History & Culture

The library that isn’t: The evolution of Harper Memorial Library

Harper Memorial Library on UChicago's campus

Did you know that Harper Memorial Library—perhaps the University of Chicago’s most iconic of its Gothic, castle-like buildings—isn’t a library at all?

It used to be, of course.

The nearly 112-year-old structure, when completed in June 1912, represented a major milestone for the University, featuring modern conveniences like telephones and a system of pneumatic tubes to transmit book orders. Its main reading room of architectural grandeur is still called, by former longtime Dean of the College John W. Boyer, “the single most impressive room on campus” and in more recent times, tends to be likened to the Great Hall of Hogwarts in Harry Potter lore.

Since its groundbreaking in 1910, Harper Memorial Library has:

Endured a West Tower collapse (during its original construction)
Served as the University’s main circulation library for 60 years
Then transitioned to the College’s administrative and teaching space
Before being renovated, 40 years later, to better serve students as a study center

Next time you take a walk on the Hyde Park campus, don’t miss a chance to explore Harper Memorial Library, filled with architectural details and history from the University’s storied past.

Midway Plaisance before and after the construction of Harper Library — Left: The Midway Plaisance before Harper Library and many of the other buildings of the University's mile-long Gothic front had been built. The south end of Haskell Hall is to the left; the Law School (Stuart Hall) is in the center; and Foster and Kelly Halls are to the right. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library), Right: The library shortly after construction from the Midway Plaisance.

A founding president’s vision

Harper Memorial Library completed the vision of its late namesake, William Rainey Harper, the first president of UChicago, who died in early 1906 of cancer at the age of 49. During Harper’s tenure and shortly before his death, he championed for improvements to the University library, which was in dire need of its own, centralized space. At the time, from 1892 to 1902, the University’s general book collections shared space in a temporary one-story structure with the University of Chicago Press and the men’s and women’s gymnasiums. William Rainey Harper

That building stood at the corners of 57th Street and University Avenues before it was demolished in favor of the Tower Group four—now known as Hutchinson Commons, Mitchell Tower, Reynolds Club, and Mandell Hall. The collections followed Press to its new building at Ellis Avenue and 58th Street (now the site of the University Bookstore).

Planning had begun for a new library in 1902, when Harper and the Board of Trustees had decided to make the central library the dominant member of the group of nine buildings that would house the Divinity School, the Law School, history and social sciences, philosophy, classics, modern languages, and oriental studies. Harper’s death spurred the board to action, who agreed the library would be a fitting memorial to the University’s first president.

A University campaign to raise money for the new building was supported by a matching gift from John D. Rockefeller, who offered three dollars to every dollar raised up to $600,000. Architects Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge—whose work includes Bartlett Gymnasium, Ida Noyes Hall, and the Tower Group—broke ground exactly four years to the date of Harper’s death on Jan. 10, 1910, and Harper Memorial Library opened to students a little more than two and a half years later, on June 18, 1912.

“Harper Library was a powerful symbol of the early University’s ambitions and its pride, but also its desire to be recognized as a “European-like” institution worthy of being in the company of the great universities of Berlin, Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris,” said Boyer, senior advisor to the President and the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History. Boyer still maintains an office on the top floor of Harper, where he also served as the longest-tenured dean (1992–2023) in the College’s history. He’s also a resident expert of University history and author of the 2015 book, The University of Chicago: A History.

The library is also, he added, “a memorial to a great leader—William Rainey Harper—our founding President and the man most responsible for the intellectual design and scholarly and educational success of the new University of Chicago.”

Harper Memorial Library under construction — Construction sequence of Harper Memorial Library. Left: in May 1910, Right: December of the same year. Builders broke ground in January 1910 and the building was dedicated on June 11, 1912. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)

Harper Memorial Library in 1919 — Left: Exterior of Harper Memorial Library from the Midway Plaisance, pictured here in 1921. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library), Right: Desideratus, Cardinal Mercier (left, mid-ground), Archbishop of Malines, and Harry Pratt Judson (right, mid-ground), University of Chicago president leave Harper Library in procession in 1919. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)

The two towers

Construction went almost according to plan except for one incident: The collapse of the West Tower in March 1911. Surprisingly and thankfully, none of the 25 workers on site were seriously injured.

A black and white photo of the left tower in Harper Memorial Library showing it's collapse — The West Tower after its collapse in March 1911. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)

two differing styles of towers on Harper Memorial Library — Pictured left: the East Tower, military in character, mimics Christ Church Hall at Oxford; and right, the West Tower of Harper Memorial Library, with its ecclesiastical turrets bears resemblance to King’s College in Cambridge. (Photos by Jason Smith)

If you look up at the building today, you’ll notice the towers differ in style: the West Tower, with its ecclesiastical turrets bears resemblance to King’s College in Cambridge, while the East Tower, military in character, mimics Christ Church Hall at Oxford. Early University lore suggested the pairing symbolized the union of religion and secular government, or conversely, the dissimilarities represented the separation of church and state.

The great reading room

With its nearly 50-foot-high ceiling arches, stone walls, carved screens and corbels, grand window, and imposing chandeliers, the Arley D. Cathey Learning Center—formerly the Harper Reading Room—is a can’t miss stop at UChicago.

Lovers of the Harry Potter series liken the student study center to Hogwarts’ Great Hall, and the campus landmark is loved by many. While it once housed library stacks and its nearby Harper Café served as a circulation desk, the room and its adjacent formerly named Stuart North Reading Room was renovated in 2009 into a study space. In 2012, late alumnus Arley D. Cathey, PhB’50, pledged his estate to rename the spaces in his father’s honor.

Harper Library Main Reading Room — Left, an undated photo of the main reading room, in its former iteration with bookstacks housing Harper’s 60,0000-piece collection. Center, the reading room pictured in 1945. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library). Right, The main reading room pictured in 1939. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)

Modern Cathey Learning Center reading room — The Arley D. Cathey Learning Center reading room after it was renovated to create a more open floor plan, pictured here in 2013. (Photo by Robert Kozloff).

Cathey Learning Center coats of arms — In the screen above the west entrance to the main reading room, the coats of arms from left to right of American universities include Yale, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and California. Not pictured in photo: Harvard and Chicago. Above the Arley D. Cathey Learning Center signage, the inscription reads: “Read not to contradict nor to believe but to weigh and consider,” which is attributed to Francis Bacon, an English philosopher who served under King James I. (Photo by Robert Kozloff)

The attention to detail in the room is significant. On one entrance to the room bears a screen that bears the coats of arms of Western Hemisphere universities: Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Chicago; on the other those of the Eastern Hemisphere: Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Bologna, Tokyo, and Calcutta. On the corbels (structural supports where the arches begin), printers’ marks are carved of notable European printers—such as perhaps the most famous of the dolphin wrapped around an anchor of Aldus Manutius, an Italian printer who founded the Aldine Press in 1494. Printers marks, or devices, were popular decorative elements in library architecture at the time of Harper’s construction.

Boyer gave nod to Ernest DeWitt Burton, the then director of the University Libraries and a professor of New Testament Studies, who helped lead the direction of the library’s creation in the early 1900s. Burton—who later would serve as University president from 1923–1925—and the faculty formulated a rich iconography of coats of arms, shields, gargoyles, and medieval motifs that adorns the facades of the main entrances and the walls of the East and West Towers. On the facade of the West Tower, for example, facing 59th Street, are still more coats of arms of foreign universities, including the "double eagle" of the Imperial University of Vienna.

“So far as I know, Harper Library is the only building in North America to have the symbol of the Hapsburg Dynasty on its façade,” added Boyer, also a specialist in the history of the Hapsburg Empire and of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The library’s evolution

Over time, the University’s collections began outgrowing the building, leading to the construction of the Regenstein Library in 1971. Most of Harper’s collections were moved to the new library, and then the building underwent extensive renovation. The first and second floors were converted into a new College center, bringing the dean’s office, admissions and financial aids offices, and other College administrative offices under one roof, and where they still reside today along with several academic offices and meeting rooms.

Until 2009, however, the Harper and Stuart reading rooms still housed a 62,000-piece collection of book volumes on open shelves before another renovation created a more open design and designating the connected North (formerly Stuart) Reading Room a group study space and creating the student-run café.

Today, the Arley D. Cathey Learning Center offers 20,000 square feet of study space, can seat nearly 300, houses the College Core Tutor and Writing programs, and the Al Weisman Corner, which contains a collection of more than 80 magazine subscriptions for casual reading.

Other sources:
The University of Chicago: A Campus Guide, Jay Pridmore, 2006
A Walking Guide to the Campus: The University of Chicago, 1991, University Publications Office
The University of Chicago: An Official Guide, David Allan Robertson, 1916

North reading room then and now — Left, an undated photo inside the North Reading Room (formerly Stuart Reading Room). Right, today, inside the Arley D. Cathey Learning Center, which allows for group study and houses the College Core Tutor and Writing programs. (Photos: Left, University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; Right, by Jason Smith)