THE NEW BUILDING FOR THE LIBRARY OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE-AN INTERPRETATION OF THE PLANS

Librarian of the College

The following description of the new library applies to the generalized plans approved by the Trustees at their April and June meetings. Later, when they are worked out in detail, the plans will be published in the MAGAZINE. The central block of the building will stand about 60 feet to the rear of Butterfield Hall. The whole building, except the arcade, can be erected without disturbing Butterfield, but obviously the latter must soon be removed. The Graduate Club will have to find a new home, but the other houses on the block can remain temporarily. The building, in its extreme dimensions, is 240 by 170 feet. The basement and ground floor reading rooms are each 40 by 70 feet. The delivery hall and lounge reading room are 150 by 25 feet each.

The architect is Jens Frederick Larson of Hanover. The preparation of plans has been by a joint committee of Trustees and Faculty, constituted as follows : For the Trustees, Messrs. Farkhurst (chairman), Tuttle, Dußois, Little, Brown; for the Faculty, Professors Haskins (chairman), J. P. Richardson, Gray, Ames, and the Librarian; for the Alumni, Clarence G. McDavitt.

The foundations are to be put m this year, and it is hoped to have the building complete by Commencement 1928.

Those who were charged with the pleasant task of planning a new library for Dartmouth attempted first of all to discover the wishes of those who are to use the building. The plans presented herewith embody the result of many conferences with faculty and students, checked by visits to other institutions and by the advice of those who have similar problems. The building is designed, not primarily as a storehouse for books, but rather as a help in the liberal education of students, directly through its provisions for instruction, study and service, and indirectly through its beauty, comfort and informality. Libraries have been variously designed—as architectural monuments, as research workshops, as storage ware houses, as all that could be had for a given sum. We have tried to avoid all of these.

In general the building is an H, with storage and service in the cross-bar and use in the wings. Through either of the ground-floor entrances one passes immediately into the delivery hall, high, and cheerful with its row of southern windows. Little in the way of lobby or steps intervenes between the entrances and this focus of the library's service. Here is the delivery desk, with book stacks behind; the card catalog, index of the library's contents; the reference assistant, chief guide to the building s resources. Here also is space for changing exhibits, and, at the windows, shelves and seats for displaying and examining new books. Behind this room, at right and left of the; stack, are staff workrooms, placed here at the center of things both to save time in staff work and to make their services promptly available to the public. These rooms are repeated in the basement, and above in a mezzanine, thus giving much room for growth.

In the wings, on the ground floor, are reading rooms. On the east, the south wing contains the periodical room. It is planned to shelve here the current numbers of nearly all the 1100 periodicals taken by the library, thus presenting an impressive exhibit of the latest material in every fie,ld, as well as of the extraordinary interrelations of these fields as developed by present thought. The north wing is the reference room. Here will be gath- ered dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, general periodical sets and their indexes—the tools of research as well as quick answers for the curious. Between the two rooms is service space for both.

On the west, the south wing is a study hall. It may be used as an overflow reading room when others are full. It may be used as a refuge by students who can find no peace in dormitory or fraternity house. The north wing contains the executive offices, and the treasure room. This room we would like to see develop as the abiding place of some man with magnetic personality and wide culture, who would surround himself with the most impelling products of thought and imagination, clothed beautifully by the "art of the book"—press, illustration, binding—and therewith leave an abiding impress on many students of each succeeding class. Meanwhile, the room will house such "treasures" of general interest as the library acquires. Space for valuable material of less showy nature, for College archives of all sorts, manuscripts and so on, with room to use them, is located in the basement just below. In the mezzanine, above the offices, there is opportunity to fit up a room or two in the style, perhaps, of Wheelock's time—to reproduce, the College library as it might have been in 1772 when it occupied the southwest chamber in the home of Bezaleel Woodward.

The northward slope of the ground, skillfully utilized, gives good light to the basement on east, west and north. Ihe base,ment of the east wing provides two attractive reading rooms for the use of books put on reserve for required reading. The basement under the delivery hall, fairly lit by light-court windows, supplies a delivery space for this service, tables for overflow from the reading- room, and a place where conversation may not have to be suppressed. Books time-stamped here may be used anywhere in the building or out of it. These are student rooms, and students will man the desk and do what little policing is necessary.

In both wings the second floor is devoted to special rooms, relatively small, but of various sizes, to be assigned to. departments of instruction. It has been a serious handicap to instruction that Wilson Hall provided no place where could be carried on that most fruitful form of teaching which uses books too many or to valuable to transport to. a recitation building, or sends for a book when an unforeseen trend of discussion makes it suddenly useful. With the developopment of the new curriculum it is expected that informal meeting with small groups of students will become very prevalent, and these rooms provide the opportunity to do this in comfort, an opportunity not now existing except in the homes of some favored members of the faculty. Certain larger rooms can be assigned to departments or divisions which desire to have a center for their work, in which to build up a selected collection of books, less bewildering to the student than the mass of material in the stack; in which to display current but ephemeral matter, and exhibits pertinent to their work; which they can perhaps find funds to fit up in especially charming style.

On the second floor of the cross-bar is a stately room, 150 feet long, rising through two floors and into the roof trusses, lit by tall south windows. It will have fireplaces and ash trays, club chairs and lounges. On long tables will be always a selection of the most interesting new things in print. Stimulating and lovable books, old and new, will be around the walls. The stack opens out of it. The department rooms are near. It will be an informal room. Subdued conversation can be carried on. Faculty and students will drop in for relaxation and stimulation. Many will feel, in after years, that here have been spent some of their most memorable hours.

The stack, in its central block, rises nine levels from the basement. At the second floor, or seventh stack level, it spreads into the space above the work rooms, rising three levels above the second floor. Around the outside of the ce,ntral block, on every level, next the windows, is a wide space, occupied on the sides by open tables and on the end by semi-enclosed studies, or carrels. These individual working places, remote, next to books, are very popular in university libraries which have installed them. On the window side of the, east and west blocks, on each of the three levels, is a row of entirely enclosed studies for members of the faculty. This will at last give to many of them retreats, near their material, where they can prepare for class work and conduct research, reasonably safe from interruption.

The building will comfortably shelve about 500,000 volumes. As there will be about 200,000 volumes to go into it, and as, at our present rate of growth, we double in 23 years, there would seem to be plenty of leeway. For reading, it will seat between 900 and 1000—say half the student body. Add to this capacity of the departmental centers and it appears that about 1200 could find chairs somewhere in the library. And the plan permits of enlargement, both in storage and seating.

At the present stage of the plans, interior finish, decoration, furniture, are still but delightful imaginings. They are, however, vital to the fulfillment of the building's purpose. It would be brutal to waste, the possibilities of these admirably proportioned rooms by skimping in such matters, skimping either in thought or cost. It is the intention to make each of the larger rooms so quietly charming a thing that therein work will be easier, and thereafter a memory of it will persist.

This, then, is a building for students and faculty, a pleasant place for the, making. of contacts, with books, with each other. Likewise it is a place for hard, secluded, effective work—but there have been many such. We have attempted the difficult task of providing adequately for both.

As to the architecture, it grew" out of the plan—it grew with the plan. It is our Colonial Georgian of the simpler type, eve,ry detail studied as to its harmony with Dartmouth row. The tower, reminiscent of Independence Hall, softened by hints from the spires of certain New Hampshire churches, has grace and dignity. By day shadows will shift in the great south court and the tower lift above the trees. By night, from its lanterned arcade, from its many windows, a glow of light will give life to the north end of the campus. Compelling by charm, dominant perhaps, but not domineering, it may prove not inadequate, to its position the intellectual center of the College.

The New Library, South Elevation Facing the Campus

Main Street Front from Tuck Drive

Looking from the Administration Building