Butler Library
Coordinates: 40°48′23″N 73°57′47″W / 40.8064°N 73.9631°W
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 1931–1934 and was designed by James Gamble Rogers in the Neoclassical style.
Originally called "South Hall", in 1946 it was renamed for Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University 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 writers, philosophers, and thinkers: Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Vergil on the northern face, towards College Walk and the Low Library. Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, and Goethe on the east, facing John Jay Hall and Wallach Hall; and Horace, Tacitus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Dante on the western facade, facing Alfred Lerner Hall and Carman Hall.
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