My daughter is considering going here so we walked the campus. It’s all weird with Covid but the library building looked old, big, and nice.

As a student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign from 1958 to 1962, I spent as much time in the Main Library as I did in Illini Hall, which housed the Daily Illini. The library triggered by interest in the Civil War while my work at the Daily Illini groomed me for my future career in journalism. With over 13 million volumes, the Main Library is the second largest university library in the United States after Harvard. So I figured there wasn't any subject (battle, general, unit, issue) regarding the Civil War that I couldn't find and read about. I found books by Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton, the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, a four-volume history of the Civil War by the Comte de Paris, the Pulitzer Prize winning four-volume study of R.E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman, Margaret Mitchell's fictional Gone With The Wind, Pickett's Charge by George R. Stewart, From Manassas to Appomattox by General James Longstreet, Harriett Beecher Stowe's two-volume Uncle Tom's Cabin and so many others. Located at 1408 West Gregory Drive, at the south end of the university's Main Quad, the Main Library was built in 1924-1929. The red brick, Georgian Revival building features a three-bay main entrance with limestone archways and a green slate roof with a series of 11 dormers and four tall chimneys. The interior is highlighted by 27 stained glass windows showing Renaissance printer's marks and four murals. In 1969, the underground undergraduate library was constructed to the east of the Main Library. Built around a 72 by 72 foot square central courtyard, the two-story, 9,689-square-foot library has a capacity of 150,000 volumes and seats 1,899. The four-acre complex also includes the University Archives and the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. In 2000, the library was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Among the collections housed within the main stacks are papers of Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg and John Milton.