From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
The Library--Bowdoin College--Brunswick, Maine C118
View of the General Hubbard Library at Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine. The building was named after Thomas Hamlin Hubbard (December 20, 1838 - May 19, 1915) General Hubbard was a Union Army colonel from Maine during the Civil War who was awarded the honorary grade of brevet brigadier general, United States Volunteers, for meritorious service. After the war, Hubbard was a lawyer, railroad executive, financier, businessman and philanthropist. Soldier, lawyer, philanthropist, and financier, Hubbard was best known for his enthusiasm for Arctic exploration, which contributed to the discovery of the North Pole. For years he was President of the Peary Arctic Club, which was formed to give Admiral Robert E. Peary financial backing in his polar quest; but after this quest had ended in success Hubbard's interest in the frozen north did not end, and he was one of the financial contributors to the Donald B. MacMillan expedition in the Arctic studying the native tribes On the south side of the Quad is Hubbard Hall (1903), once the College’s library and now the site of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center; the economics, government and legal studies, and history departments; some information technology offices; the library’s Susan Dwight Bliss Room, which houses a small collection of rare illustrated books; and the Shannon Room and Pickering Room, which both serve as multi-purpose classroom and meeting spaces. Portraits of Bowdoin's fourteen previous presidents are exhibited on the second floor. The south wing of Hubbard Hall is connected to the library and contains book stacks and a study room. A carved replica of the building’s original gargoyle now looms atop Hubbard Hall.
