Editing Sterling Memorial Library (section)

==History==
[[File:Johnwilliamsterling.jpg|200px|thumb|John W. Sterling, the library's namesake]]
For the ninety years prior to the construction of Sterling Memorial Library, Yale's library collections had been held in the College Library, a chapel-like [[Gothic Revival]] building on Yale's [[Old Campus]] now known as Dwight Hall.<ref>{{cite book |last=Tolles |first=Bryant F. Jr. |title=Architecture & Academe: College Buildings in New England Before 1860 |location=Lebanon, NH |publisher=University Press of New England |year=2011 |isbn= 9781584658917 |pages=37–39 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NlJCGeoDB8AC&pg=PA37 |access-date=4 April 2014}}</ref> Built to house a collection of 40,000 books in the 1840s, and later expanded to Linsly Hall and Chittenden Hall, the old library could not hold Yale's swelling book collection, which had grown to over one million volumes.<ref name="Schiff">{{cite journal |last=Schiff |first=Judith Ann |title=The "Heart of the University" Turns 75 |date=Sep–Oct 2005 |journal=Yale Alumni Magazine |url=https://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2005_09/old_yale.html |access-date=6 April 2014}}</ref>

In 1918, Yale received a $17-million [[bequest]] from [[John W. Sterling]], founder of the New York law firm [[Shearman & Sterling]], providing that Yale construct "at least one enduring, useful and architecturally beautiful edifice."<ref name="Schiff" /><ref name="Science">{{cite journal |title=The Sterling Bequest to Yale University |journal=Science |volume=48 |number=1230 |date=26 July 1918 |page=87 |url=https://archive.org/details/jstor-1642065 |access-date=4 April 2014|doi=10.1126/science.48.1230.87 |bibcode=1918Sci....48...87. }}</ref> The largest bequest in the history of any American university, it initiated a major period of construction on Yale's campus.<ref name="Science" /> Because of the library collection's growth, the university decided to make the centerpiece of Sterling's gift a new library with a capacity for 3.5 million volumes.<ref name="Science" /><ref>{{cite web |title=Yale Central Complex, New Haven Historic Resources Inventory |year=1984 |publisher=City of New Haven |url=http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/CityPlan/pdfs/HistoricInventory/NH%20HRI%201%20Yale%20Central%20Complex.pdf |access-date=4 April 2014}}</ref>

The building's original architect, [[Bertram Goodhue]], intended the library to resemble his [[Nebraska State Capitol|State Capitol Building]] in [[Lincoln, Nebraska]], with the library's books in a prominent tower.<ref name="Bloomer">{{cite book |last=Bloomer |first=Kent C. |author-link=Kent Bloomer |title=The Nature of Ornament: Rhythm and Metamorphosis in Architecture |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=2000 |isbn=9780393730364 |pages=187–185 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F7afIwq-xPYC&pg=PA178 |access-date=4 April 2014}}</ref> When Goodhue died in 1924, the project passed to [[James Gamble Rogers]], the university's consulting architect. Rogers' work on a "General Plan" for the Yale campus allowed him to incorporate the main library project into his neo-Gothic scheme for Yale's expansion.

Roger's campus plan called for the library to sit on a new main courtyard, now called Cross Campus. Originally, he planned to balance the courtyard with a 5,000-seat chapel facing opposite the library. With the end of compulsory undergraduate chapel services in 1926 and the lack of a financier, the chapel was never built.<ref name=Grubiak>{{cite journal |last=Grubiak |first=Margaret M. |title=Reassessing Yale's Cathedral Orgy: The Ecclesiastical Metaphor and the Sterling Memorial Library |doi=10.1086/599848 |date=2009 |journal=Winterthur Portfolio |publisher=The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum |volume=43 |issue=2/3 |pages=159–184 |s2cid=163974556 |url=https://www84.homepage.villanova.edu/margaret.grubiak/GrubiakWinterthurPortfolio2009.pdf |access-date=15 January 2015}}</ref> Expanding on Goodhue's tower concept, Rogers proposed the library take the form of a cathedral, which, in his own words, would be "as near to modern Gothic as we dared to make it."<ref name="Mills Brown">{{cite book |last=Mills Brown |first=Elizabeth |title=New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design |year=1976 |location=New Haven |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=9780300019933 |page=128 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9no2loQlCeEC&pg=PA128 |access-date=4 April 2014}}</ref> He modeled the library's entrance hall to resemble a vaulted [[nave]] and commissioned extensive [[stained glass]] and stone [[Ornament (art)|ornament]] to decorate the building's exterior and interior.<ref name="SML History">{{cite web |title=The History of Sterling Memorial Library |publisher=Yale University Library |url=https://web.library.yale.edu/building/sterling-library/history |access-date=4 April 2014}}</ref>

The library's {{convert|122500|sqft|m2|adj=on}} footprint would take up more than half a city block. Twenty buildings were cleared for its construction, many of them private homes.<ref name="Keogh">{{cite journal |last=Keogh |first=Andrew |title=Notes by the Library, Based on an Address on Alumni Day 1928 |journal=Yale University Library Gazette |date=1928 |volume=3 |pages=27–34}}</ref> Although excavation began in the fall of 1927, the construction site was not fully secured until July 1928, when the final [[holdout (architecture)|holdout homeowner]] agreed to sell.<ref name="Taylor" /><ref name="Husted" /><ref name=Martz>{{cite journal |last=Martz |first=Rebecca |title=Sterling Histories |journal=Yale University Library Gazette |date=October 2006 |volume=81 |issue=1/2 |pages=6–7 |jstor=40859517}}</ref>

While the new library was planned and constructed, Yale began soliciting gifts from its alumni for the new library. By 1931, the collection had grown to nearly 2 million volumes, many of them rare books and manuscripts.<ref name="Schiff"/><ref name="Taylor" /> Among the most important of these acquisitions was a [[Gutenberg Bible]] donated by [[Anna Harkness]].<ref name=Taylor>{{cite book |last=Taylor |first=Merrily E.  |title=The Yale University Library 1701–1978: its History, Collections, and Present Organization |year=1978 |publisher=Yale University Library}}</ref> The bible became the centerpiece of the new library's Rare Book Room, which allowed students and researchers to browse the most valuable books in the university's collection for the first time, a function later subsumed in part by the [[Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library]].<ref name="Schiff"/>

At the time of its construction, the choice of cathedral architecture attracted criticism. Like much of Yale's revivalist construction of the same era, the new library was criticized as expensive and retrograde.<ref name=Grubiak /><ref name=Goldberger2006>{{cite web |last=Goldberger |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Goldberger |title=Yale and the Promise of the Modern |location=New Haven, CT |date=9 December 2006 |url=https://www.paulgoldberger.com/lectures/yale-and-the-promise-of-the-modern/ |access-date=15 January 2015}}</ref> [[William Harlan Hale]], writing in ''[[The Nation]]'', scorned it as a "cathedral orgy," criticized the library's bastardized cathedral aesthetics and the university's timid anti-modernism.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hale |first=William Harlan |author-link=William Harlan Hale |title=Yale's Cathedral Orgy |journal=Nation |date=29 April 1929 |pages=471–472}}</ref> Many students of architecture leveled similar criticisms.<ref name="Goldberger1985">{{cite book |last=Goldberger |first=Paul |chapter=The Sterling Library: A Reassessment |title=On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post Modern Age |date=1985 |publisher=Penguin Books |pages=[https://archive.org/details/onrisearchitectugold/page/269 269–271] |isbn=9780140076325 |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/onrisearchitectugold/page/269 }}</ref> Others asserted that the project was either sanctimonious or sacrilegious for merging academic purpose and religious architecture.<ref name=Grubiak /> Later critics have praised the building's ambition, beauty, and pragmatism.<ref name="Goldberger2006"/><ref name="Pinnell">{{cite book |first=Patrick L. |last= Pinnell |title=The Campus Guide: Yale University |publisher=Princeton Architectural Press |year=1999 |page=67 |isbn=1568981678}}</ref><ref name=Betsky>{{cite book |last=Betsky |first=Aaron |title=James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism |date=1994 |publisher=Architectural History Foundation |isbn=9780262023818}}</ref>