The Grand Reading Room – Then and Now
Written by: Ben Atterberry
The next time you study in Ellis Library’s Reading Room, take a moment to look around. The room may feel familiar, but it looked strikingly different when Ellis Library opened in 1915: unfinished, dimly lit, and open on one side to the rest of the building. According to the University Libraries’ Ellis Old and New page, the room was not finished when the library opened. A 1914 photograph shows it still being put together, with light fixtures on one side lacking the glass globes found on fixtures elsewhere in the room. The coffered ceiling was left plain white at the time, and it stayed that way until the room was freshened up in 2003 – nearly 90 years after the room first opened the ceiling and wall details were finally painted.
The room was also initially more open to the rest of the library. In a 1915 photograph looking south, no partition separates the room from the hallway; students at the tables could see straight past the columns into what used to be the Delivery Room, where a card catalog was used to request and pick up books. That sightline doesn’t exist anymore. A partition now closes off the gap between the columns, though the archive doesn’t specify exactly when it went up. The old Delivery Room itself was turned into Room 213, a space built in the late 1990s that now houses the library’s Electronic Classroom. At the time, that was the extent of the second floor – there were no east stacks, and the connecting reading room where the cast gallery is now didn’t exist.
In 1936 a second, connected reading room (now room 202) was added to the Grand Reading Room almost doubling the size of the space. The room’s purpose shifted over the decades: the architect’s 1936 plan shows a desk near the West Stacks doors where books could be requested, and by 1955 the room served as the Reserved Book Reading Room. These changes are easy to miss on a normal walk through the library. To help visitors explore Ellis Library’s past and present, University Libraries maintain a Now and Then Photographs guide, pairing historical images with photos of the same spots today. So, on your next study session, picture the room as it looked in 1915: unfinished, partly lit, and open to the hallway. The quiet space students know now took decades to take shape and included one very delayed paint job.
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