting boarded up since 2000, there has been debate about what the Veblens' intentions for the house had been, having bequeathed it to Mercer County after Elizabeth's death in 1974. I had heard that they had wanted it to be used as a nature center, but there was nothing in writing to prove it.

Finally we had the brilliant idea of looking in the Veblen papers at the Institute archives, where we found their wills. Both the 1960 will of Oswald and the 1974 will of Elizabeth's contain the following language:

"I give and bequeath all of my pictures, radio receivers and phonograph records to the said County, to be kept by it in the house herein devised as a part of the proposed library and museum of Herrontown Woods."

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