University of Virginia Library

3. THE ALDERMAN LIBRARY BUILDING

It will be recalled that some doubt of the adequacy of
the Rotunda for library purposes began to be whispered as
early as the comparatively prosperous days of the 1850's;
and that this had found full utterance in the years immediately
preceding the Rotunda fire. The extension of the
library space in the restoration of the Rotunda stilled those
voices for a time. But by the end of the first hundred years

they had been raised again, this time swelling to the volume
of a chorus. It is true that there persisted some opposition
to any move from the building Mr. Jefferson had planned
for the Library. To this adherence to tradition the persuasive
reply was made that, while the Founder's vision of the
University included architectural design, it was essentially
a vision of the spirit, not of bricks and mortar; and that
whenever walls should tend to become a prison, there
seemed no shadow of doubt that he would have impatiently
and resolutely led the way towards freedom.

There was still to be a tedious wait for the new building.
But now the planning for it began in earnest. Several possible
sites were considered. A wooded dell, just across the
road by the University Chapel, offered several advantages.
It was on the axis of the Rotunda and only about a hundred
and forty yards distant from it; the erection in 1929 of
Monroe Hall and of eight dormitory units and the plans
for additional construction to the westward gave assurance
that this site would be still fairly central for the University;
and the fifty-five foot dip made possible a structure which,
by extending downward from the surface level, would
achieve the needed floor space without towering above the
low Jeffersonian buildings which it would face.

When virtual agreement on this site had been reached,
thorough study was made of the present library needs of
the University and of possible future needs, as far as they
could be discerned, the whole Faculty being circularized for
ideas. Extensive records of similar investigations at Dartmouth
College and at Princeton University were secured
and carefully scanned; blue prints of new buildings at
Dartmouth and at the University of Rochester were
studied; visits were made to other Libraries; and an experimental
—and very amateur—set of specifications was drawn
up and sent for criticism to the Librarians of several institutions
which had recently erected new library buildings.

These Librarians proved most generous in giving aid, and
the replies were noteworthy for frank and constructive
criticism. Another timely library publication—James
Thayer Gerould's The College Library Building: Its Planning
and Equipment—proved particularly suggestive, especially
in the matter of equipment. The final result of many
months of effort was that a concisely stated but comprehensive
set of specifications was made ready for submission to
the future Architect of the new building.

In a double sense—both as to site and to financial history
—this was a matter of erection in a depression. In 1924,
when President Alderman “dreamed a few dreams” among
which was “a great new library costing a million dollars,”
the times were flush. So were they during the first months
of the intensive study on plans. That study, however,
stressed both needs and economy. By 1929 it was possible
for the Librarian to present to the Faculty Library Committee
a detailed report. At the close of the presentation
he was asked what all this would cost. His answer was
specific: “On the basis of cubic contents at present prices
the building will cost approximately a million dollars; and
a second million will be needed for endowment.” The
silence that ensued was suddenly broken by President Alderman,
who with a characteristic gesture removed his eyeglasses
with one hand, placed the other firmly on the table
before him, and announced: “Gentlemen, I have finished
with consideration of thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents!”

It is significant that as President Alderman's imagination
thus caught fire, it flashed back to thoughts of the
Founder. In his address before the University on Jefferson
Day, 13 April 1931, there came these ringing words:—

The need of a great library building, which by its spaciousness
and beauty may stand before the world as a symbol of the worth
and dignity of learning, is the supreme requirement of this University
at this stage of its work, on purely university levels.

Such beholding by President Alderman was not to be.
That was his last address before the University. Later that
same month, on April twenty-ninth, he died from a cerebral
hemorrhage while on his way to take part in the inaugural
ceremonies for Harry Woodburn Chase as President of
the University of Illinois. The administration of the University
of Virginia was carried on, first as Acting President
and two years later as President, by John Lloyd Newcomb,
who had been Dean of the Department of Engineering
since 1925 and Assistant to the President since 1926. President
Newcomb, like Dean Metcalf, had been among the
first to realize that a new library building was vital for the
development of the University. To that realization were
now added his loyalty to his late leader and his determination
to carry through this predominant purpose of Doctor
Alderman's latest years—it being tacitly assumed that the
proposed building should bear the name of the first President.
By his patience, undismayed persistence, and skillful
timing in this endeavor, President Newcomb revealed himself
to be of the stock of the Founder.

However, in 1931 and for several years thereafter, the
solicitation of funds from the State or from private donors
was akin to the proverbial squeezing of juice from a cork.

The world depression was at its nadir. Yet in this very
situation was found the cure, even as “out of the nettle,
danger, we pluck the flower, safety.” For in 1935 President
Newcomb proposed that appeal be made to the Federal
Emergency Agency of the Public Works Administration.
This move was promptly supported by the Faculty Library
Committee, and received the approval of the Board of
Visitors. Permission was then granted by the Governor,
George Campbell Peery, that formal petition be presented
to the Public Works Administration. That body passed
upon the project as being “economically sound and socially
desirable.” But the requirements by the Federal Government
had meantime been altered so as to remove any likelihood
of a grant for the total sum. There remained, however,
the possibility of obtaining thus a portion of the necessary
amount. President Newcomb and the Visitors thereupon
canvassed the prospects of raising the required balance. The
Rector of the Board of Visitors, Frederic William Scott,
was from eminent experience as a financier a valuable
counsellor in such proceedings. The method finally adopted
was a bond issue secured by a student library fee covering
a considerable period of years. The plan was to aim at a
total of $950,000, of which fifty-five percent or $523,000 was
to be obtained by the bond issue and forty-five percent or
$427,909 was to be requested from the Public Works
Administration. The application was made. But the operations
of that Administration were by that time beginning
to taper off, grants were being made more slowly, and the
anxiety was intensified as the prospects of success faded.

Meantime it had been necessary to take hurried action
in obtaining blueprint drawings to accompany the request.
The application to the Governor for permission to present
the petition had been illustrated by sketches of obviously
homemade variety. At that point R. E. Lee Taylor, an
alumnus of the University and the senior member of the

architectural firm of Taylor and Fisher of Baltimore, volunteered
to prepare the proper drawings. His offer was
accepted, and he was later designated as the Architect of the
new Library. That the specifications were ready for him
proved of double value: for they both helped to expedite
the Architect's work and also to insure full consideration at
this strategic moment of an interior adapted to functional
library use.

Public interest in the proposed new building had gradually
been intensified, the credit in no small measure going
to the Managing Editor, William Hillman Wranek, Jr., of
the Alumni News, and to editorial writers in various newspapers
in the State. Moreover, a searching appraisal of
American Universities by Edwin Rogers Embree in an
article in the June 1935 issue of the Atlantic Monthly had
caused acute discomfort at the University of Virginia; and
before this, in 1930, the erection of a football stadium had,
by an ironical twist, stirred a marked reaction in favor of
the library cause. In January 1936, at a largely attended
meeting of the Washington Alumni, President Newcomb
replaced the customary greetings from the University
Administration by a forceful presentation of the urgency of
the library situation. The Virginia Senators and Representatives
and other officials in Washington joined with him
in watchful waiting for a favorable moment in which to
press for action on this university project. On September
third Senator Glass and President Newcomb seized such a
moment by a vigorous presentation to Harold Ickes, Secretary
of the Interior and Administrator of Public Works. At
11:44 on the morning of Saturday, September twelfth, the
message came through that the P.W.A. grant had been
made. At 11:50 a telegram was dispatched to the Architect
in Baltimore to start full operations at top speed; and
President Newcomb then joined in an impromptu celebration
by the Library Staff under the colonnade east of the

Rotunda, at which the dignified Chairman of the Faculty
Library Committee, Dean Metcalf, gave memorable stamp
to the spirit of the occasion by executing an extraordinary
clog dance.

From this point events moved amain. The contract for
excavations on the chosen site was awarded on November
tenth, and the contract for the foundations on November
twenty-first. During 1937 and the early part of 1938 other
contracts were formally awarded, making fifteen in all, of
which twelve went to Virginia firms. It is pleasant to record
that something of the enthusiasm which was felt at the
University for this undertaking was caught by a number of
the contracting firms and their performance went beyond
the letter of their contracts. Actual work on the excavations
started late in November 1936. So did the rains—and the
next twelvemonth ranks high in the Albemarle County
records of precipitation. It proved necessary to postpone
the completion date of the construction and equipment
tasks from January to March 1938. But by April it was
possible to move into the new building.

Difficulties had meantime emerged in the issuance of the
bonds because of the wording of State laws, which were
found so to limit the sale of the bonds that they could be
purchased only by the Federal Government. But by good
fortune a special session of the Virginia Legislature had
been summoned for December 1936, and permission was
obtained that consideration of the broadening of the perti
nent act be included in the special session deliberations.
Legislative approval was thus secured, and the bonds were
successfully issued in January 1937.

The dispersion of the library collections had been augmented
during the increasingly crowded conditions from
1925 to 1938, and eight additional libraries had come into
being outside of the Rotunda, making a total of twenty-two
in seventeen other buildings—a situation that administratively

tended less to cultivation of the higher branches than
to development of the lower limbs. The problem of deciding
which collections should be moved into the new building
was carefully considered by a subcommittee of the
Faculty Library Committee in conference with each interested
group. As a result the three department libraries
(using department in the connotation customary at the
University of Virginia), Engineering, Law, and Medicine,
and ten laboratory or special collections, Astronomy, Chemistry,
Fine Arts, Geology, the Institute for Research in the
Social Sciences, Mathematics, Music, Physics, Public
Administration, and Rural Social Economics, remained outside
—though from eight of these certain classes of books
were transferred to the Alderman Library.

The actual moving required twenty-seven working days,
beginning with April twentieth and ending with May
twenty-sixth. The abundance of terraces necessitated much
carrying, and specially constructed and numbered boxes
with handles were used, so that the classification order of
the books could be preserved and volumes urgently needed
could be located at all stages. By careful organization it was
possible to keep the main reading rooms undisturbed except
for one day, May tenth; and on the eleventh the new building
was opened to readers. The first book that had been
transferred to the Alderman Library was Doctor Alderman's
memorial address on Woodrow Wilson, and this had been
proudly carried by Miss Dinwiddie, the senior member of
the Staff in length of service. When the doors were opened
on the morning of May eleventh, President Newcomb was
the first borrower, and his selection was the little volume of
Doctor Alderman's response to a toast on Virginia. There
were occasional delays in locating books during those first
days. But Miss Roy Land, the Circulation Librarian, treated
difficulty as adventure—and that spirit was transfused into
both readers and library assistants.

The formal dedication of the Alderman Library was
held on 13 June 1938 in connection with the final exercises
of the 113th session of the University. President Newcomb
made announcement of several donations, including that
of the Tracy W. McGregor Library, an acquisition of extraordinary
importance for development of research; and Dr.
Dumas Malone delivered a notable dedicatory address. Doctor
Malone was at that time Director of the Harvard University
Press. He had formerly been Editor of the Dictionary
of American Biography, and, previous to that, from
1923 to 1929, Professor of American History at the University
of Virginia. There was special fitness in his presence on
that occasion, for he was the biographer of President Alderman,
and he had, in his years at the University of Virginia,
been an active member of the Faculty Library Committee.

The new building thus dedicated and opened for use
was a massive structure with a frontage of approximately
two hundred feet and a depth of one hundred and seventy
feet. By closing the northern side, it completed the quadrangle
formed by West Range, Monroe Hall, Peabody Hall,
and the Biological Laboratory. Facing these other buildings
it was appropriately two stories in height. But the dip in
the site permitted a five story elevation on the northern
facade, and a ten story stack, there being two stack decks to
a floor. The exterior design of both the southern and the
northern facades was a three axis combination, in which a
long central mass with a moderately elevated slate roof
dominated the end wings and was joined to them by unaccented
connecting links. The east and west wings were
broken by two slightly projecting pavilions, between the
pavilions being a row of engaged columns rising from the
level of the fourth or main floor. As in the dominating type
of University of Virginia buildings, there were two exterior
colors, white for the columns, pilasters, cornices, and trim,
and a pleasingly mottled brick red for the plain wall surfaces.

Within the new structure were two light courts, somewhat
like the spaces in a thickly stemmed letter B. These
were designed to afford light and ventilation—though it
was later discovered that under a noonday summer sun they
tended to become pockets of warm air. The unusual amount
of exterior wall which resulted from these light courts had
a supplementary advantage, since there was afforded so
ample a support to the floors that the need for interior supporting
walls was thereby largely eliminated. The room
spaces could therefore be altered, as future needs might
arise, by the simple erection or removal of partitions. The
problem of future developments was also effectively met by
the rectangular shape of the new building, as contrasted
with the confining circle of the Rotunda; and along with
the original plans there were also drawn tentative plans
for a five story addition to the northward, which would
greatly extend the available floor space.

As it was, the uniformly low height of the rooms, fifteen
feet or twice the seven feet, six inches, of the standard stack
deck, gave to the Alderman Library an unusual floor area,
about 132,800 square feet, in proportion to a gross cubage
of 2,102,000 cubic feet. The effort to gain maximum space
for readers and staff and books was an outcome of the difficulties
in administering more than a score of scattered
collections. The absence of lofty, monumental effects was
also specifically planned in order that both readers and
books should be in homelike surroundings—a cardinal aim
in the planning for the new general library.

The one exception was the monumental character of the
entrance hall—a memorial to the first President. This had
the height of two stories. The entrance was at the center
of the southern facade and was therefore protected in winter
and open to the prevailing breezes of summer. (There
was only one other entrance to the building, leading into
the receiving room for materials and located at the north

end of the bottom floor of the west wing.) In the entrance
hall the comfortable chairs, the displays of new books and
of books of current interest, and the wall exhibition cases
for special and constantly varied exhibits offered welcome
to visitors. This was also a functional room, containing the
circulation desk and the public card catalogue—which was
planned to become a union catalogue for all books in possession
of the University. On the same main floor (actually
the fourth floor of the building) were located the spacious
general reading room, with a reference collection shelved
on wall cases, the general and circulation and reference
offices, a room for national and special catalogues, and a
workroom for the Preparations or Cataloguing Division.
Thus the main floor served the general reader and afforded
conveniently located headquarters for three of the five divisions
of the Staff, Preparations, Circulation, and Reference.

On the floor below were rooms largely used by students:
the reserved book reading room, a document reading room,
a browsing room, and a room for current newspapers and
magazines; there were also the offices of the extension
library services, and a special room featuring the Garnett
home library. On the quiet fifth floor above were studies
for research scholars and small seminars for graduate student
classes and conferences.

Grouped in another way, the eastern wing emphasized
reading rooms and the western wing workrooms for the
Staff. The reading room for rare books and manuscripts was
on the second floor of the east wing, directly below the
reserved book reading room; and still farther down, on the
first floor, was a photographic laboratory for microfilm and
photostatic reproductions. That equipment and the various
gadgets scattered through the building would doubtless
have intrigued Mr. Jefferson. As for the west wing, the
processing of new materials began at the receiving room on
the first floor, passed through the acquisition operations

on the second floor, and on up to the main floor. On the
receiving room floor at the bottom there was also a staff
room, furnishing equipment and comfortable conditions
for noonday lunches, for resting periods, for first aid in
case of illness, and for occasional social gatherings of the
Staff.

Other spaces within the new building—such as the series
of functional offices and workrooms, five in each of the
unaccented connecting links between the bookstack and
the wings on the northern side—have not been enumerated.
But what have been mentioned may sufficiently demonstrate
the expansion of accommodations for readers and Library
Staff—accommodations that were designed to seat comfortably
approximately 800 readers and to afford work space
for a hundred or so staff members in conditions that would
conserve strength and encourage a corresponding quality
in effort.

But the heart of the Library was, of course, the general
bookstack—a ten deck tower extending downward in the
central block of the northern side. This was a complete and
compact unit formed of rock-based foundations, concrete
floors, and a forest of steel supports. This bookstack and
supplementary shelving in various rooms in other parts of
the building afforded a total shelf space for some 600,000
volumes. Of course, when there is an expansive classification
into which additions are inserted according to subject, any
figure giving total shelf space is misleading, since some
allowance of empty shelves scattered throughout the bookstack
is essential for effective operation. It was therefore
recognized that a capacity figure for workable conditions
would prove to be not over 500,000 volumes. It should be
added that the need which Dean Metcalf had been among
the first to recognize, namely, that the University supply
research facilities for graduate students, faculty, and visiting
scholars, was in this new building met not only by the

studies and seminars on the fifth floor, and by the accommodations
of the Rare Book and Manuscript Division, but
also by one hundred carrels or cubicles lining the northern
side of the general bookstack.

Economy had been stressed in the making of the plans;
and as it turned out, the date of erection was favorable for
building costs. About 1938 prices began to be yeasty, and
it has been estimated that by 1950 the expense of erection
would have doubled. One effect of that economy was that
when the moving had been completed, all parts of the new
building were occupied. This absence of uncharted spaces
had the result of shortening the interval until further
expansion would be necessary. It had also not been sufficiently
realized how stimulating to users of the Library and
to donors of materials this impressive structure would
prove; and what seemed to be a generous allowance for
growth proved in some facilities to have been sadly underestimated.
By 1944, when the Faculty Library Committee
again found it necessary to concentrate on building plans,
on the details for the addition to the northward, the pressure
for more stack space, for more studies and carrels, for
more special rooms had again become urgent. Hence, at
the end of the first quarter of the University Library's second
hundred years, the building problem was again a serious
one. But by that time there was a clearer conception of
what a library of university caliber involved and of its
value to the University and to the whole region.

By 1950 there had also been a gain in housing and
equipment for most of the department, school, and special
collections. The Chemistry, Fine Arts, and Physics Libraries
had acquired additional shelf space, the collections for the
Institute for Research in the Social Sciences and for Rural
Social Economics had been transferred to more spacious
quarters in Minor Hall, and an attractive Nurses' Library
had been opened in one of the medical buildings. The

books of the music and public administration collections
had for the most part been transferred to the Alderman
Library, leaving a total of nine school and special collections.
The three department libraries, Engineering, Law,
and Medical, were in this period all moved into specially
designed library sections of new buildings: the Engineering
Library into Thornton Hall, occupied in 1936, the Law
Library into Clark Hall, occupied in 1932, and the Medical
Library into the medical group which was occupied in
1929. By 1950 hopes were immediate for further accommodations
for the rapidly growing law collections, and the
needs were patent for similar expansion of the engineering
and medical collections. Thus in buildings and equipment
the advance on the path of progress, for the general library
and for a majority of the separate collections, had been
greater during this period than during the entire preceding
century.