New beginnings for Yale's iconic library, thanks to US$20m donation

New Haven, Connecticut

"FEW works can equal it as a monument of lifelessness and decadence; none can surpass it in extravagance and falsity." Writing in an undergraduate review called The Harkness Hoot in 1930, William Harlan Hale had nothing good to say about the new Sterling Memorial Library, "built at a cost of about US$7 million by Yale University, and safely constructed - alas! - for the ages". Why, he wondered, did Yale insist on a "Girder Gothic" faux cathedral while great minds elsewhere were fashioning a new age of minimalist, transparent, unsentimental architecture?

Time has answered his question.

"To me, it conveys a sense of belonging to this scholarly world," said Marina Filiba, a Yale senior from Buenos Aires who majors in architecture. "I think it was…