Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is the name by which it is known. usually to the "Beinecke Rare Book Library" belonging to the Yale University Library (New Haven (Connecticut), United States).

This library is the current owner, among the many documents in its extensive collections, of several copies of manuscript and illuminated works, such as the Voynich Manuscript, with the signature "MS408", or a copy of the first Gutenberg Bible (first book printed on a movable type printing press). Features the personal archives of Edith Wharton, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Eugene O'Neill, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman and Witold Gombrowicz, among many others.

The building that houses the Library was built between 1960 and 1963, with a design by Gordon Bunshaft. It has a windowless façade, built from granite and white Vermont marble, tensioned by a concrete grid, already which thanks to the properties of the material, similar to those of alabaster, and the fine cuts of material introduced in the aforementioned grids, allows light to pass through it, giving an interior lighting that, thanks to the low intensity and the chromatic range that it acquires when crossing the stone, transmits to the visitor an atmosphere consistent with the ancient books and scrolls that are exhibited inside.

In 1977, the library suffered an infestation of wood beetles. The library pioneered a non-toxic way to ensure the safety of materials by freezing each volume at -33°F (-36°C) for three days. This method is now widely accepted as the best way to preserve special collections around the world and keep them free of pests, the Beinecke Library freezes all new acquisitions.

Architecture

A six-story above-ground glass tower with stacks of books is surrounded by a windowless façade, supported by four monolithic pillars at the corners of the building. The exterior shell is structurally supported by a steel frame with pylons embedded 50 feet (15 m) from the bedrock at each corner pier. The façade is built with granite and translucent veined marble. The marble is milled to a thickness of 1.25 inches (32 mm) and quarried in Danby, Vermont. On a sunny day, the marble transmits filtered daylight inside in a subtle golden amber glow, a product of its slim profile. These panels are framed by a hexagonal grid of Vermont Woodbury granite veneer, secured to a structural steel frame. The exterior dimensions have mathematical proportions " platonic " of 1: 2: 3 (height: width: length). The building has been called a 'jewel box', and also a 'humanities laboratory'. The modernist structure contains furniture designed by Florence Knoll and Marcel Breuer.

A raised mezzanine for public exhibitions surrounds the glass tower and displays, among other things, one of the 48 extant copies of Gutenberg's Bible. Two basement floors extend under much of the Hewitt Quadrangle. The first secondary level, the 'Court' level, centers on a sunken courtyard in front of the Beinecke, featuring The Garden (Pyramid, Sun and Cube). These are abstract allegorical sculptures by Isamu Noguchi that are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the disk), and chance (the cube). This level also features a secure reading room for visiting researchers, administrative offices, and book storage areas. The two-story underground building level has high-density shelving of moving aisles for books and files.

The Beinecke is one of the largest buildings in the United States dedicated entirely to rare books and manuscripts. The library has space in the central tower for 180,000 volumes and space for more than 1 million volumes in the underground book shelves. The library's collection, housed both in the main library building and on the shelves of the Yale University Library in Hamden, Connecticut totals approximately 1 million volumes and several million manuscripts.

During the 1960s, Claes Oldenburg's sculpture Lipstick on Caterpillar Tracks (Ascending) was displayed in the Hewitt Quadrangle. The sculpture has since been moved to the courtyard of Morse College, one of the university's residential dormitories.

The elegance of the Beinecke later inspired the glass-walled structure that protects and displays the original main collection (the books given by King George III and known as the King's Library) within the British Library building in Euston London.

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  During the day the sunlight is filtered through the marble panels

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  At the entrance level. Sunlight flood

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  Panoramic Beinecke interpse (The curved lines are results of photography with a wide angle)

History

At the end of the 19th century, rare and valuable books from the Yale University Library were shelved specials at the University Library, now known as Dwight Hall. When the university received a multimillion-dollar bequest from John W. Sterling for the construction of Sterling Memorial Library in 1918, the university decided to create a reading room dedicated to its rare books, which became the Reading Room. rare books from the building when the building opened in 1930. Because the bequest did not include an allocation for books or materials, Yale English professor Chauncey Brewster Tinker asked Yale alumni to donate materials that they would give to the university a collection as monumental as its new building. When Sterling opened, Tinker's appeal brought together an impressive collection of rare books, including a Gutenberg Bible by Anna M. Harkness and several important Beinecke family collections, most notably their collection on the American West. By 1958, the library owned more than 130,000 rare volumes and many more manuscripts. The accumulated collection proved too large for Sterling's reading room, and the reading room was not suitable for its preservation. Having already given important collections to Yale, Edwin and Frederick W. Beinecke—as well as Johanna Weigle, widow of his brother Walter—gave funds to construct a building dedicated to the rare book library. When the Beinecke Library opened on October 14, 1963, it became home to the Rare Book Room volumes and three special collections: the American Literature Collection, the Western American Collection, and the American Literature Collection. German Literature. Shortly after, they were joined by the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn collection.

The Beinecke Library became the repository for books in the Yale collection printed anywhere before 1800, books printed in Latin America before 1751, books printed in North America before 1821, newspapers and pamphlets printed in the United States before 1851, European treatises and pamphlets printed before 1801, and Slavic books, from Eastern Europe, the Near and Middle East to the 20th century XVIII, as well as special books outside these categories.

Now, the collection extends to the present day, and includes modern works such as poetry books and limited edition artists' books. The library also contains thousands of linear feet of archival material, ranging from ancient papyri and medieval manuscripts to archived personal papers of modern writers.