A look back: Boatwright Library turns 50
BY JIM GWIN
Collection Librarian
On Nov. 1, 2005, the Frederic William Boatwright Memorial Library turned 50 years old. The official dedication took place Nov. 1, 1955, amid a convocation event in Cannon Memorial Chapel.
Today Boatwright Library is sometimes taken for granted as the center of the University and is certainly the most photographed building on the campus. That has not always been the case. The first library on the 1914 campus was housed in a wing of Ryland Hall. But the University was growing and so were the library collections, and by the 1920s, they needed more room.
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Boatwright Library has served the campus for 50 years. |
Space for library materials was very limited. Books and journals were stuffed into small reading rooms in Maryland, Puryear and Richmond halls and the basement of North Court.
Dr. Boatwright, who had served as president of the University since 1895, was nearing the end of his tenure by the 1940s, and many in the University community were looking for some way to honor him. The original idea for a new library building that would be named for Dr. Boatwright began to take shape among the Baptists of Virginia.
In 1944, a formal committee was appointed by the Baptist General Association to direct a campaign to raise $500,000 for a library to honor Dr. Boatwright for "long and faithful service to Virginia Baptists." Dr. Reuben Alley, editor of The Religious Herald and an alumnus of the University, was appointed chairman of the campaign and convinced a reluctant and characteristically modest Dr. Boatwright to accept the naming of a new library for him.
Dr. Boatwright soon threw himself into the efforts to raise funds for the library, traveling all over Virginia with Dr. Alley at his side. By the 1950s, the cost of the library building had risen to nearly $1 million and funds were very scarce. But through the tireless efforts of the women of the Virginia Baptist Woman's Missionary Union, the gifts from some 730 Baptist churches in Virginia, and the work of countless faculty, staff and members of the Richmond community, funds were eventually raised to complete the library building.
Consisting of some 60,000 square feet, Boatwright Memorial Library included the main library with space for 150,000 volumes and seating for 270 students; a wing housing the Virginia Baptist Historical Society with space for 50,000 volumes and 40 readers; and a ground floor with space for the administrative staff of the University and the president.
Dr. Boatwright died in 1951, not living to see the library that would bear his name. Ground was eventually broken on Feb. 7, 1954, on the hill above Westhampton Lake, with Dr. Boatwright's granddaughters, Frederica and Donna Lynch, doing the honors in the presence of a large number of friends of the University.
In his dedicatory address for Boatwright Library in 1955 in Cannon Memorial Chapel, Dr. Vernon B. Richardson spoke about Dr. Boatwright's belief that the library was central to the University and quoted from one of Dr. Boatwright's talks during the campaign for the new library: "The library is the most vital building in a University. ... the universal laboratory where every student and every teacher does his work. Especially has the library become more important in the last half century as the emphasis in college education has shifted from teaching to learning. The quality of education provided by a college is directly dependent upon its library, and the educational value of an institution will rise or fall as its library is strong or weak."
This article first appeared in Voyages, the newsletter of the Friends of Boatwright Library.
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