The Dean Room
To Andrew Dickson White, co-founder and first president of Cornell University, “the ideas of a great university and a great library are inextricably linked.”
Built in 1891, Cornell’s first dedicated library building, now known as Uris Library, fulfilled White’s dream to create what he called, “the noblest structure in the land.” With an innovative design that allowed for convenient access to materials, it was, in White’s words, “the best academic library built.”
The main reading room of the Cornell University Library [now the Uris Library], ca. 1900. Card catalogs were located at the west end of the room.
Courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
The library was formally dedicated in 1891—23 years after classes began. Cornell’s first architecture student, William Henry Miller, designed the building. His portrait hangs over the security desk on the north wall of its lobby.
Miller’s architectural vision looms large on campus and in Ithaca. In addition to the library, he designed four other major university buildings as well as two fraternities, the A.D. White House, the Central Avenue Bridge, and Eddy Gate. Miller also designed numerous residential, business, and church buildings in Ithaca and the region. Uris Library, though, is considered his masterpiece. White called it “a marvel of good planning, in which fitness is wedded to beauty.”
Built in an “Americanized” or Richardsonian-Romanesque style, the library is a cross-shaped structure with arcades of arches and squared windows. As a “cruciform basilica,” it features a large reading room in its “nave” with excellent natural lighting from 29 windows and 20 clerestory windows. Around the world, Uris library and its attached bell tower, serve as symbols of the university. They are Cornell’s “secular cathedral” devoted to books and learning.
The east end of the Arthur H. Dean Reading Room, Uris Library in 1962. A linoleum floor has replaced the wooden floor, and card catalogs line the north and south perimeters, blocking access to the alcoves on either side. Today, the floor is carpeted.
Courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
The General Reading Room, now known as the Dean Room, is the building’s most commanding interior space and its prominence is significant. While not the first library to contain such a space, Miller’s design reflects a major shift in how libraries functioned.
Previously, academic libraries were essentially storage facilities open to faculty only a few hours per week. But Cornell’s library building was designed to accommodate a collection of 400,000 books and to provide a convenient way for people to access and use those books. Built into the natural slope of the site, no book in the library was more than 120 feet away from the service desk at the west end of the General Reading Room – the same place where today’s circulation desk is located.
Cornell may have had the first American university library intended for extensive use by undergraduates as well as faculty, thanks to vision of the its first university librarian Daniel Willard Fiske. Cornell’s library was open nine hours a day, longer than any other library in the country. Hours were extended even further in 1885, when Cornell’s library, then located in McGraw Hall, became the first American library in the country lit by electricity.
The library may have been open, but books did not leave the building. From the beginning, the library was conceived as a non-circulating reference library. Only later after conducting a survey of other libraries in 1908 did Cornell agree to allow books to circulate for the first time.
By then, the stacks were already becoming overcrowded. Lack of adequate space for books and readers became a frequent source of contention over the next 50 years and space pressures were not remedied until Olin Library was built in 1961.
Renamed in 1962 after Harold D. Uris, a graduate of Cornell’s class of 1925 and a Cornell trustee from 1967 to 1972, Uris Library was designated as the undergraduate library, so undergraduate students would not have to compete with graduate students or faculty for resources, services or study space.
The current Dean room.
The Dean Room in Uris Library is named for Arthur H. Dean, an Ithaca native, Cornell alumnus, attorney, diplomat, United Nations delegate, and Cornell University trustee. He and his wife Mary provided funds for the renovation of Uris Library and the building of Olin Library. Thousands of rare books and manuscripts were also added to the library collections, as a result of their generosity. To foster a love of books and reading among Cornell’s students, they also began the library’s first undergraduate book collection contest, which lasted from 1966 until 1989. That contest serves as the model for today’s Cornell University Library and Library Advisory Council Book Collection Contest.
The Dean Room is now, as it has always been, a reading room where one can study quietly or take advantage of traditional library services. It is also a hub of new activities. Card catalogs have been replaced by computers and wireless connections make access to Cornell’s digital resources possible throughout the building.
In the northwest corner of the Dean Room there are portraits of Ezra Cornell and A. D. White. They are joined by portraits of Cornell’s past presidents, which proceed in chronological order as you move counterclockwise around the room.
A historic building, Uris Library embodies the useful and the beautiful. Elements of Cornell’s history are preserved in its architecture and art work.
As you tour the building, we hope that you can appreciate Andrew Dickson White’s belief that, in his words: “the library is the heart of the university, ‘the culmination of all.’”