UNIVERSITY" ARCHIVES 
 
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 WfyUs 
 
 University of California Berkeley 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 BERKELEY 
 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 1915 
 
DONOR OF THE BUILDING 
 
 CHARLES FRANKLIN DOE, whose gift of three- 
 quarters of a million dollars rendered the con- 
 struction of the new library building for the 
 University of California a possibility, was born 
 at Parsonsfield, Maine, August 13, 1833. He was 
 descended from a typical New England family, 
 the youngest of a family of twelve, and of deli- 
 cate constitution from his childhood. Ill-health 
 prevented his success as a teacher in his home 
 town, and as a carpenter and builder in Boston. 
 It was therefore a blessing to him that in 1857 
 he could join his brothers Bartlett and John Doe, 
 who had gone to California in 1850. Here he 
 found a congenial climate and recovered his 
 health sufficiently to attain the front rank among 
 the business men of San Francisco. He first 
 allied himself with his brothers in a sash, door, 
 and blind manufactory, afterwards forming a 
 partnership with James Knowland in the .retail 
 lumber business. In these ventures and through 
 careful investments in city real estate he built up 
 a fortune of several million dollars. 
 
 There was nothing spectacular about his suc- 
 cess. He conserved his health, doing always "a 
 quiet, honest business/ 7 Mr. Doe was regular in 
 his habits, shy and retiring and had few intimate 
 friends. In this he was strongly in contrast with 
 his brother Bartlett, who was a man of very 
 positive qualities. This shyness was especially 
 marked in the presence of women, which ex- 
 plains the fact that he remained a bachelor 
 throughout his life. Yet he was an ardent lover 
 of children and deeply interested in their welfare, 
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as the list of his benefactions testifies. A Uni- 
 versalist in religion, he was indiscriminate in his 
 gifts to institutions for the protection and care 
 of children those of all creeds sharing equally. 
 The gift of twenty-four per cent of his prop- 
 erty to the University of California for a library 
 building was the result of an idea that had de- 
 veloped during the last years of his life. In this 
 plan he was advised and guided by his friend, 
 H. B. Phillips. He often said that five hundred 
 thousand dollars was enough for any one man, the 
 remainder belonging to the state. Holding these 
 views, his gift to the University would have been 
 more generous had it not been for a state law 
 restricting the percentage of his fortune a man 
 might bequeath to institutions. At any rate the 
 amount donated has sufficed to erect a monument 
 to his name, not only lovely from an esthetic 
 viewpoint, but also a center of spiritual activity 
 of unceasing beneficence. It is no source of 
 wonder that one to whom books were the chief 
 happiness and relaxation should have seized upon 
 the opportunity to create a great library and 
 valued that fact as the crowning event of his 
 life. His death occurred in 1904. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF THE BUILDING 
 
 Doe bequest, 1904. 
 
 Cornerstone laid, Thanksgiving Day, 1908. 
 
 Library opened in June, 1911. 
 
 Architecture: Classic, a mingling of Corinthian 
 and Ionic, with red tiled roof. 
 
 Framework : Steel incased in concrete. The whole 
 building is fireproof. Doors, sashes and stacks 
 of metal. The main doors are of massive 
 bronze. 
 
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Dimensions: Width, east and west front, 226 feet; 
 height, 60 feet. Length, north and south, 263 
 feet. 
 
 Plan : Square court, used as stack-room, surrounded 
 by various reading rooms, seminar rooms, de- 
 livery hall, etc. 
 
 Materials: The exterior is of California granite, 
 the main vestibule and staircase of white 
 Italian marble. The delivery hall is paneled 
 in arches of caen stone, buff-tinted. The read- 
 ing-room is finished in similar manner, but 
 with rectangular paneling, the vaulted ceiling 
 being ornamented with panels containing cen- 
 ters of conventionalized blossoms in high 
 relief. The walls of the other rooms are fin- 
 ished in neutral tinted plaster, and all floors 
 are covered with battleship linoleum. 
 
 Lighting: The reading-room and delivery hall are 
 lighted during the day by large windows and 
 skylights, and at night by ceiling lights. In 
 addition, the reading-room tables are provided 
 with electric lamps, bronze standards with two 
 lights each. Ordinary electroliers and desk 
 lamps are used in the other rooms. 
 
 Delivery Hall: 28x134 feet; opens into reading- 
 room and stack; contains a massive marble 
 and bronze loan desk. The delivery hall is the 
 center of activities and houses the catalogues 
 of the library proper (west end), and the 
 bibliographical catalogues formed from the 
 cards of the Library of Congress and other 
 institutions (east end). At the east end are 
 also cases containing athletic trophies and col- 
 lections of rare coins, etc. 
 
 'Reading -room: 53 feet wide and 210 long, 40 feet 
 in height; lighted by skylights and great win- 
 dows on the north, east, and west sides; con- 
 tains thirty-five reading tables, capable of ac- 
 commodating over five hundred readers. Around 
 the walls are steel cases in which are shelved 
 a reference collection of about 15,000 volumes, 
 special reading cases being provided in the 
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center of the room for general reference books 
 and atlases. A reference desk of carved and 
 paneled oak is at the entrance to the room 
 facing the loan desk. 
 
 tack: 104 feet long by 43 feet wide, and five 
 decks each IVz feet in height; the shelving 
 is of pressed steel, capable of accommodat- 
 ing about 375,000 volumes. The stack is 
 lighted from the rear by windows looking out 
 on an open court. A wide aisle permits the 
 placing of small tables for the use of profes- 
 sors and research workers who have stack 
 privileges. An electric elevator, automatic 
 book-lift and telephone system contribute to 
 rapid service. Provision for the addition of 
 four stories to the present stack and for 
 further extension into the court as need re- 
 quires is made in the plans. 
 
 Administrative Offices: Librarian's office (13x14 
 feet) ; associate librarian ? s office (15 x 21 
 feet); catalogue department (30x30 feet); 
 accessions department (two rooms, each 15 x 
 30 feet). An electric freight elevator connects 
 the accessions department with the basement 
 and with the ground floor. 
 
 Periodical Boom: 88 x 61 feet, on the ground floor 
 at the right of the entrance. Lighted by north 
 and west windows. Contains a two-story stack 
 for bound periodicals and wall cases for cur- 
 rent numbers. Capacity of shelves about 
 50,000 volumes. Seating capacity, 120. 
 
 Bancroft Library: Opposite the periodical room 
 and of the same dimensions is the room in 
 which the Bancroft collection of Pacific coast 
 literature is installed. This room also con- 
 tains a two-story stack capable of accommo- 
 dating about 50,000 volumes. The office of 
 the curator connects with the Bancroft library. 
 This contains filing cabinets and steel cases 
 for manuscripts and the more valuable bound 
 volumes. 
 
 Seminar rooms and special libraries : On the ground 
 floor, a corridor runs around three sides of the 
 quadrangle of the Library, upon which open 
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the rooms devoted to special collections and 
 seminar rooms for the different departments 
 of instruction. There are thirty-five of these 
 rooms, varying in size from 15x15 feet to 
 30x30 feet. Certain of these not used for 
 seminar rooms are used for special purposes, 
 e.g., University archives (1-2), University 
 Press (4), staff room, men (14), staff room, 
 women (24-26), maps and charts (28), library 
 school (30-33). Two cloak-rooms are also pro- 
 vided at the sides of the main staircase. 
 
 Architect: John Galen Howard, the architect of 
 the Doe Library, has been Professor of Archi- 
 tecture and supervising architect of the Uni- 
 versity of California since 1901. Under his 
 direction the permanent plans for the build- 
 ings of the University as proposed by Monsieur 
 Benard, the winner of the first prize in the 
 Hearst competition, are being developed. The 
 fact that Mr. Howard was the winner of the 
 fourth prize in the competition renders his 
 appointment as the University architect par- 
 ticularly appropriate. Mr. Howard studied 
 under H. H. Eichardson, McKim, Mead, and 
 White, ^and at the ticole des Beaux Arts, and 
 has designed many important buildings in the 
 United States. 
 
 Furniture, chairs, desks, lamps, etc.: Designed in 
 the main by J. H. P. Atkins, of the firm of 
 Vickery, Atkins and Torrey, San Francisco. 
 Catalogue cases and wooden furniture mainly 
 supplied by a San Francisco firm, A. J. Forbes 
 and Sons. 
 
 Heating and Ventilation: The Library is supplied 
 with heat from the central power plant, and 
 the main rooms are supplied with air thor- 
 oughly purified by an air-washing plant in- 
 stalled in the basement. 
 
 Catalogues and Classification : The Library is class- 
 ified according to a system devised by Mr. J. 
 C. Rowell, the Librarian. Certain classes 
 (history, political and social sciences), how- 
 ever, are now being reclassified according to 
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the system in use at the Library of Congress. 
 A new catalogue on the dictionary principle is 
 also being developed. About 20,000 volumes 
 have been reclassified and 70,000 cards filed 
 in the new catalogue. In addition to the cata- 
 logues of the library proper there is a biblio- 
 graphic catalogue of the catalogue cards of all 
 American libraries at present printing cards. 
 This numbers approximately 1,000,000 cards. 
 The Library of Congress cards, of course, 
 form the bulk of this collection, although 
 about 200,000 cards have been supplied by the 
 printed cards of Harvard University Library, 
 John Crerar Library, University of Chicago 
 Library, and the Royal Library at Berlin. 
 
 General Statistics: 
 
 Number of volumes in the Library: 
 
 about 300,000 
 
 Number of yearly accessions (average) 20,000 
 Number of serials currently received.. 6,000 
 Number of volumes in Beading-room: 
 
 about 15,000 
 
 Number of volumes in Bancroft 
 
 Library: about 60,000 
 
 Number of manuscripts in Bancroft 
 
 Library: about 100,000 
 
 Use of library (statistics for 1914) : 
 
 Day use 144,248 
 
 Home use 67,514 
 
 Overnight use 6,058 
 
 Total 217,820 
 
 Library staff: Librarian, associate librarian, 5 
 department heads, 14 senior assistants, 12 
 junior assistants, 7 attendants, etc.; total 40, 
 exclusive of student service. 
 
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