Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

The Clemson University Tiger Band rehearses on their practice field as the sun sets, Nov. 15, 2017. (Photo by Ken Scar)

I made sure to get over to the STC from Trafalgar Campus before they started moving everything and everyone out.

I always thought that with some renovations, STC could have been a rather nice campus, including making A23 the front entrance.

Hasselblad 500c - Carl Zeiss Distagon 50mm 1:4 - Fuji Acros 100 @ ASA-100

Kodak D-23 (Stock) 9:00 @ 20C

Meter: Pentax Spotmeter V

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC (2017)

Clemson University sorority sisters paddle a raft across the R.M. Cooper Library reflection pond in a contest that was part of fraternity Alpha Tau Omega’s Viking Week, April 19, 2017. Viking Week is ATO’s signature philanthropy event. This year the event benefitted the building of the Samuel J. Cadden Chapel, an all-inclusive student chapel that will stand directly behind the library. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Canon EOS rebel XSI

If you're a fan of the Film Photography Project you'll know that they recently released their own Monobath! Well I finally got around to testing out the bottle I was sent and when I pulled out the first roll from the tank, I'll have to say I am pretty impressed! Though I did notice that the film base stayed that lovely TMAX purple, but the images speak for themselves! Wow!

Minolta Maxxum 7000 - Minolta AF 35-70mm 1:4 - Kodak TMax 100 @ ASA-100

FPP Super Monobath (Stock) 5:30 @ 20C

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC (2018)

Contax G2 - Carl Zeiss Planar 2/45 T* - FPP EDU 200 @ ASA-100 (Fomapan 200)

Pyrocat-HD (1+1+100) 7:30 @ 20C

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC (2018)

INTERIOR, NEW CHAPEL HALL.

Date: 1894

Source Type: Photograph

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Robert R. Beatty, Photo Tint Engraving Company

Postmark: Not Applicable

Collection: Steven R. Shook

Remark: The Auditorium, or Chapel, at Valparaiso University was constructed in 1892. It served as a center for entertainment and was later converted to a chapel. The structure was destroyed by fire on November 27, 1956.

The following news item concerning the construction of the Auditorium Building appeared in the June 26, 1891, issue of The Tribune:

Valpo's New Normal College.

Never in the history of any school has such marvelous growth and development been seen as of the Normal School of Valparaiso. Professors Brown and Kinsey, by their untiring efforts and indefatigable labors have won for themselves an undying reputation consequent on their establishment and management of the Normal. Their school has multiplied and re-multiplied until now they deem it necessary to enlarge upon their already spacious quarters by erecting a magnificent college building. The edifice is to be situated on the corner of College avenue and Locust street. Active progress is now being made in excavating and preparing the foundation. The building will be 120x60 feet. It will consist of two stories, the first being 14 feet high and the second 32 feet high. The material used in the construction will be pressed brick with stone trimmings. The first floor will consist of six recitation rooms, each with an average seating capacity of one hundred pupils. These rooms will be utilized for the study of mathematics and sciences. The second floor will be used as an auditorium, with a seating capacity of 2,000. It is said the Auditorium will be the largest in Indiana, barring the Hall at Indianapolis. All the modern mechanical appliances are to be inaugurated, electricity and gas will be utilized for lighting purposes. The system of ventilation is complete in every detail. The estimated cost of the building will be forty thousand dollars. the citizens of Valparaiso may well feel proud of this ornament to their now beautiful city.

This photographic image was included in a souvenir photograph book published by Robert R. Beatty in 1894. Beatty was the proprietor of a photography studio in Valparaiso that was first located at 65 College Avenue and later at 20 South Locust Street. The Valparaiso studio was in operation from the 1880s to about 1902 when he sold his business to Henry A. W. Brown and became a student at the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Otology.

Sources:

Beatty, Robert R. 1894. Souvenir Valparaiso, Ind. Chicago, Illinois: Photo Tint Engraving Company. 37 p.

The Tribune, Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana; June 26, 1891; Volume 8, Number 11, Page 1, Column 3. Column titled "From Our Neighbors. Newsy Notes From The County Round On The Movements of the People."

Copyright 2023. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Clemson University student Deavin Rencher, a sophomore studying special education and member of the Call Me MISTER program, reads with Tydarius Cobb, 9, at Uptown Barbers in Central, S.C., as part of the Razor Readers program. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

In the beautifully renovated Stocking Hall on the east end of Tower Road, the Cornell Dairy Bar is a great place for breakfast, lunch, coffee, or a sweet treat. We offer Cornell Dairy ice cream, milk, yogurt, pudding, and Big Red Cheddar, produced right here at Cornell’s very own dairy processing plant.

The Dairy Bar offers Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters specialty coffees, a mouth-watering array of sandwiches made to order, grab-and-go FreshTake items, and even pints of ice cream to take with you. Please note that our fresh deli counter is open 10:30-4:00 Monday through Friday, and ice cream service begins at 10:30am. FreshTake sandwiches and packaged salads and ice cream items are available in our cooler outside those hours.

Our regular hours vary seasonally, especially weekend hours, so please check the specific hours on this page for updates.

Menu:

Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters Specialty Coffee, Mighty Leaf Tea, Hot Cocoa, Frozen Lattes and Mochas, Pepsi Beverages, Hot & Cold Sandwiches, Soups, and Grab-n-Go items. Order ice cream sandwiches for your events 72 hours in advance!

Nutrition Info:

Check the Cornell Dairy Bar nutrition details on our NetNutrition page!

Current Cornell Dairy ice cream flavors:

•Alumni Swirl

•Butter Pecan

•Kahlua Fudge

•Coconut

•Caramel Cubed

•Stocking West Saloon

•Bavarian Raspberry Fudge

•Cornelia’s Dark Secret

•Peanut Butter Mini

•French Vanilla

•Ezra’s Morning Cup

•Triple Play Chocolate

•Vanilla

•Chocolate

•Black Raspberry

•Cherry Pie

•Cookies & Cream

•Mint Chocolate Chip

•Strawberry

•Big Red Bear Tracks

•Cookie Dough Dream

•Mango Sorbet

Thanks for understanding if we’re temporarily out of a particular flavor, or need to make substitutions. Sometimes people eat a lot of ice cream, and we just run out of something!

Having a party? Handpacked pints and quarts are available, at $6.99/pint and $9.99/quart. Ice cream sandwiches are always available in limited quantities. Want a bunch for a special occasion? Whether you’re a parent ordering for your student, or a friend who wants to help a buddy celebrate, you can download and fill in the Dairy Bar’s ice cream sandwich order form, and we’ll do the rest. Please place your order at least 72 hours in advance. Or check out our Ice Cream Social offerings.

Did you know we can ship Cornell Dairy ice cream? Enjoy your favorite flavors in pints, quarts, and three gallon tubs, shipped overnight in a cooler with dry ice. Find out more about overnight ice cream delivery on the Department of Food Science web site.

Location:

Stocking Hall, Central Campus

Driving to campus? Parking is available right across Tower Road from the Dairy Bar in the Peterson Lot. The meter is in operation 7:30am-5pm Monday-Friday, and you can pay with cash or credit card.

In the beautifully renovated Stocking Hall on the east end of Tower Road, the Cornell Dairy Bar is a great place for breakfast, lunch, coffee, or a sweet treat. We offer Cornell Dairy ice cream, milk, yogurt, pudding, and Big Red Cheddar, produced right here at Cornell’s very own dairy processing plant.

The Dairy Bar offers Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters specialty coffees, a mouth-watering array of sandwiches made to order, grab-and-go FreshTake items, and even pints of ice cream to take with you. Please note that our fresh deli counter is open 10:30-4:00 Monday through Friday, and ice cream service begins at 10:30am. FreshTake sandwiches and packaged salads and ice cream items are available in our cooler outside those hours.

Our regular hours vary seasonally, especially weekend hours, so please check the specific hours on this page for updates.

Menu:

Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters Specialty Coffee, Mighty Leaf Tea, Hot Cocoa, Frozen Lattes and Mochas, Pepsi Beverages, Hot & Cold Sandwiches, Soups, and Grab-n-Go items. Order ice cream sandwiches for your events 72 hours in advance!

Nutrition Info:

Check the Cornell Dairy Bar nutrition details on our NetNutrition page!

Current Cornell Dairy ice cream flavors:

•Alumni Swirl

•Butter Pecan

•Kahlua Fudge

•Coconut

•Caramel Cubed

•Stocking West Saloon

•Bavarian Raspberry Fudge

•Cornelia’s Dark Secret

•Peanut Butter Mini

•French Vanilla

•Ezra’s Morning Cup

•Triple Play Chocolate

•Vanilla

•Chocolate

•Black Raspberry

•Cherry Pie

•Cookies & Cream

•Mint Chocolate Chip

•Strawberry

•Big Red Bear Tracks

•Cookie Dough Dream

•Mango Sorbet

Thanks for understanding if we’re temporarily out of a particular flavor, or need to make substitutions. Sometimes people eat a lot of ice cream, and we just run out of something!

Having a party? Handpacked pints and quarts are available, at $6.99/pint and $9.99/quart. Ice cream sandwiches are always available in limited quantities. Want a bunch for a special occasion? Whether you’re a parent ordering for your student, or a friend who wants to help a buddy celebrate, you can download and fill in the Dairy Bar’s ice cream sandwich order form, and we’ll do the rest. Please place your order at least 72 hours in advance. Or check out our Ice Cream Social offerings.

Did you know we can ship Cornell Dairy ice cream? Enjoy your favorite flavors in pints, quarts, and three gallon tubs, shipped overnight in a cooler with dry ice. Find out more about overnight ice cream delivery on the Department of Food Science web site.

Location:

Stocking Hall, Central Campus

Driving to campus? Parking is available right across Tower Road from the Dairy Bar in the Peterson Lot. The meter is in operation 7:30am-5pm Monday-Friday, and you can pay with cash or credit card.

Tydarius Cobb, 9, reads with Clemson University student Deavin Rencher, a sophomore studying special education and member of the Call Me MISTER program, at Uptown Barbers in Central, S.C., as part of the Razor Readers program. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Crowds gather at Clemson University’s Watt Family Innovation Center to view the 2017 Solar Eclipse, Aug. 21. 2017. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Contax G2 - Carl Zeiss Planar 2/45 T* - FPP EDU 200 @ ASA-100 (Fomapan 200)

Pyrocat-HD (1+1+100) 7:30 @ 20C

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC (2018)

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Carved Wooden Manuscript Case

•Creator: unknown (unknown nationality, artist)

•Title: Carved wooden manuscript case

•Work Type: desks

•Location: Uris Library, Andrew D. White Library, Cornell University

•Description: Carved folding top, supported by two dogs. Possible attribution: Luigi Frullini.

•Repository: Cornell University

•Collection: Cornell: Campus Art and Artifacts

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

I made sure to get over to the STC from Trafalgar Campus before they started moving everything and everyone out.

Lathes.

Hasselblad 500c - Carl Zeiss Distagon 50mm 1:4 - Fuji Acros 100 @ ASA-100

Kodak D-23 (Stock) 9:00 @ 20C

Meter: Pentax Spotmeter V

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC (2017)

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Uris Library

•Construction Date: 1888

•Architect: Wm H Miller, CU; Warner, Burns, Toan & Lunde; Gunnar Burkirts

•Style: Richardsonian Romanesque; Modern

•Building Stone: Berea Sandstone (sandstone) from the Mississippian Period quarried in Northern Ohio; Holston Limestone (a.k.a. Tennessee marble) (limestone) from the Ordovician Period quarried in Tennessee; Red Levant (marble) from the Triassic Period in the A.D. White Library quarried in Spezia, Italy; Portage Redstone (sandstone) from the Cambrian Period quarried in Michigan (lower courses); (stairs) (note the pointed, pressure-solution “stylolites”)

To Andrew Dickson White, co-founder and first president of Cornell, “the ideas of a great university and a great library [were] inextricably linked.” Uris serves as the main University library with an emphasis on undergraduates. The libraries at the southern end of the Arts Quad serve the entire Cornell community. The University Library (now Uris Library) opened to the public in 1892, as the sole repository of the fledgling university’s books. Eighteen more libraries have since been constructed, including Olin, whose terrace looks out over the quad, and Kroch, accessible through Olin and built entirely below ground, with skylights on the southeastern corner of the quad supplying natural light.

The ceremonial opening of Uris Library was on October 7, 1891—the twenty-third anniversary of the day that classes began at the university—as the University Library. Its completion fulfilled A.D. White’s dream to create what he called, “the noblest structure in the land.” As the building was dedicated on that October afternoon, Cornell President Charles Kendall Adams noted: “To-day…we come together with glad hearts to celebrate the completion of what must for all time be the most important structure on these grounds.”

Designed by Cornell’s first architecture student, William Henry Miller, whose portrait hangs on the north wall of the lobby, the building featured an innovative design that allowed for convenient access to materials, and was, in White’s words, “a marvel of good planning, in which fitness is wedded to beauty.” He also considered it “the best academic library built.” Henry Van Brunt was the original architect and his Richardsonian Romanesque designs greatly influenced Miller’s final design. Miller won a competition which included Van Brunt and Charles Babcock. Miller’s work has been praised for its convenience, soaring tower, light-filled spaces, and the high quality of the masonry decoration. The rustication reflects the buildings of the Arts Quad, though a yellow, easily carved sandstone was used. Miller used an “Americanized” “modified Romanesque” or Richardsonian Romanesque style. The library cost over $200,000, and was the gift of Henry W. Sage in memory of Jennie McGraw Fiske, stemming from a period in University history known as the “Great Will Case.” The building forms the steeply sloping southwest corner of the Arts Quad where a library building was intended in the plan of 1866.

Uris Library is the university’s first dedicated library building and is considered to be architect William Henry Miller’s masterpiece. Miller’s architectural influence looms large on campus. In addition to the library, he designed four other major university buildings—Barnes Hall, Stimson Hall, Boardman Hall, and Risley Hall—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.

The library is a cross-shaped structure with arcades of arches and squared windows. It is a “cruciform basilica” that features a large reading room—a “nave”—with excellent natural lighting from twenty-nine windows and twenty clerestory windows. For a university famously founded as a non-sectarian institution, the new library building was Andrew Dickson White’s “secular cathedral” devoted to books and learning.

Andrew Dickson White required a waterproof room for the 30,000 history and architecture books he donated from his personal library. The university’s collection consisted of an additional 84,000 volumes. Funds for the building and a book endowment were to come from the estate of Jennie McGraw (inherited from her father), but the will was contested by her husband Willard Fiske, former university librarian. Henry Williams Sage gave the money until the case was settled in Cornell’s favor.

Chimes donated by Jennie McGraw at the University’s opening in October 1868 stood at this site in temporary scaffolding before placement in the tower of McGraw Hall, built by her father John. The bells were finally installed in the new library tower.

The University Library was renamed Uris Library in 1962, after Harold D. Uris ’25. It was his gift which helped to finance the 1962 remodeling of the library. The renovations were done by O’Brian and Taube, a local architecture firm. Also in 1962, the Library Tower was named McGraw Tower, after John McGraw (Jennie’s father), that houses the Jennie McGraw Chimes. In 1982, the underground reading room was added, with seating for an additional 214 students. Designed by Gunner Birkerts, the addition was financed by Harold D. Uris’25, who gave $3 million through the Uris Brothers Foundation. The roof of the cocktail lounge is a terrace with plaques honoring generous donors throughout Cornell history.

Attached to the library is the underground reading room, commonly known as the “cocktail lounge,” which looks out over Libe Slope.

(Photo by Ken Scar)

A group of students from Catlin Elementary School give Kathleen Swinney a card at the Tigers Read event in the Clemson Indoor Practice Facility, May 3, 2018. The event celebrated the third year of the Tigers Read! Initiative, which is sponsored by Dabo Swinney’s All In Team Foundation and aims to prevent the decline in reading skills many students experience during summer months. (Photo by Ken Scar)

George Petersen (right), founding dean of Clemson University’s College of Education, chats with one of his professors outside the learning center on Darla Moore’s farm in Lake City, S.C., March 5, 2018. Petersen was taking a group of his professors to visit South Carolina’s so-called ‘Corridor of Shame’ during a listen and learn field trip to the area, March 6, 2018. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

(Photo by Ken Scar)

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Andrew Dickson White Portrait Bust

•Creator: Simmons, Franklin (American sculptor, 1839-1913)

•Culture: American

•Title: Andrew Dickson White Portrait Bust

•Work Type: portraits; busts (figures)

•Location: Uris Library, Andrew D. White Library, Cornell University

•Material: White marble, Rosso Levanto

•Description: Portrait bust of Cornell University co-founder and first president Andrew Dickson White (1866-1885).

•Repository: Cornell University

•Subject: White, Andrew Dickson, 1832-1918; College presidents

•Collection: Cornell: Campus Art and Artifacts

•Artist Biography: Franklin Simmons (1892-1913) was an American artist. He is primarily known for his portraits. Some of his notable portrait subjects include Admiral Farragut, and Generals Grant, Sherman, and Hooker among others. “Throughout his life he created 100 portrait busts in marble and roughly 15 public monuments,”

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Arms of Saint Edward the Confessor

The arms of Saint Edward the Confessor, a blue shield charged with a gold cross and five gold birds, appears to have been suggested by heralds in the time of Henry III of England based on a coin minted in Edward’s reign. These arms were later used by Richard II of England out of devotion to the saint.

OLD COLLEGE BUILDING.

Date: 1894

Source Type: Photograph

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Robert R. Beatty, Photo Tint Engraving Company

Postmark: Not Applicable

Collection: Steven R. Shook

Remark: This image shows the original campus building of the Valparaiso Male and Female College, which was founded by the Methodist Church and operated between 1859 to 1871. The college went defunct in 1871 and was closed for approximately two years, reopening in 1873 as the Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute. The original large brick structure consisted of the center portion of the building between the two towers. The tower and east wing to the left in this image were erected in 1867, while the tower and west wing to the right were added later. The structure shown here, with its several additions, was destroyed on February 15, 1923, by a fire originating from an overheated stove.

This photographic image was included in a souvenir photograph book published by Robert R. Beatty in 1894. Beatty was the proprietor of a photography studio in Valparaiso that was first located at 65 College Avenue and later at 20 South Locust Street. The Valparaiso studio was in operation from the 1880s to about 1902 when he sold his business to Henry A. W. Brown and became a student at the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Otology.

------

The following news item appears in the February 22, 1923, issue of The Chesterton Tribune:

BUILDING TO RISE FROM THE RUINS

Arising from the blackened ruins of the historic administration building of Valparaiso university which was destroyed by fire last Thursday morning, will come a new and modern administration building and library, according to a decision of the trustees at a meeting held Saturday.

The loss is estimated between $150,000 and $175,000. This was fairly well covered with insurance and the trustees believe the building can be replaced. Committees were named to find out exactly what is needed in the way of new buildings and some decision will be reached at the next meeting of the board, February 28.

The fire which is of unknown origin was hard to fight on account of the cold. It started about 5 A. M. and the flames were not under control before 10:30 o'clock, when the building was a heap of smoldering ruins. For a time the flames threatened to spread to other buildings. Water dashed against the building froze on the walls so that the buildings looked like an ice plant without and a raging inferno within. Two students who lived in the towers narrowly escaped with their lives and lost all personal effects.

Male and co-ed students joined in an effort to save the school library when the fire was discovered. Shielding their faces with dampened towels and handkerchiefs, the students worked frantically, carrying armful after armful of books and records out from the ever-growing inferno into the cold.

Numerous valuable paintings in the art school, also housed in the administration building were destroyed.

In addition to the library and art school the administration building contained executive officers of the university and the class rooms of the university high and dramatic school.

The building was the oldest on the campus. It was erected 50 years ago and housed the original college.

Sources:

Beatty, Robert R. 1894. Souvenir Valparaiso, Ind. Chicago, Illinois: Photo Tint Engraving Company. 37 p.

The Chesterton Tribune, Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana; February 22, 1923; volume 39, Number 50, Page 1, Column 1. Column titled "Building to Rise From the Ruins."

Copyright 2023. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

Memorial Stadium under the totality of the 2017 Solar Eclipse, Aug. 21. 2017. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Fiske Table

•Creator: unknown (unknown nationality, artist)

•Title: Fiske Table

•Work Type: tables (support furniture)

•Location: Uris Library, Andrew D. White Library, Cornell University

•Description: Owned by Daniel Willard Fiske (1831-1904), first librarian of the Cornell University library (1868-1883).

•Repository: Cornell University

•Subject: Fiske, Willard, 1831-1904

•Collection: Cornell: Campus Art and Artifacts

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Andrew Dickson White Portrait

•Creator: Fassett, Truman E. (American painter, born 1885)

•Culture: American

•Title: Andrew Dickson White Portrait

•Work Type: portraits

•Location: Uris Library, Andrew D. White Library, Cornell University

•Description: Cornell University co-founder and first president Andrew Dickson White (1866-1885).

•Repository: Cornell University

•Subject: White, Andrew Dickson, 1832-1918

•Collection: Cornell: Campus Art and Artifacts

Kanji Cow from my Love....higher learning

The 2017 Solar Eclipse can be seen through the clouds on the Clemson Unviversity campus, Aug. 21. 2017. (Photo by Ken Scar)

(Photo by Ken Scar)

Professors from Clemson University’s College of Education visit South Carolina’s so-called ‘Corridor of Shame’ during a listen and learn field trip to the area, March 6, 2018. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Near Kent State university, the downtown area of Kent Ohio is undergoing rapid changes. Near many historic sites of Kent's modern and early cultural past TreeCity Coffee is poised for greatness in the heart of the city.

It's new construction blends in to the Brick works of the City but with a rather Bauhaus/industrial interior. It's fireplace and practical furniture support both both quick trips and prolonged lounging.

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

Roman Boy

•Creator: unknown (unknown nationality, artist)

•Title: Roman Boy

•Work Type: statues

•Location: Uris Library, A. D. White Library, Cornell University

•Material: White marble

•Description: Roman boy, white marble, at entrance to Andrew D. White Library, Uris Library.

•Repository: Cornell University

•Collection: Cornell: Campus Art and Artifacts

(Photo by Ken Scar)

(Photo by Ken Scar)

Date: Circa 1980s

Source Type: Postcard

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Nancy Ek Ferguson (#124003)

Postmark: None

Collection: Brent Barber

Remark: Printed on the reverse of this postcard is the following --

Christ College

Special Programs in Undergraduate Education

Valparaiso University

Valparaiso, Indiana

Copyright 2023. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

From the Cornell Chronicle:

Teaching Winery Opens on Campus

By Ted Boscia | April 2, 2009

With the snip of a grapevine, Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences, opened the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) Teaching Winery before a large crowd of faculty, students, vintners and other guests April 1.

Cornell, long known for its viticulture (grape-growing) research, now claims the only university teaching winery in the eastern United States. The $900,000 facility promises to prepare students for careers in New York’s wine and grape industry, which ranks third nationally in wine production and includes more than 250 wineries across the state.

Ian Merwin, the Herman M. Cohn Professor of Horticulture, and Ramón Mira de Orduña, associate professor of enology, helped Henry unveil the 1,800-square-foot building. The winery, attached to the Cornell Orchards store, will act as the Ithaca hub for CALS’s new viticulture and enology undergraduate major, which enrolls roughly 30 students and draws on more than 50 faculty members from the horticulture, food science technology, plant pathology, and applied economics and management departments. Inside the winery, students will access cutting-edge equipment to learn the science and art of winemaking.

“The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Teaching Winery represents a major enhancement to our Viticulture and Enology (V&E) program,” said Henry. “Having this facility in Ithaca is crucial for our undergraduates, who will gain from hands-on experience in winemaking and grape-growing.”

Previously, V&E students crafted wines in a makeshift lab on the mezzanine of Stocking Hall. At the ceremony, students offered tastes of experimental wines produced in a fall 2008 class. Nearby, Sabrina Lueck ’10, a V&E major, said, “I’m beyond excited to begin using all the winery’s beautiful equipment.”

The winery includes state-of-the-art fermentation tanks and a modern microbiological and chemical lab, elements needed for the storage of grapes and the preparation and analysis of wines. It will allow students and faculty convenient access to three acres of hybrid wine grapes at Cornell Orchards and is near the program’s Lansing vineyards, which grow more traditional varieties like Pinot Noir, Riesling and Chardonnay.

“The facility will be among the finest in the United States and will provide our students with the widest possible range of winemaking experience,” said Mira de Orduña.

Mira de Orduña thanked numerous wineries and companies that donated equipment, including de-stemmers, filters, barrels and tanks, and also enzymes, yeast, bacteria and fining agents used in the production of wine. He said, in particular, that oak barrels donated by Canton Cooperage of Lebanon, Ky., and that a custom-made WinePod fermenter by Provina of San Jose, Calif., would expose students to “both the most traditional and the latest equipment available in winemaking.”

Ted Boscia is a staff writer in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.

A. D. White Russian Bell

•Creator: unknown (unknown nationality, artist)

•Culture: Russian

•Title: A. D. White Russian Bell

•Work Type: bells (idiophones)

•Location: Uris Library, Andrew D. White Library, Cornell University

•Measurements: 3 ft. (height)

•Description: Presented to Andrew Dickson White First President of Cornell University (1866-1885) when he was Ambassador to Russia (1892-1894). Text on bell: “Caellum non animum mutant/ Qui trans mare currunt. They change their clime not their disposition/ Who run beyond the sea. From Horace, Epistles, Book 1, Epistle 2.” Prior to library renovation, 1961-62, this bell was rung at evening closing. Andrew D. White Library, Uris Library. This bell is occasionally incorrectly referred to as the Fewston Bell.

•Repository: Cornell University

•Subject: Chimes (bells); White, Andrew Dickson, 1832-1918; Russia

•Collection: Cornell: Campus Art and Artifacts

•Donor:White, Andrew Dickson

•Acquisition Date: 1894

GREENWICH HALL. COMMERCIAL HALL.

Date: 1894

Source Type: Photograph

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Robert R. Beatty, Photo Tint Engraving Company

Postmark: Not Applicable

Collection: Steven R. Shook

Remark: Commercial Hall was constructed in 1880 by Henry Baker Brown and Chauncey Watson Boucher. The structure had a footprint of 95-feet by 95-feet. The first two floors were initially used as housing for students at the Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute, while the third floor was used for the commercial department of the institute.

This photographic image was included in a souvenir photograph book published by Robert R. Beatty in 1894. Beatty was the proprietor of a photography studio in Valparaiso that was first located at 65 College Avenue and later at 20 South Locust Street. The Valparaiso studio was in operation from the 1880s to about 1902 when he sold his business to Henry A. W. Brown and became a student at the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Otology.

Source:

Beatty, Robert R. 1894. Souvenir Valparaiso, Ind. Chicago, Illinois: Photo Tint Engraving Company. 37 p.

Porter County Vidette, Valparaiso, Porter County, Indiana; January 29, 1880; Volume 24, Number 5, Page 3, Column 4. Column titled "Local."

Copyright 2023. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.”

Andrew Dickson White Library

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University’s co-founder and first president, built a great library. Although seldom identified today as one of the foremost collectors of the 19th century, his achievements have left a remarkable legacy. Unlike other famous book collectors of his time—J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Edwards Huntington, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox—he did not establish a separate institution to house his personal collections of books and manuscripts. Instead, White donated his entire collection of 30,000 books to the Cornell University Library—at a time when the Library possessed a collection of just 90,000 volumes. White’s great generosity reveals his utilitarian approach to collecting and, in his words, a “strong belief in the didactic value of books.” As an educator and historian he believed that one could not have a great university without a great library, and he wanted his books to be read and used by Cornell’s faculty and students.

White’s collections of materials on architecture, witchcraft, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil War were among the finest in the world during his lifetime. Originally shelved in the large, three-story room within Uris Library that bears his name, White’s collections are no longer kept together in one place. Many of his books were moved to the stacks in Olin Library when it opened in 1961. In recent years, most of White’s books have been transferred to the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections for their continued protection and preservation. Today, the Andrew Dickson White Library holds a portion of the humanities and social science collections found in the combined Olin and Uris Libraries.

It is perhaps more fitting and accurate to say that Andrew Dickson White built two great libraries. The first was his large and significant personal book collection. The second was the Cornell University Library. White hired Willard Fiske to be Cornell’s first University Librarian, and he worked closely with him to develop innovative and progressive policies for their library. White purchased its first books, and played an active role throughout his life in developing the library’s collections.

Even in his student days, White had considered the merits of the most prestigious European libraries, imagining what it would be like to build an important new research library. White conceived and developed his vision for an upstate New York university during a miserable first year at college. White’s visions of a beautiful university were honed during his first year at a college whose architecture he called “sordid,” and later at Yale, where he urged classmates to “adorn and beautify the place.” While his classmates occupied themselves with shenanigans, the sixteen-year-old consoled himself in the library, where he found a book on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As a University of Michigan professor in the late 1850s, he planted elms and evergreens with the help of his students and was appointed superintendent of grounds. Two decades later he would preside over an institution that embodied the vision of his youth. The faculty included professors of modern history and literature, as well as classics and mathematics. They were free of control by religious sects and political parties. And learning was accomplished not by rote memorization and recitation, but through analysis, discussion, and experience. The Victorian beauty of the A. D. White Reading Room in Uris Library would probably have satisfied White’s exacting standards.

A trace of this inspiration can be found in the stained-glass windows that line the room. They portray the crests of several Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In the north windows, for instance, the blue escutcheon contains the motto for Oxford University, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea.” Translated from Psalm 27, it means, “The Lord is my Light.” Visitors from a new generation find the room’s ambiance comes from another source, calling it the “Harry Potter” library.

When White offered his personal library to the university, he set two conditions. He asked that the university provide a suitable space to house his collection—he stipulated a fire-proof room—and he requested that proper provision be made for the ongoing maintenance of his collections. That “suitable space” is the Andrew Dickson White Library. White played an active role in helping the building’s architect, William Henry Miller, design and ornament this space.

The maintenance and cataloging of the collection became the responsibility of George Lincoln Burr, a member of the Cornell class of 1871. Burr was White’s secretary and personal librarian as well as the first curator of the White Historical Library. Originally hired by White when he was a Cornell sophomore, Burr worked closely with White to develop and care for his library. We can safely posit that after 1879, the White collection must be seen as a collaborative effort between the two scholars. Each traveled to Europe on extended book-buying tours. Burr, also a renowned professor in the Cornell History department, is given special credit for building and enriching the Library’s collections on the Reformation and witchcraft.

Burr’s portrait by Cornell art professor Christian Midjo is prominently displayed on the north wall of the room, and a small drawing by R. H. Bainton on the first tier shows Burr as Cornell historian Carl Becker once described him: an “indefatigable scholar and bibliophile . . . browsing and brooding in the stacks.”

The Andrew Dickson White Library is filled with art work, furniture, and artifacts from White’s academic and diplomatic careers. He served as U.S. minister to Germany while still president of Cornell, and later also served as minister to Russia. Several pictures and photographs in the room depict Russian scenes. The artwork and the case of plaster casts of European coins and medallions were all collected by Mr. White.

Originally, this space had skylights and an open archway into the adjacent Dean Room (where the Burr portrait now hangs). Those features were lost to renovations, but the original three tiers of wrought-iron stacks still offer an open and dramatic display of their books. Upon first seeing these shelves filled with White’s books in September of 1891, George Lincoln Burr wrote that it “gave one such an idea of a multitude of books. You see and feel them all. They quite overawe one.” Setting the objective for the collection, he promised to make the White Library, in his words, “the great living, growing historical workshop of the University.