You are here

Vermont » Addison County » Middlebury » Axinn Center at Starr Library

Axinn Center at Starr Library

-A A +A
1898–1900, 1927, York and Sawyer; 2005–2008 addition, Childs, Bertman, Tseckares South end of front campus

One of the first independent commissions of the prominent Beaux-Arts firm of York and Sawyer, Starr Library was modeled on small libraries then being designed by their parent firm, McKim, Mead and White. The selection of their design over a competing Romanesque Revival alternative marks the college's commitment to classical and City Beautiful principles that would dominate campus development for the next half century. Along with a change in material from local limestone to more formal Vermont marble, the choice of this fashionable aesthetic embodies the college's determination to reposition itself from a regional to a national institution. Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott modernized the library's classicism with their International Style reading room addition in 1959–1962. It was superseded as the college library in 2004 (AD30.4) and adapted for academic uses by Childs, Bertman, Tseckares of Boston with the restoration of its historic spaces and the addition of a rear winter garden, joining office wings scaled to Old Stone Row.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson
×

Data

What's Nearby

Old Chapel
Painter Hall
Davis Family Library
Middlebury College
Center for the Arts

Citation

Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson, "Axinn Center at Starr Library", [Middlebury, Vermont], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VT-01-AD30.3.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Vermont

Buildings of Vermont, Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 126-126.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,