Uris Library: The Secular Cathedral of Cornell
Far above Cayuga’s waters stands Uris Library, symbol of Cornell University. This library is the
oldest one on campus and was purposefully designed to be a simple, elegant, and practical library; not a
place to store books, but to read them. Its location indicates its character. Its design shapes the
activities of its patrons as they study, sleep, and stress out. Uris Library’s site and architecture both
contribute to the ways in which students read inside it.
From the university’s founding, a grand library was planned. Andrew Dickson White, Cornell’s
first president, believed that “the ideas of a great university and a great library are inextricably linked”
and therefore he wanted his university’s library to be “the noblest structure in the land.” It would be
decades, however, before Uris Library finally opened in 1891, a full twenty three years after classes
began at Cornell. The delays were so numerous as to go past tragedy and into black comedy. Although
everyone wanted a library, hardly anyone agreed on what or where it should be. Karin White, the
daughter of Cornell’s first president Andrew Dickson White, recalled that her father “became furious
and sometimes trembled in restrained rage as they passed the building during walks on the campus” as
he remembered the various battles over the library.1
Before the construction of Uris Library, part of the university’s collection of books was held in
Morrill Hall, while thousands more were temporarily stored in boxes. These rooms in Morrill Hall,
however, were needed for classes due to a chronic lack of space. In what must have been their own
personal hell, students had to try to read and study while professors lectured, making these rooms
unusable to students for hours each day.2 After a few months, more space opened up, professors
moved into their new classrooms, and students were finally able to read in peace. But there was still
not enough room for the already large and rapidly growing collection of books. A true library was
needed.
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In 1881, Jennie McGraw Fiske, constant friend and benefactor of Cornell University, passed
away from tuberculosis at the age of forty-one and left a considerable inheritance to Cornell, valued
then at more than one million dollars.3 Unfortunately for the university, which intended to build its
future library with this money, its charter limited its property to five million dollars, on which it had
already bordered before Jennie’s generous gift.4 The state legislature removed this limitation in May
1882, but the Board of Trustees had not informed Jennie’s widower and the university’s first librarian,
Willard D. Fiske, of the problem and had fixed it behind his back. In 1883, troubled by the trustees’
dishonesty, he resigned as librarian and contested his late wife’s will, temporarily eliminating Jennie’s
inheritance as a source of funds for the school’s library. This case would last until 1890, when the
United States Supreme Court finally settled in Fiske’s favor.
But let no one think Mr. Fiske turned his back on Cornell. He retained an interest in the
university and gave presents to the library for the rest of his life.5 Upon his own death, Fiske even
bequeathed to Cornell Library more money than he had received from Jennie’s will, along with his
collections of Dante, Petrarch, and Icelandic literature. Today he lies interred with his wife in Sage
Chapel, while a room bearing his name, known by students as the “Fish Bowl” for its glass walls, exists
within Uris Library.6
While the suit was being contested, Henry Williams Sage, president of the Board of Trustees,
donated money for the construction of a library, under the condition that should the suit be settled in
the university’s favor, the money would be repaid. And so, Cornell University finally got its library.
The first thing that one notices about the library is its location. It took “fifteen months of study
and discussion” before “a site for the great library” was chosen.7 Numerous locations around the border
of the Arts Quad were considered and rejected, for all of which designs were planned. At one point,
Henry Van Brunt, one of the men being considered for the job of designing the library, was told to adapt
his design to a site that had already been rejected by the Board of Trustees, for who knows what
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purpose.8 What a contrast from the university’s early years, when building locations were chosen much
more simply and quickly: the Board of Trustees “would march out on the campus in a body and select
the site for a building.”9 In the end, however, the library was constructed on the best possible site, one
that highlights its unique nature.
Uris Library stands on an intersection of thresholds, partaking in both sides while belonging
wholly to neither. On a line running north to south, Uris Library divides the formal and academic
buildings of the Arts Quad from the informal and entertaining buildings to the south, including Barnes
Hall, the Cornell Store, and Willard Straight Hall, home to Okenshield’s and the Ivy Room. Uris Library
stands at the intersection of these two worlds: both a place for academics and for fun. Students go
there not only to read for class, but to meet with friends, eat in the café, and nap in the Andrew Dixon
White Library, home of the comfiest couches on campus.
From east to west, Uris straddles the division between the dorms of West Campus and the
classrooms of Central. Most students will sleep in the library at least once during their years at Cornell
and for many it becomes a second home on campus. For me and for others, it was the campus’s center
of gravity, whither we returned when we had some time between classes, but not enough to return to
our rooms. During Finals’ Week and before important exams, it even becomes a first home for some
students because of its long hours. Some students are so frequent visitors that they become friends
with the library staff. No other building on campus besides the dorms themselves has so many students
residing within it at all hours of the day.
Its interior is what truly makes Uris Library feel like a home, however. As soon as one walks in
there is a fireplace, bordered on each side by simple benches usually occupied by chatting students, as
though one were entering someone’s parlor. (The fireplace is, of course, never lit. A fireproof library is
quite pointless if one starts fires inside it.) Another fireplace is located in the Andrew Dixon White
Library, along with leather couches, comfortable arm chairs, a beautiful view of West Campus and Lake
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Cayuga, and various minor touches that make one feel as though one is in not an academic library, but a
personal one. Casts of White’s collection of medals and coins are held in two cases, and busts of some
famous Cornell figures adorn the room. The room’s unique catwalks give it a whimsical feel,
contributing to its nickname of “The Harry Potter Room.” One can easily feel at home here as they read,
with the only exception that silence is strictly observed, enforced by the glares of one’s peers.
This distinctive location reveals the nature of Uris Library. Through its unique location, Uris
Library creates an atmosphere that is at the same time domestic and academic, serious and lighthearted, a place of study and a place of enjoyment. Perhaps it does this too well, for some students will
avoid Uris Library, claiming that they find it hard to get any work done within it, because they inevitably
run into friends and start up conversations and thusly pass away their studying time.
The casual observer may never notice, but Uris Library is built in the shape of a massive cross,
measuring 170 feet, 7 inches by 153 feet, 5 inches.10 Why such an unusually unique shape? Because
this library is a secular cathedral dedicated to learning. Kermit Parsons explains the locations of the
library’s main features:
The main elements of the library plan are clearly based on the cross form often used in
churches with the reading room in the nave and aisles, the main seven-level stack in the choir,
the White Library and five-level south stack in the transepts, and the book delivery desk [Now
the circulation desk] at the altar.11
The architect chosen to design the library was William H. Miller, a former Cornellian who had already
designed several buildings for his alma mater. The library’s architectural style is Romanesque, a style
often used for churches during the Middle Ages, and its entrance is gargoyled with carved faces.
Venerable but not intimidating, the style encourages respect without fear. Uris Library represents a love
of learning that draws in its devotees.
Outside the library, yet still connected to it, is McGraw Tower, named for Jennie McGraw, the
clock tower that holds the university’s twenty one bells. This tower could have been separate, and
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indeed, some wanted it to be so at first. But what is a cathedral without a bell tower? Andrew Dixon
White, in a letter to Leland and Jane Lathrop Stanford, founders of Stanford University, commented on
the importance of the bells to his university. He called the bells the voice of the university and wrote
that:
We find that our chiming clock at Cornell University, while of practical value in keeping
professors and students aware of the flight of time, is ideally useful in developing the sense of
beauty, and attaching Faculty, graduates, students and visitors to the place. Think of the voices
of sweet-toned bells, sounding from the quadrangle during the day, giving warning of the flight
of time, and then during the night echoing under the arches, and floating over to Menlo park,
and the surrounding villages. It is the only thing needed to complete the beautiful impression
made by that whole creation and its surroundings.12
President White spoke with as much truth as any prophet, for I know of no Cornellian who does not
have a special place in their heart for these bells. The chimes ring out every quarter hour, while the
chimesmasters hold three concerts daily, playing songs ranging from Hotel California and The Muppet
Show Theme to compositions by Bach and Pachelbel. A particular favorite is Here Comes the Sun, played
both joyfully on sunny days and hopefully on the far more common cloudy days. A cathedral, but one
with a sense of humor.
The main reading room, the Arthur H. Dean Room, also exhibits this cathedralesque design. The
desks for students are aligned in rows like pews. Here, with heads bowed, students concentrate in
silence, often studying, sometimes praying if they feel unprepared for their upcoming exams. The
room’s high ceiling and massive windows complete the image. Indeed, with a floor area of 6612 square
feet, the Dean Room nevertheless has a total window area of over one thousand square feet.13
Yet this is no purely decorative cathedral. Uris Library was designed always with efficiency in
mind. The Dean Room’s massive windows create a perfectly lit room during the day, while the first ever
electrical lighting installed in a US library has let students read throughout the night since 1885.14 With
seven floors of books, the circulation desk and Dean Room are placed in the middle. From this central
location, no book is more than one hundred and twenty feet away, a fact for which many students are
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thankful, and the library staff even more so. At the time, no library of such a size was its equal and Uris
Library stood in a league of its own in terms of spatial efficiency.15
Every part of Uris Library shapes the way books are read within its walls. Students go to
different parts of the library for different purposes, depending on what they have to read and how much
they intend to enjoy it. If one desires a casual atmosphere, they can go to the White Library, with its
domestic atmosphere. If one wishes to do dedicated work, the book stacks, quiet, dim, and imposing,
are one’s best bet. For absolute silence, no room on campus beats the Kinkeldey Room, located above
and behind the circulation desk. And if one wishes to talk with friends, the Austen Room lets one speak
without disrupting others. Students read books for class not only in a different way, but in a different
place from those read for pleasure.
As a secular cathedral, Uris Library can only be considered a success. It is without a doubt the
focal point of the university and its primary landmark. Its clock tower is the lighthouse by which any lost
student can find their way back, as a cathedral attracts lost souls. It creates an environment of respect
and devotion for its books. As students study in this cathedral, enlightenment inevitably follows,
gleamed not from The Book, but from the many. It is perhaps here more than anywhere else on campus
that, as Cornell’s founder and namesake Ezra Cornell desired, “Any person can find instruction in any
study.”
Matthew Harrison Stukus
College of Arts and Sciences
Class of 2009
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Notes
1
Kermit Carlyle Parsons, The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development, (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1968), 153.
2
Waterman Thomas Hewett, Cornell University: A History, vol. 1, (New York: The University Publishing Society,
1905), 358.
3
Hewett, Cornell University, 364.
4
Parsons, The Cornell Campus, 155.
5
Horatio S. White, Willard Fiske: Life and Correspondence, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1925), 86.
6
Lance Heidig, “Remembering Jennie McGraw Fiske,” Cornell University Library, January 15, 2010,
<http://libecast.library.cornell.edu/uris/jennymcgraw.html>
7
Parsons, The Cornell Campus, 161.
8
Parsons, The Cornell Campus, 161.
9
Parsons, The Cornell Campus, 161.
10
Arthur Norman Gibb, The Library Building of the Cornell Campus, (1890), 15.
11
Parsons, The Cornell Campus, 168.
12
Andrew Dixon White, “Memorandum from Andrew D. White to Governor and Mrs. Stanford, 26 May 1892,” in
The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development, by Kermit Carlyle Parsons, (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1968), 298.
13
Gibb, The Library Building of the Cornell Campus, 22-23.
14
Lance Heidig, “The Arthur H. Dean Room,” Cornell University Library, January 15, 2010,
<http://libecast.library.cornell.edu/uris/dean.html>
15
Gibb, The Library Building of the Cornell Campus, 27.
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Bibliography

Gibb, Arthur Norman. The Library Building of the Cornell University: A Monograph. 1890.

Heidig, Lance. “The Arthur H. Dean Room.” Cornell University Library. January 15, 2010.
<http://libecast.library.cornell.edu/uris/dean.html>

Heidig, Lance. “Remembering Jennie McGraw Fiske.” Cornell University Library. January 15,
2010. <http://libecast.library.cornell.edu/uris/jennymcgraw.html>

Hewett, Waterman Thomas. Cornell University: A History. Vol. 1. New York: The University
Publishing Society, 1905.

Parsons, Kermit Carlyle. The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1968.

White, Andrew Dixon. “Memorandum from Andrew D. White to Governor and Mrs. Stanford,
26 May 1892.” In The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development. By Kermit
Carlyle Parsons. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968.

White, Horatio. Willard Fiske: Life and Correspondence. New York: Oxford University Press,
1925.
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