Doe Memorial Library - A Palace for Books
Photo: Louis H. G., CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on UC Berkeley Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.
The grand classical building before you is Doe Memorial Library, completed in 1911. Its funds came from Charles Franklin Doe, a San Francisco businessman who left money for a library in 1904. The design grew out of an international competition for a new campus plan, won by French architect Emile Benard, and it set the white, columned Beaux-Arts look of the campus core.
Doe is the heart of a connected library complex. Underground passages link it to the Gardner Stacks, which hold millions of volumes, and to Moffitt Library next door, while the Bancroft Library, with its famous collections on the history of the American West, is attached on the east side. The library complex is also home to the Mark Twain Papers, a vast collection of the author's letters and manuscripts.
If you are allowed in, look for the grand reading room upstairs, with its tall arched windows and long wooden tables. Check the library's website for visitor access and hours.
Getting here: Walk to the library's north entrance at the edge of Memorial Glade, about 100 meters away.
Did you know?: A statue of Mark Twain holding a copy of Huckleberry Finn near the entrance is commonly mistaken for Albert Einstein.
Photo op: Stand back on the glade so the full row of columns fits in the frame, with people on the steps for scale.
More on Wikipedia: Doe Memorial Library · Bancroft Library · Mark Twain
Stops on this tour
- Sproul Plaza and Sather Gate - Birthplace of Free Speech
- Strawberry Creek - The Water That Chose the Campus
- Valley Life Sciences Building - A T. rex Indoors
- Memorial Glade - The Campus Front Lawn
- Doe Memorial Library - A Palace for Books
- South Hall - The Oldest Survivor
- Sather Tower - The Campanile
- Hearst Mining Building - A Monument to Mining
- Gilman Hall - Where Plutonium Was Identified
- Hearst Greek Theatre - An Ancient Stage in the Hills
- Faculty Glade - Oaks, Creek and 4.0 Hill