Butler Library
in New York, United StatesCategory: Attraction
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535 West 114th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA Print route »
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The Nicholas Murray Butler Library, colloquially called Butler Library, on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University at 535 West 114th Street, the university's largest single library with over 2 million volumes. One of the largest buildings on the campus, it was built in 1931-34 and was designed by James Gamble Rogers in the Neoclassical style.
Originally called "South Hall", in 1946 was renamed for Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia from 1902-1945, who first proposed the building when plans to expand the Low Memorial Library did not come to fruition. The new library was funded by Edward Harkness, a Columbia alumnus who was also donor of Yale's residential college system and Harvard's houses.
The library's facade features an arcade of columns in the Ionic order above which are inscribed the names of great writers, philosophers, and thinkers: Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Saint Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, and Goethe.
Butler Library remains at least partially open 24 hours a day during the academic year.
