University of Chicago Eckhart Hall Library

Chicago, Illinois

The existing library in the University of Chicago's historic Eckhart Hall (Charles Z Klauder, 1930) was dignified, but it no longer worked.  Many of its contents had been relocated to other libraries on campus, leaving it much too large for the remaining mathematics and statistics collections, and its 84-year-old stacks were unusable because they were inaccessible to people with disabilities.  Meanwhile, the University needed additional offices so its growing faculty could work, study, and meet with students.  Our renovation created five private faculty offices along the existing leaded windows, connected to the library by an access corridor and a book-lined seminar room.  The Math and Statistics Library, filling the remaining double height space, is wrapped in bookshelves and organized around a new wood-clad circulation desk.  Above, suspended lanterns of wood slats bring light down from the existing skylights, warming it and diffusing throughout the space.

Project Data

Area/Budget: 4500sf / $784,000

Scope: 4,500sf renovations to the Math and Statistics Library within the historic classroom building (Klauder, 1930)

Project Team: David Woodhouse, Andy Tinucci (project architect), Ed Blumer, Samantha Spencer

CCJM Engineers (mep); Matrix Engineering (structural); Powers and Sons (general contractor)

Photographer: Mike Schwartz