Princeton's New Firestone Library Dominates Nassau Academic Plant

Lamont Library just won't make an impression on the ambling Princeton invader should he chance to explore the Yard. The men from Nassau town are used to this sort of glorified bookshelf; they've got one three times as big themselves--and just as new.

The Trustees of the four-year old College of New Jersey voted to purchases a bookcase in 1750. This is the first record in Princeton's annals of any provisions for the printed word. It was just some 198 years later, in June, 1948, that President Dodds set the last few pounds of the 5,200 tons of Foxcraft stone required in the Gothic exterior walls of the 86,000,000,000 Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library.

During the two centuries, the library

facilities at Princeton have alternated from good to very bad. The two-million volumes Firestone Library now gives that colleges facilities which are unique in architecture and functional value.

Unlike Lamount, which is merely an undergraduate library, Firestone was meant to replace almost all the other scattered libraries and bring them together in one centrally located place, easily accessible to students, graduate researchers, and faculty.

Flexibility of use was obtained by adopting the modular system of construction. This in practice, came about by constructing the interior of the library in uniform units of space, 18-feet by 24-feet, and bounded at the four corners by supporting columns. These dimensions were chosen because of their suitability for the open stacks, and seminar, office and carrel arrangements.

The carrel system is one of the library's most unusual end controversial features. Some 494 of them--500 were planned, but 6 got lost in the construction shuffie--are located through the acre and one-half of stack area on each of the three lower floors and the two above the main level.

In reality a private study adjacent to a particular field of learning, a carrel provides for the students to whom it is assigned a desk, bookshelves, a comfortable chair, and an adjustable desk light.This senior tries to stretch out in his single carrel.