| Sterling Memorial Library | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Facade and tower of Sterling Memorial Library | |
  | |
| General information | |
| Type | Library |
| Architectural style | Collegiate Gothic |
| Location | 120 High Street,New Haven,Connecticut,United States |
| Coordinates | 41°18′41″N72°55′45″W / 41.3113°N 72.9291°W /41.3113; -72.9291 |
| Completed | 1930[1] |
| Opened | April 1931[1] |
| Cost | $8 million[1] |
| Owner | Yale University |
| Height | 150 feet (46 m) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 16 |
| Floor area | 441,651 square feet (41,030.7 m2) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | James Gamble Rogers |
| Website | |
| web.library.yale.edu/building/sterling-library | |
Sterling Memorial Library (SML) is the mainlibrary building of theYale University Library system inNew Haven, Connecticut, United States. Opened in 1931, the library was designed byJames Gamble Rogers as the centerpiece of Yale'sGothic Revival campus. The library's tower has sixteen levels of bookstacks containing over 4 million volumes. Several special collections—including the university's Manuscripts & Archives—are also housed in the building. It connects via tunnel to the undergroundBass Library, which holds an additional 150,000 volumes.
The library is named forJohn W. Sterling, a lawyer representingStandard Oil, whose huge bequest to Yale required that an "enduring, useful and architecturally beautiful edifice" be built. Sterling Library is elaborately ornamented, featuring extensive sculpture and painting as well as hundreds of panes ofstained glass created byG. Owen Bonawit. In addition to the book tower, Rogers' design featured five large reading rooms and two courtyards, one of which is now a music library.
While the library's nave and main reading rooms can be visited on guided tours, its collections are restricted to cardholders.
For the ninety years prior to the construction of Sterling Memorial Library, Yale's library collections had been held in the College Library, a chapel-likeGothic Revival building on Yale'sOld Campus now known as Dwight Hall.[2] Built to house a collection of 40,000 books in the 1840s, and later expanded to Linsly Hall and Chittenden Hall, the old library could not hold Yale's swelling book collection, which had grown to over one million volumes.[1]
In 1918, Yale received a $17-millionbequest fromJohn W. Sterling, founder of the New York law firmShearman & Sterling, providing that Yale construct "at least one enduring, useful and architecturally beautiful edifice."[1][3] The largest bequest in the history of any American university, it initiated a major period of construction on Yale's campus.[3] Because of the library collection's growth, the university decided to make the centerpiece of Sterling's gift a new library with a capacity for 3.5 million volumes.[3][4]
The building's original architect,Bertram Goodhue, intended the library to resemble hisState Capitol Building inLincoln, Nebraska, with the library's books in a prominent tower.[5] When Goodhue died in 1924, the project passed toJames Gamble Rogers, the university's consulting architect. Rogers' work on a "General Plan" for the Yale campus allowed him to incorporate the main library project into his neo-Gothic scheme for Yale's expansion.
Roger's campus plan called for the library to sit on a new main courtyard, now called Cross Campus. Originally, he planned to balance the courtyard with a 5,000-seat chapel facing opposite the library. With the end of compulsory undergraduate chapel services in 1926 and the lack of a financier, the chapel was never built.[6] Expanding on Goodhue's tower concept, Rogers proposed the library take the form of a cathedral, which, in his own words, would be "as near to modern Gothic as we dared to make it."[7] He modeled the library's entrance hall to resemble a vaultednave and commissioned extensivestained glass and stoneornament to decorate the building's exterior and interior.[8]
The library's 122,500-square-foot (11,380 m2) footprint would take up more than half a city block. Twenty buildings were cleared for its construction, many of them private homes.[9] Although excavation began in the fall of 1927, the construction site was not fully secured until July 1928, when the finalholdout homeowner agreed to sell.[10][11][12]
While the new library was planned and constructed, Yale began soliciting gifts from its alumni for the new library. By 1931, the collection had grown to nearly 2 million volumes, many of them rare books and manuscripts.[1][10] Among the most important of these acquisitions was aGutenberg Bible donated byAnna Harkness.[10] The bible became the centerpiece of the new library's Rare Book Room, which allowed students and researchers to browse the most valuable books in the university's collection for the first time, a function later subsumed in part by theBeinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.[1]
At the time of its construction, the choice of cathedral architecture attracted criticism. Like much of Yale's revivalist construction of the same era, the new library was criticized as expensive and retrograde.[6][13]William Harlan Hale, writing inThe Nation, scorned it as a "cathedral orgy," criticized the library's bastardized cathedral aesthetics and the university's timid anti-modernism.[14] Many students of architecture leveled similar criticisms.[15] Others asserted that the project was either sanctimonious or sacrilegious for merging academic purpose and religious architecture.[6] Later critics have praised the building's ambition, beauty, and pragmatism.[13][16][17]
The library is situated on Yale's Cross Campus, the central quadrangle of the university. Surrounding buildings, includingBerkeley College,Trumbull College, andSterling Law Building were designed by Rogers and built in the same period andGothic Revival style as the library.
The entrance hall of the library is known as the "nave" because it imitates themain approach of a cathedral. At its western terminus is achancel containing an ornate circulation desk andaltarpiece mural painted byEugene Savage.[11] Constructed ofIndiana limestone andOhio sandstone blocks, the nave is a self-supporting stone structure with none of the steel reinforcement used elsewhere in the library.[18] It is elaborately decorated with stone and wood carving, ironwork, stained glass windows, and ceilingbosses.[19] The main hall is flanked by twoaisles, which originally heldcard catalogs for the library bookstacks. Though the original catalog drawers remain in the aisles, the cards have been removed and the aisles converted to seating areas and acomputer lab. At its western end it is intersected by atransept, which leads to the library's main reading room on one end and its wing on the other. For many years,smoking was allowed in the nave, which left a layer of soot on its upper levels.[20] Beginning in 2013, the nave underwent a $20-million, yearlong renovation to clean its surfaces, restore its architectural details, overhaul building systems, and reconfigure visitor circulation and services.[21][22][23]
Fifteen levels of library materials, primarily books, are housed in the building's tower, commonly referred to as the "Stacks".[8] Originally intended to house 3.5 million volumes, it is a seven-story structure, with eightmezzanine levels interleaved between the main stories.[24] Although encased in a Gothic exterior, the tower's structural system is a weldedsteel frame, which permits a vertical rise that traditional Gothic techniques would not.[11] Thecrenelated roof of the tower is elaborately decorated, complete with a castle-like housing forair handling equipment.[25]
The tower's shelves are estimated to stretch 80 miles (130 km), contained within 6.5 miles (10.5 km) of aisles.[26] In addition to the library collections, the tower houses reading rooms, study carrels, library offices, and special collections, including theBabylonian Collection.[24] Access to the Stacks is restricted to affiliates of the university and library patrons.
Four reading rooms sit near the nave on the first floor of the library:
The tower holds smaller reading rooms for the library'sarea studies holdings, including African, East Asian, Latin American, Near East, Slavic and East European, Southeast Asian, and Judaica collections. There are also dedicated reading rooms for several fields of study, includingAmerican Studies,History, andPhilosophy.
Sterling's northern wing, accessed from the nave via acloister hallway, contains the library's offices as well as three major rooms: a lecture hall, the Memorabilia Room, and the Rare Book Room. The Memorabilia Room hosts temporary exhibitions of Yale's archival collections and university history, and serves as an antechamber to the 120-seat lecture hall.[29]
The Rare Book Room, designed after EnglishJacobean architecture, was built to allow library patrons to browse Yale's collection of rare books and manuscripts.[11] A vaulted, octagonal chapel behind the room was specially constructed to house a copy of theGutenberg Bible.[5][11] The completion of the Beinecke Library in 1963 provided a more secure, climate-controlled repository for rare books, and the room and chapel now serve as a browsing room for the library's Manuscripts & Archives department.
The library originally had two courtyards designed and landscaped byBeatrix Farrand.[30] In 1997, the western courtyard was enclosed and renovated to become the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library.[12] Sterling's remaining courtyard, named the Selin Courtyard, features motifs from the history of printing.[11][31]
The library is one of the most elaborate buildings on the Yale campus. Rogers commissioned artisans, including stained glass artistG. Owen Bonawit and blacksmithSamuel Yellin, who worked with Rogers on many of his buildings, sculptorRene Paul Chambellan, and painterEugene Savage. The building's exterior is decorated with stone gargoyles, reliefs, and inscriptions.[19] The nave is the most ornately decorated library interior, although ornamental features, particularly stained-glass windows, can be found in nearly every room in the building.
A relief above the library's main entrance symbolizes the scholarly achievements of ancient civilizations. It is the work of architectural sculptorRene Paul Chambellan, who executed a design produced byLee Lawrie.[32]: 282 The scene depictsCro-Magnon,Egyptian,Assyrian,Hebrew,Arab,Greek,Mayan, andChinese scholars inlow relief, with inscriptions from major works in each writing system.[19] At center is a medieval scholar, and directly above the doors are symbolic representations of major civilizations, which include aPhoenician ship, aBabylonian lamassu and theCapitoline wolf ofRome.[19]
At the western end of the nave is afresco painted by Eugene Savage, a professor in theYale School of Art and Architecture. Savage titled it "The Imagination that Directs the University's Spiritual and Intellectual Efforts," but it is commonly known as theAlma Mater mural for its depiction of a personified "University."[33][34] Savage, an expert inEarly Renaissance techniques, painted the mural in his characteristic style, anArt Deco interpretation of traditional Renaissance composition.[35] Surrounding "Alma Mater" are personifications ofacademic disciplines.[34]
680 unique stained glass panels byG. Owen Bonawit adorn the nave, reading rooms, offices, and tower of the library.[12][36] Eighty decorate the nave, depicting scenes from the history of Yale and New Haven.[1][19] Most reading rooms have stained glass panels that represent themes from their subject matter.[19] Bonawit's firm also designed over 2,000 small outline images to inset in windows without stained glass panes.[36] Although Sterling contains the most in number, Bonawit's panels can be found in many of Yale's Gothic Revival buildings of the same period, including theSterling Law Building, the Hall of Graduate Studies, and theresidential colleges.[36]
In the nave, tenhigh relief stone panels by Chambellan depict the history of the Yale University Library up to 1865.[19] Bosses on the nave's ceiling depict writing implements.Samuel Yellin, the blacksmith who shaped most of the ironwork for Yale's Gothic buildings, created handwrought elevator doors for the Stacks depictingmajor trades, as well as ironwork and gates for the building.[8] Other decorative stonework by Chambellan—gargoyles,corbels, and reliefs—can be found throughout the building. While most of his works depict scholarship and university life, several are humorous interpretations of the lives of students and librarians.[37]
Several tributes in the library commemorate pioneering graduates of the university. A portrait ofEdward Bouchet, one of Yale's earliest African American graduates, hangs in the nave's transept.[38][39] Near the Franke Family Reading Room is a statue ofYung Wing, the first Chinese graduate of Yale.[40] In 2016 a portrait of the first seven women to receive Ph.D.s from Yale, which those seven women all did in 1894, was placed in the library.[41] The women includeMary Augusta Scott, Elizabeth Deering Hanscom,Margaretta Palmer, Charlotte Fitch Roberts, Cornelia H.B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, and Laura Johnson Wylie.[41] The portrait is the first painting hanging in the library to have women as subjects.[41]Brenda Zlamany was the artist.[41]
The large majority of materials in Sterling are housed in the bookstacks, which are contained in the building's tower. The bookstacks use two classification systems: the Yale Library system and the Library of Congress system. Adopted in the 1890s, the non-standard Yale system became cumbersome and inefficient for cataloging. Though replaced in 1970 by the Library of Congress system, many of the 5.7 million volumes held by the library at that time remain filed in the Yale system.[43] The card catalogs in the nave once contained as many as 9.5 million cards, sorted in 8,700 trays.[10]
Manuscripts & Archives is the primary archival repository of the university, housing Yale memorabilia, university archives, historical manuscripts, and personal papers donated to the university.[44] Though the archive uses the former Rare Book Room as its primary reading room, most of the collection is held off-site. Significant materials within Manuscripts & Archives include the papers ofCharles Lindbergh,Eero Saarinen,Eli Whitney,John Maley and the audio library ofOsama bin Laden.[45][46] The archives hosts a notable collection of diplomatic papers, including those ofDean Acheson,Henry Kissinger,Henry Stimson, andCyrus Vance.[47][48]
Audio, visual, and paper materials related to music are retained in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, a facility converted from one of Sterling's courtyards. The collection was established in the mid-19th century underGustave J. Stoeckel, and was expanded by the acquisition ofLowell Mason's papers and library in 1873.[32] Its collections include one of the largest catalogs of recordings and scores in the United States, including the papers ofCharles Ives,Carl Ruggles,Quincy Porter,Horatio Parker,Virgil Thomson,Clarence Watters,Richard Donovan, andJ. Rosamond Johnson.[10] The collection was moved to Sprague Hall of theYale School of Music in 1955, then to Sterling after the Gilmore Library was completed in 1997.[10][12]
The seventh floor of Sterling Memorial Library holds theYale Film Archive, which holds collections of more than 7,000 film elements, including hundreds of unique 35mm and 16mm prints and original negatives, as well as more than 50,000 items in its circulating video collection. The archive, which grew from a small collection of 16mm prints acquired for use in teaching film in 1968, was formally established in 1982 and moved to Sterling in 2021. Its collections include original material by filmmakers includingMary Ellen Bute,Frank Mouris,Warrington Hudlin, andWillie Ruff. The Film Archive collects, preserves, and screens films in its collection, and is an Associate of theInternational Federation of Film Archives.
The library houses several special collections:
{{cite encyclopedia}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)
| Facilities |  | |
|---|---|---|
| History and collections | ||
| Prizes | ||
Located in:New Haven, Connecticut | |||||||||||
| People |
|  | |||||||||
| Schools |
| ||||||||||
| Campus | |||||||||||
| Residential | |||||||||||
| Library and museums | |||||||||||
| Research | |||||||||||
| Athletics |
| ||||||||||
| Artistic |
| ||||||||||
| Traditions | |||||||||||
| Publications | |||||||||||
| Student Life | |||||||||||
| Programs | |||||||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Geographic | |
| Other | |
