Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

Main reading room, Uris Library, circa 1900.

The University Library, now known as Uris Library, opened in 1891 -- a full 23 years after classes began -- as Cornell's first dedicated library. (It was refurbished in 1962 with funds from Harold '26 and Percy Uris and renamed in their honor.) Inside Uris Library is White Library, designed to hold the private collection of Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, who persuaded Ezra Cornell to purchase the 6,000-volume Anthon collection of classical works and noted, "The ideas of a great university and a great library are inextricably linked."

In 1868 White traveled to Europe, where he, according to Cornell historian Morris Bishop, "bought lavishly from the university funds and from his own. Naturally he was more tempted by bibliophilic rarities than by solid background books for undergraduate use. No matter; today those rarities have become treasures." White charged architect William Henry Miller to create "the noblest structure in the land." Miller (who also gave us the A.D. White House, the Central Avenue Bridge and Eddy Gate) had been Cornell's first architecture student. Apparently his education paid off: White proclaimed Miller's library "a marvel of good planning, in which fitness is wedded to beauty."

-- Adapted by George Lowery from Morris Bishop's "A History of Cornell."