The Heart of the University

This article examines the library’s status on the American college campus and how its image has recorded shifting ideals and values in education and society. Academic libraries evolved from single rooms in the 1700s to freestanding libraries in the 1800s. Post–Civil War changes in higher education spurred the development of large, prominent libraries, centrally located and intended to symbolize the “heart of the university.” After World War II, new government and academic policies influenced dramatically rising enrollments and broadened curricula, which, combined with a cultural shift to modernist architecture, produced a new type of library building that emphasized function over monumentality.