I   Michael Stoller
 

Though it did not gather all or even most of
die library system's many reading rooms
under one roof, as Williamson had hoped, the
public and staff spaces were arranged to
accommodate the efficient operations that
had been impossible in Low.

There was mtich excitement at Columbia
upon the opening of South Hall. Guests came
from all over the world for the dedication,
where Mr. John Buchan, British publicist and
MP for the Scottish universities, delivered a
stirring oration on the \alue of great libraries.
The Department of Buildings and Grounds
hii'ed twent\'-lwo cleaners to maintain the
building's public rooms and corridors, and a
ftiU-time electrician and two plumbers were
devoted to the building.--' But Williamson
could not have avoided some disappointment
at the compi'omises built into his new library.
Its architecture didn't meet with rave
reviews. Even the special issue of Alumni Nexus
published to celebrate the building's dedica¬
tion is filled with impressive facts but quite
devoid of the adulation cjue might expect.
Indeed simple words of praise are difficult
 

to find. Within hardly more than a decade
there was discussion of altering the building's
layout, and detailed plans for its complete
redesign were drawn up Ibr the first dme
in 1969.-"'

South Hall was a state-of-the-art library
building when it opened in the fall of 1934. Its
pneiunatic tubes and con\e\'or belts, its air-
conditioned book stack, its non-glare lighting
were all the finest technology available at the
time. Williamson could not ha\e known how
soon all of these wonders would become obso¬
lete—how the advent of browsable stacks
would render the pneumatic tubes and
conveyor belts useless, how the growing pollu¬
tion of New York's air wotild overwhelm the
stack air-conditioning, how the building's
corridors and reading rooms would come to
seem dark and gloomy by modern standards.
But from time to time Williamson's eye must
have wandered north to University Hall, which
remained unfinished long after his retire¬
ment, and he must occasionally have regretted
the compromises and fiscal realities that had
given birth to South Hall.