Let there be Lit
Behold! The humanities library reopens
There was always that distinct experience when you headed to the back of Alderman Library. You’d cross the connecting bridge, never looking down the barren window wells on either side, and confront cold steel—an old elevator beside the metal chute they called a staircase.
The ceilings lowered to half height. The walls closed in. Windows disappeared. Time stopped. Your internal compass lost its polarity. You had descended into the dark night of the Stacks.
Retrace those steps today and it’s like a morning-sun realization that it had all been a bad dream. As you walk, you cross the same bridge, only now you float above a modern courtyard. The view to Carr’s Hill beckons you through to the other side. The ceiling rises to double height. Natural light bathes you from clerestory windows. Welcome to the reimagined Alderman Library.
If we could only use one word to describe it, we would choose “light,” because the space is awash in it. By day, it cascades in; at night, it radiates outward to the streetscape. If allowed a second word, we’d pick “vistas,” for the now unobstructed views of Grounds and the Blue Ridge beyond.
Chicago’s HBRA Architects created a design that pays homage to the original without imitating it. It takes the original building’s simple elegance, borne of Depression-era economy, and gives it clean, 21st century expression.
That starts with the newly constructed north half of the building, replacing the torn-off Stacks, and offering an additional entrance, from University Avenue.
The interior study courts came about by capping the old light wells with a pair of high-tech skylights and pouring a new concrete floor. The atriums connect into an indoor courtyard evocative of the National Gallery.
Impeccably restored are the McGregor Room, aka the Harry Potter Room; Memorial Hall, the library’s grand lobby; and, off to the right of it, the Reference Room, the street-level study (read: social) hall.
The Windsor chairs and tables there are original, restored by the grandchildren’s generation of the Harrisonburg, Virginia, company that made them. High-end Thos. Moser of Maine handcrafted much of the new furniture.
“What I wanted out of the renovation was another 100-year building, with hundred-year furniture,” says University Librarian John M. Unsworth (Grad ’88).
The big square library building uses wrought-iron balustrading to pay its respects to the big round one that preceded it. Two Rotunda restorations ago, in 1976, UVA dismantled Stanford White’s Beaux Arts confection, including the grillwork that wrapped around the balconies of the then-two-story Dome Room. The new library has repurposed them in stairwells and walkways.
“Most of it was stuck in a barn out at Birdwood, and it just sat there for 50 years,” says UVA historic preservationist Brian Hogg (Col ’83).
Design efficiencies reduced the square footage to 225,000 from 275,000, while allowing seating capacity to increase to more than 1,400 from 800.
The new library will hold 1.3 million books, down from 2 million, but with improved curation and fluid sequencing from the first floor of adjacent Clemons Library to the fifth floor of Alderman. The offsite Ivy Stacks, with capacity for 4 million volumes, will still figure into the mix. On-site, it might take until June to restock the Alderman shelves.
Restocking the place with students took about half a day. They’re everywhere, as if they’ve always been there. In fact, basically none of them has. Construction closed the library for the past seven semesters, making this most every undergraduate’s first look. And it’s a dazzling one.