Suzzallo & Allen Architectural History

Welcome to the Suzzallo & Allen Library, the largest of the libraries in the University Library system.

Suzzallo...At Night

The Suzzallo Library, named after Henry Suzzallo, the fifteenth president of the university, opened in 1926. The architects of Suzzallo Library, Charles H. Bebb and Carl F. Gould Sr., had a vision of a campus united by design and reflecting the age-old traditions of the academy as personified by Oxford and Cambridge. Suzzallo Library was to be their centerpiece. The library embodies collegiate gothic with its soaring west facade and row of eleven 35 foot high stained glass windows and terra-cotta and cast-stone figures. When planning began in 1922, Henry Suzzallo envisioned a library that was "the soul of the university."

The exterior is composed of sandstone, precast stone, terra-cotta and brick, with a slate roof. Eighteen terra-cotta figures in niches upon the exterior buttresses were selected by the UW faculty in 1923 to symbolize contributions to learning and Allan Clark, a young sculptor from Tacoma, was commissioned to create the figures, which include, from left to right, Moses, Louis Pasteur, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, Benjamin Franklin, Justinian, Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Goethe, Herodotus, Adam Smith, Homer, Gutenberg, Beethoven, Darwin, and Grotius. Three heroic figures of cast stone depicting “Mastery,” “Inspiration,” and “Thought,” also sculpted by Allen Clark, stand over the portals of the main entrance. Another detail in the façade is a series of shields, which are the coats of arms of various universities around the world, including Toronto, Louvain, Virginia, California, Yale, Heidelberg, Bologna, Oxford, Paris, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Upsala, and Salamanca.

Grand Staircase from 3rd Floor

The Grand Staircase leads from the 1st to the 3rd floors. The 1963 addition to Suzzallo added a floor between the 1st and 2nd floors of the original building.

The Grand Stair Hall, with its vaulted ceiling, displays the “batwing,” one of the more visible features of the seismic renovation which Suzzallo underwent between 2000 and 2002, at a cost of $47 million. When the original building was completed in 1926, this area was a rotunda with stained glass windows surrounding.

A highlight of Suzzallo Library is the Reading Room. Measuring 65 feet high, 52 feet wide, and 250 feet long, the Reading Room features a vaulted ceiling elaborately decorated with richly colored and gilded stenciling. The oak bookcases are topped with a hand-carved frieze representing native plants of Washington state. The tall, traceried windows incorporate leaded glass which is intended to break the direct rays of light. Medallions representing 28 different Renaissance watermarks are worked into the design. At each end of the Reading Room there is a hand-painted world globe suspended from the ceiling, each of which bears the names of different explorers.

Suzzallo Library Reading Room. photo by Curtis Cronn

A view of the Reading Room, looking toward the north alcove.

Smith Room

Throughout the room, marble panels, cast and carved sandstone, wood paneling and ironwork grills display the craftsmanship employed in creating this space. In the north alcove of the Reading Room you will find the Warren G. Magnuson Desk. This double, mahogany desk, which was originally located in the Senator’s office in the Russell Senate Office Building, was donated to the UW as part of the Senator’s political papers and artifacts from his Senate office. All are welcome to sit and study at this desk.

Smith Stuff

The Smith Room, adjacent to the Reading Room, in part of the 1935 wing on the south side of the original building, was originally the reading room for rare books and Pacific Northwest materials. Those collections are now housed in Special Collections in the south wing of the Allen Library. Now the Smith Room is used primarily for classes, conferences and meetings for the Libraries and University community. It is not generally open to the public.

The stained glass windows in the room picture historical vignettes and seals of the Washington Territory, the Hudson’s Bay Co. and the Provisional Government of Oregon.

The Smith Room walls are covered with several large murals representing the history and exploration of the Northwest.

Model of Suzz

On the floor in the study area outside of the Reading Room there is an octagonal shape outlined by the limestone. Bebb and Gould’s original design for Suzzallo Library form a triangle with three wings and a 300 foot high carillon book tower in the center. The west wing opened in 1926 and the south wing in 1935. The book tower of the original design (the shape of which is reflected in the limestone floor mentioned above) was never built.

Plaza

A glass and concrete addition of 125,000 square feet was added to the north and east sides of Suzzallo Library in the years between 1961 and 1963. Architects Bindon and Wright departed radically from Gould and Bebb’s orginal plans for the library, with modern architecture meant to harmonize with the gothic elements in the orginal building, as well as those in surrounding campus buildings.

New Wing

The 1963 wing added desperately needed space for collections and staff. Over the next two decades, the University Libraries continued to grow, and increasingly needed more space to house materials. The section you are walking into now houses the Suzzallo Periodicals collection. This collection represents more than 7,500 periodical subscriptions, more than 175,000 individual volumes—the largest periodicals collection in the UW Libraries system. (There are more than 56,000 periodical subscriptions in the UW Libraries system.)

In 1988, the Washington State Legislature approved funding for the construction of a new library addition designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes Associates of New York.

Allen N Stairs

The new structure, completed in 1990, provided shelving for over 1,056,000 volumes and added environmental improvements such as ultraviolet filtering for both lights and windows. The building was designed for flexible collection and technology needs and provided a structure that fits well among older campus buildings. The brick and terracotta façade by Daniel Casey ties the building both to existing campus architecture and to a Northwest sensibility. The new Library was named for Kenneth S. Allen, Associate Director of Libraries from 1960 to 1982, in recognition of his years of service to the Libraries, and in appreciation of a generous endowment from his son, Paul G. Allen.

Allen North

In October 1994, Libraries staff members and users watched with interest as Carl T. Chew, Mare Blocker, J.T. Stewart, and Ron Hilbert arrived in the Allen Lobby to install their collaborative artwork, Raven Brings Light to This House of Stories. The most noticeable of the several parts to this exhibit are the 40 ravens and crows suspended from the ceiling, and the title, displayed in large letters on the wall, in both the Lushootseed language and English. In Pacific Northwest Native American lore, Raven is the being who went east to bring the light to the west. In this work, the light is the knowledge housed within the Libraries collections. Each bird carries a sample type style or other symbol from cultures around the world.

Allen South

Walk across the “arcade” into the south wing of the Allen Library. Here you will find the Libraries Research Commons. Established in fall, 2010, the Research Commons is a place to collaborate and connect with fellow students and faculty on research projects. It is a place for workshop and presentation opportunities, and a place to discover what your peers and colleagues are researching.

Thanks to a special arrangement with the UW’s Burke Museum, a cast of a 28-foot long fossil crocodile, Tomistoma machikanense, from the Late Pleistocene, hangs in the library’s foyer.

Please feel free to ask any questions you have at any of our public desks.