Looking back at some of Columbia University’s old libraries.

Columbia is well advertised for its 19 (or 22) libraries. But some of you may know that it used to have, in fact, even more libraries. Before the digital age, information for all subjects had to be stored in libraries by necessity, so many of them have merged or closed since then, some of them later than you might expect. Here are just a few of Columbia’s former libraries, in reverse order of closing.

  1. Geology Library (1897-2018)

As discussed in my previous pieces on Schermerhorn Hall, the Geology Library used to be located on the 6th Floor of Schermerhorn. It had been there ever since Schermerhorn was built in 1897, but when the building was expanded in the mid-40s, a new floor was added (the 7th) putting stacks there. Sometime between 2022 and the 2024-25 school year, the extra books were finally taken out of the stacks and put in the Uris Library. The former reading space/library entrance was gutted and replaced with the Irving Center for Cancer Dynamics, and nobody knows what is currently in the stacks area.

Former pictures of the Geology Library exist thanks to Bwog and exist here.

  1. Engineering Library (1890?-2014)

While the Mathematics Building was the original Engineering building before Mudd, there were originally no libraries there; the Engineering Library was inside Low. When Mudd was built in the early 1960s, the Engineering Library was moved there. The archived Columbia website indicates that the “Archibald Monell Engineering Library” was in Mudd 422, which was apparently reached after you “pass the elevators and turn right”. 

Once the current NoCo Science & Engineering Library was finished, Mudd’s library’s days were numbered. It was closed and replaced with the Institute for Data Science & Engineering in May 2014, with material being moved to the Science & Engineering Library in NoCo.

Apart from the picture of the staircase by Bwog, I found another picture of the Library’s entrance in 2012, courtesy of the Spectator.

  1. Chemistry Library (1897-2009)

The Chemistry Library was originally located in Havemeyer Hall, Room 307. According to floorplans I found, Room 307 seems to be now known as Room 328, AKA the Miller Room, a small room near the entrance of Havemeyer where people eat catered meals before guest lectures. However, when they expanded Havemeyer in the late 1920s and built Chandler Hall, they moved the Chemistry Library to the 4th floor of Chandler. By the 1940s, the library took up almost the entire fourth floor of that building. A floor plan I found online even shows that the library had a balcony in it. 

The library closed in 2009 and was replaced with some lecture halls, and books were moved to the NoCo Science and Engineering Library. However, if one knows where to look, they can see a sign in the Chandler staircase still saying “CHEMISTRY LIBRARY”.

There are many other libraries I can look into, and I hope you enjoyed this brief look at some of Columbia’s former libraries!

Image via Bwarchives