FOR RELEASE: Immediate, Thursday, October 17, 2002

Brooklyn College Library Opens

BROOKLYN � In a ceremony today, Brooklyn College President Christoph M. Kimmich opened the library after an $84 million expansion and renovation.

The Dormitory Authority provided financing and construction project management services for the project, which took three years to build.

�Libraries have always been personally dear to my heart and psyche,� said Dormitory Authority Executive Director Maryanne Gridley during the ceremony. �They are places where the unknown becomes knowable. They are repositories of facts and figures, endless mini-worlds of theories, ideas and, most importantly, truth.�

The Brooklyn College Library was built in 1937, housed in La Guardia Hall, which was one of the College�s original buildings. An addition was built in 1959, but by the 1990s, the library had outgrown its combined space. There wasn�t enough space to store the collections or to provide seating, and the structure lacked the wiring and other equipment needed to allow students to use the Internet and other, newer technologies. Poor ventilation had damaged some of the library�s collections.

President Kimmich told the New York Daily News that the new library �marries a traditional outside with a state-of-the-art inside� and called the building �simply dazzling.� The renovation kept the integrity of the original Georgian design. Interior space moves from the original building to the 1959 addition and into the new structure without hesitation.

The completed building is now the largest library in the City University System. The size increased by two-thirds and nearly 2,000 seats were added, with group study rooms, grand reading rooms, and smaller study spaces. A computer lab, four multimedia classrooms, network-wired study carrels and a new-media center were added. �There�s nothing in this building I don�t like,� Chief Librarian Barbara Higginbotham said in a published report. �It�s our palace of print.�

Noting that the library�s architecture encourages connection among its patrons, Ms. Gridley said this library is �replicating the mission of a college to enhance discourse and debate and � ultimately � shining light on how we can become more enlightened individuals and members of a global society.�

Ms. Gridley thanked the Brooklyn College staff and CUNY Vice Chancellor for Facilities Management Emma E. Macari and her staff. �The Dormitory Authority is privileged to be the City University�s finance and construction partner since the 1960s.�

Other speakers at the ceremony were Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz; CUNY Chief Operating Officer Allan H. Dobrin; Roy L. Furman, Chairman of the Brooklyn College Foundation; and architect Alexander S. Howe of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott.

Leaders of the Authority�s project team were Managing Director Douglas Van Vleck, CUNY Construction Program Director Michael Kolk, Chief Project Manager Jay Goldstein, Project Manager Eugene Leung and Field Representatives George Tavoulareas, Alexandros Ladias and Sharda Del Rio.

For more information, contact Press Officer Claudia Hutton at (518) 257 3382, or CHutton@dasny.org or visit the Brooklyn College Website at http://www.brooklyn.edu .

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