It’s made of stones, but I believe it has little to do with fire despite its name. I’m talking about the main library of Princeton University, which is named after Harvey S. Firestone, one of the American industrial tycoons in the early 20th century.
The Firestone Library
This name reminds me of “The Thing” in Fantastic Four, and the molten giants which exist in almost every fantasy genre video games. Casting aside the lava and fire, the library is indeed a massive structure way larger than those rocky guys.
The Firestone Library opened in 1948 as the first large American university library constructed after World War II. In 1971 and 1988, the library building underwent two major expansions. Having more than 110 km (70 miles) of bookshelves, the Firestone Library is one of the largest open-stack libraries in the world.
What’s more staggering, the 110 km of bookshelves contain only microforms and books related to the humanities and social sciences. Collections in other fields of study are housed in other libraries throughout the campus, like Lewis Science Library and Marquand Art Library.
In contrast to the solemn facade of the library and the church in front of it, the color scheme of the interior mainly adopts warm colors with low saturation, exhibiting the elegance expected from the main library of a university.
Though I’m not a librarian, I enjoy working in the Firestone Library. Thanks to the cloud computing resource of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute (PNI), where I work as a research specialist, I can analyze brain imaging data wherever on campus (or off campus via VPN).
Different from my office in the PNI, which I share with three colleagues, the carrels in the Firestone Library offers the solitude I need, especially when I have to compose an analysis script from scratch.
Unfortunately, in the Firestone Library, solitude doesn’t equal to silence. The library is undergoing a comprehensive renovation, so sporadically there would be construction noise. But it’s not that I had a bad luck to start working in Princeton in 2017. Actually, the renovation is a project planned to last for at least a decade, and the university even set up a website dedicated to this on-going project.
According to the site, the project has reached its final phase. In late May 2018, the original front desk was removed, so sadly, visitors who come during this period would be greeted by an unwelcoming construction site.
That said, with a pair of good earplugs, the noise is negligible most of the time. So, on days when I don’t have lab meetings or any other event that requires physical presence, I prefer to work all day in the Firestone Library. However, if my supervisor (Dr. Uri Hasson) reply my mail with a brief sentence like “Drop by and let’s talk in person“, I surely have to take on a rather long trek from the Firestone to the PNI.
The PNI is deep in the campus, whereas the Firestone Library is the closest to the front gate (which is named “FitzRandolph Gate“) among all libraries in Princeton University. After working for a whole morning in the library, it’s delightful to go across the Nassau Street (Route 27) and enjoy a cheap and savory bacon burger (plus seasoned fries, and an episode of anime in my tablet) at 30Burgers.
