The Addition: Original Design 1982
When Harold D. Uris, Class of 1925, gave Cornell $3 million dollars to build an extension to Uris Library (the building had been named in honor of him and his brother in 1961), he expected that the work would be architecturally-significant without detracting from the building’s distinctive Richardsonian Romanesque style. Latvian-American architect Gunnar Birkerts, who had also designed the Corning Museum of Glass, was selected to design the modern addition to William Henry Miller’s beloved 1892 undergraduate library. Birkerts was directed to design a 24-hour study space with as many as 200 seats; a study room that would stretch from McGraw Tower, all the way around the base of the library to the Kirby Room (now opposite the entrance to CL3), but that should not mar the building’s original character. Birkerts produced a spectacular design for a wraparound lounge that hugs the library, lodged into the hillside, but focused outward, over Libe Slope with westward views.
Birkerts Design for the Uris Addition
When it opened in late 1982, the Uris Addition was filled with ultra-comfortable furnishings, featuring wooden desks with rounded edges, molded arm chairs, and chrome-legged desks. It had collaborative study rooms, tables for spreading out books, study carrels, plenty of sprawl space, and a mysterious door on the south side that never actually functioned as a regular entrance. Students enjoyed long hours reading, socializing, and snoozing in this welcoming reading room. Shortly after it opened, they began calling it the “Cocktail Lounge.”
Uris Addition Program
The President and Board of Trustees of Cornell University request the pleasure of your company at the Dedication of the New Addition to Uris Library
Tuesday, the twenty-first of September
Nineteen hundred and eighty-two at four o’clock
(Tours of the facility will begin at three o’clock.)
