When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.
Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.
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One wonders how libraries will adjust over the course of the next century to the progress of the digital age. I have no doubt that paper records will need to be kept, saved, and preserved because so much of our ancient material is not only poorly suited for digital scanning, but also because the paper records have intrinsic value beyond the information they contain. The older the book, the more than proves true.
But as technology provides people with valid reasons to visit libraries less frequently (why go to the library when you can get a digital copy of the book at home), will the world’s libraries become what amounts to fancy storage buildings? Perhaps. Of course, they have *always* been fancy storage buildings. That said, it may be more difficult to persuade the public to fund the construction of beautiful book display buildings if the public has fewer utilitarian reason to enter and look around. You don’t need to go to a library anymore to get a new book. Are there other reasons beyond just information acquisition to preserve the library institution and the buildings it resides in, as it has existed for centuries?
It is worth remembering that we built libraries as sacred spaces for centuries. Housing, sharing, and preserving knowledge was a religious endeavor. Architectural beauty conveys the sacred messaging and draws people in on its own. Is our society better or worse off if we continue to build primarily to remind people that knowledge should be sacred? If the answer is that the construction no longer matters, we can certainly store books more efficiently and and probably more safely outside of public reach. How much are we losing, as a species, if we take that path?
There is a library in Ireland that makes the case, with its aesthetics, that gathered knowledge is sacred and that we should create visual messaging through wood and stone to reflect that.
Library of Trinity College Dublin
The Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin.The Old Library Building
You could make the case that you should feel a sense of awe and wonder every time you pick up your cell phone and obtain access to the entire collected knowledge of human history. The trouble is that it’s hard for Samsung or Apple to design a flat rectangle in such a way that people are reminded of that truth when they stare at their screens. Maybe if that reminder was somehow issued, people would use that access for higher ends. Until we resolve that dilemma, the next best solution, in my opinion, is to build libraries that send us that reminder. The beauty of the building, and perhaps some organized public reasons to occasionally gather (public speakers, book signings, etc.), would send the message. There might be no better visual example of the inherent sacredness of knowledge, on earth, than the Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College Library. Even with a picture, you feel the immensity of human discovery and you feel the vastness of what yet remains to be learned. The room creates a sense of awe and wonder.
The Library of Trinity College Dublin (Irish: Leabharlann Choláiste na Tríonóide) serves Trinity College. It is a legal deposit or “copyright library”, which means publishers in Ireland must deposit a copy of all their publications there without charge. It is the only Irish library to also hold such rights for works published in the United Kingdom.
The Library is the permanent home to the Brian Boru harp, a national symbol of Ireland, as well as a copy of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic and the Book of Kells. One of the four volumes of the Book of Kells is on public display at any given time. The volumes and pages shown are regularly changed; a new display case installed in 2020 facilitated all pages to be displayed, including many which had not been seen in public for several decades. Members of the University of Dublin also have access to the libraries of Tallaght University Hospital and the Irish School of Ecumenics, Milltown.
Constituent buildings
The library proper occupies several buildings, six of which are at the Trinity College campus itself, with another part of the Trinity Centre at St James’s Hospital, Dublin:
The oldest library building, now known as the Old Library, is Thomas Burgh‘s magnum opus. Construction began in 1712. A large building which took twenty years to complete in its original form, it towered over the university and city after its completion in 1732. Even today, surrounded by similarly scaled buildings, it is imposing and dominates the view of the university from Nassau Street. The Book of Kells is located in the Old Library, along with the Book of Durrow, the Garland of Howth and other ancient texts. Also incorporating the Long Room, the Old Library is one of Ireland’s biggest tourist attractions and holds thousands of rare, and in many cases very early, volumes. In the 18th century, the college received the Brian Boru harp, one of the three surviving medieval Gaelic harps, and a national symbol of Ireland, which is now housed in the Library.
The Library Complex, incorporating:
The Eavan Boland Library, in Fellows’ Square. Designed by Paul Koralek of ABK Architects, an imposing Brutalist structure opened in 1967 as the “New Library”. It was renamed after George Berkeley in 1978. In April 2023, the college decided to “dename” the library due to Berkeley owning and working slaves on his property in Rhode Island. The library was renamed after Boland in October 2024.
The Lecky Library, attached to the Arts Building. Also designed by ABK, officially opened in 1978.
The Library began with the founding of Trinity College in 1592. In 1661, Henry Jones presented it with the Book of Kells, its most famous manuscript.
James Ussher (1625–56), Archbishop of Armagh, whose most important works were Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge (1632) and Brittanicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1639), left his valuable library, comprising several thousand printed books and manuscripts, to the Library. His complete works were published by the Library in twenty-four volumes.
In 1712, building began on the construction of the library building. Records show that a type of limestone was used, extracted from a quarry in Palmerstown, located some 8 km to the west. Patrick Wyse Jackson, curator of the Geological Museum at Trinity, assessed the Old Library in 1993, and made the following observations:
“The Old Library was built between 1712 and 1732… The lower storey is built of muddy, well-bedded Calp Limestone, cut into regular rusticated ashlar blocks, which were quarried at Palmerstown… This rock is quite fossiliferous and contains tiny cubic crystals of iron pyrites or ‘fool’s gold‘… The Calp has weathered to a pleasant, warm, brownish colour which contrasts well with the grey Ballyknockan Granite of the upper storeys. Originally these levels were faced with white St Bees Sandstone from Whitehaven in Cumbria, but this disintegrated quickly and all but the carved cornice was replaced.”
In 1801, the Library was given legal deposit rights, making it the only library in Ireland to have such rights for the United Kingdom at that time.
Detail of Long Room shelvingWatercolour of Long Room before the roof was raised
The 65-metre-long (213 ft) main chamber of the Old Library, the Long Room, was built between 1712 and 1732 and houses 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. Initially, The Long Room had a flat ceiling, shelving for books only on the lower level, and an open gallery. By the 1850s the room had to be expanded as the shelves were filled due to the fact that the Library had been given permission to obtain a free copy of every book that had been published in Ireland and Britain. In 1860, The Long Room’s roof was raised to accommodate an upper gallery. The Long Room is lined with marble busts. The marble bust collection was formed when 14 busts from the sculptor Peter Scheemakers were acquired by the college. Many of the busts are of great philosophers, writers, and men who supported the college. The most outstanding bust in the collection is of the writer Jonathan Swift, created by Louis François Roubiliac.
In November 2020, Trinity College announced the addition of four marble busts featuring female scholars: Rosalind Franklin, Ada Lovelace, Augusta Gregory, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Notably, it is “the first time in over a century that Trinity has commissioned new sculptures for the Long Room of the Old Library.” Following the unveiling, Trinity archivist Helen Shenton remarked, “As the first woman Librarian in the College’s 428-year history, I am especially delighted to champion this initiative to address the historic inequity in the Long Room.”
The Long Room also holds one of the last remaining copies of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. This proclamation was read by Patrick Pearse near the General Post Office on 24 April 1916. Visitors may also view the Trinity College harp (also known as the “Brian Boru harp“) in the Long Room which is the oldest of its kind in Ireland dating back to the 15th century. The harp is made out of oak and willow and includes 29 brass strings.
Beginning in 2022, the Long Room will be closed to the public as Trinity librarians undergo a €90m restoration project, utilizing €25m of government funding. The project is said to have “taken on a degree of urgency following the catastrophic fire which destroyed Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral in 2019.” Accordingly, the project will prioritize the modernization of environmental control and fire protection measures.
In popular culture
The Jedi archives of the Jedi Temple in the movie Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones bear a startling resemblance to the Long Room of the Trinity College Library. This resemblance resulted in controversy as permission had not been sought to use the building’s likeness in the film. However, Lucasfilm denied that the Long Room was the basis for the Jedi archives, and officials from Trinity College Library decided not to take any legal action.
In the Foundation TV series the Long Room was a stand-in for a reading room in the imperial capital of Trantor.
What do you think? Should we start building libraries like this again in the 21st century, in an apparent defiance of the technological evolution toward digital information sharing? Is the stone and wood building important in and of itself?
