Library Buildings around the World

available stack space for the library as well as creating for the first time open stacks for public use. Enlarged and technologically
upgraded reading rooms, a new children’s library, and a community room are included. Outmoded mechanical and electrical
systems were replaced, and a new garden entry allows for access at grade by disabled persons. The project includes repair and
replacement of exterior cast stone, brick repointing, replacement in kind of historical windows, and rebuilding the sweeping granite
steps to the existing library. Our design respects the primacy of the Peabody and Stearns building by setting the addition back from
Harlow Street, and carrying forward the classical detailing of the original building. (Stern)
East Hampton Library, East Hampton, NY - USA 1997
During the course of this century the East Hampton Library has grown in a gradual and thoughtful way to accommodate a growing
community and expanding collections. Since 1992, we have been engaged by the Library to design two additions. The first,
completed in 1997, accommodated expansion of the Long Island Collection and archives, new staff areas, and an expansion of the
adult fiction collection. Currently under construction is a new wing that will accommodate an expanded children’s collection.
The 1997 addition created a courtyard for the west building by adding two new intersecting wings. This courtyard scheme makes
circulation within the library continuous and creates a quiet and charming outdoor space in which to read or view from the indoor
reading areas. Similarly, the new Children’s wing will create a smaller courtyard for the east building.
Both the 1997 addition and the current project allow for the reorganization of the collection in the existing building. This
reorganization restored comfortable reading and work areas to the library, created distinct and recognizable areas for each
collection, and provided clear, accessible circulation throughout.
The exterior architecture of the additions respects the vocabulary established by Aymar Embury II in the original 1910 structure.
The design of both the west and east wings create a second front for the building facing the greensward to the west. The facade
facing the historic Main Street was restored. (Stern)
The Library moved to its present location at the corner of Main Street and Buell Lane in 1912, on land donated by Mary Lorenzo
Woodhouse. The architect Aymar Embury (*June 15, 1880 New York, NY - + November 15, 1966 Southampton, Long Island, NY)
designed the building, which was also donated by the Woodhouses. The Library was designed in a neo-Elizabethan style since many
residents of that time wanted East Hampton architecture to conform to that of a pre-seventeenth century Kentish village, similar in
looks to the one the original settlers had left behind. (http://www.easthamptonlibrary.org/about/history.html)
Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn, NY – USA 1994
The new campanile-like tower provides the ninety-year-old school with expanded facilities and an image more appropriate to its long
history and growing reputation. Located directly across from the recently renovated Brooklyn Borough Hall (Gamaliel King, 1846-
1851), our design visually establishes the law school as a component in the borough's traditional civic center which also includes on
an adjacent site, the Municipal Building (McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin, 1926), from which we have taken many cues in designing
the law school's tower. The first nine floors of the new tower are connected to those of the existing building. They provide upgraded
and expanded student and faculty facilities including lecture and seminar rooms, libraries, and a cafeteria. A formal dining room is
located on the tenth floor and there is a faculty library on the eleventh. In addition to the 85,000-square-feet of new space, the project
includes the renovation of 65,000-square-feet in the existing building, including the redesign of classrooms and the moot court.
(Stern)
Ohrstrom Library, St. Paul´s School, Concord, NH – USA 1991
In 1985-86, Robert A.M. Stern Architects studied ways to add on to the St. Paul's School's existing Sheldon Library, designed for the
school by Ernest Flagg in 1901. The proposal for the addition would have expanded Sheldon to twice its original size while
maintaining its inherent spatial and formal qualities. When the school's trustees subsequently decided to build a new library, a
prominent site at the center of the village-like campus was selected. This design for the Ohrstrom Library forms the boundary wall
for two quadrangles: to the south it joins a residential group to create an intimate courtyard; to the north it is the edge of a larger
space that is both the symbolic and the actual center of the campus, serving as a counterpoint across time and space to the school's
original chapel (1859) and Henry Vaughan's masterly essay in the Gothic, the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul (1888). While H. H.
Richardson's Crane Library, Quincy, Massachusetts (1880-82), inspired the plan and the handling of the red brick and Briar Hill
stone used for the exterior, the synthesis between traditional form and modern abstraction in the library C. R. Mackintosh designed
for the Glasgow School of Art (1907-09) was also an influence. This is apparent in the tall oriel windows, the abstraction of detail,
and the mediation between the small scale of the residential buildings and the buttressed structure of the Chapel of St. Peter and St.
Paul. On the inside, the principal point of reference was James Gamble Rogers' School House (1937), until Ohrstrom the last
building in St. Paul's chain of Gothic-inspired buildings. Ohrstrom Library incorporates the most up-to-date computerized
information retrieval technology into traditional reading rooms and more intimately scaled niches that provide a variety of places
for quiet individual or group study within easy reach of the bookstacks. The nave-like plan is entered at the crossing that separates
the stacks from the specialized reading rooms, the primary one being a two-storey-high vaulted room that opens to a view of Lower
School Pond. (Stern)
Stocks-Mann Architekts, Little Rock, AR – USA
http://stocksman.com
Libraries:
Sidney S. McMath Branch Library, Little Rock, AR – USA 2004
Stoner Meek Architecturec & Urban Design, San Francisco, CA – USA
see: Noll & Tam
Straughn Trout Architects, Lakeland, FL – USA
http://www.straughntrout.com
Libraries:
Sarah D. & L. Kirk McKay Archives Center Library, Southern College, Lakeland, FL – USA 2009
(side by side with Thad Buckner Building originally E(dwin) T(imanus) Roux Library: Nils Schweizer/Frank Lloyd Wright
1945/1968
Program & Purpose:
Originally intended as an expansion to Nils Schweizer’s Roux Library (Schweizer was Wright’s student and campus architect for the
25 years following Wright’s death), the Archives Center materializes the enduring collaboration between the Florida Southern
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