The Association for the Arnold Arboretum, Inc., an independent group of 600 members, was organized in July 1953 as a nonprofit Massachusetts corporation to aid in the protection, preservation, support, and advancement of the Arnold Arboretum. Its creation was prompted by the Harvard Corporation’s decision in January 1953 to remove most of the Arboretum’s herbarium and library from Jamaica Plain to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in accordance with the previously approved "Bailey Plan." This plan, developed by Professor Irving W. Bailey in 1945, recommended the unification of botanical activities at Harvard. The Association argued that the "Bailey Plan" involved a legal and moral breach of trust with the benefactors of the Arboretum who contributed to its endowment.
The Association launched a public relations and legal campaign against the University to prevent the removal of the Arboretum's library and herbarium, beginning with a request for Massachusetts Attorney General, George Fingold, to sue Harvard University. Fingold refused, and the Association brought suit in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts against his decision. The suit failed, and in 1955, most books and herbaria specimens were transferred to a new building in Cambridge, which was later named the Harvard University Herbaria. A second lawsuit was filed by the Association in the name of the new Attorney General, Edward J. McCormack, Jr., in 1958. Later that year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld Harvard’s decision to removal material from the Arboretum.
From the guide to the Records of the Association for the Arnold Arboretum, 1953-1958, (Harvard University Archives)
