Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library sits on Yale University Hewitt Quadrangle in New Haven, Connecticut, completed in 1963 to a design by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in the International Style. Its windowless outer walls of translucent Vermont marble and granite enclose a glass walled central tower of book stacks, giving the reading room a soft amber light while shielding the roughly one million volumes and several million manuscripts inside from direct sunlight. It is among the largest buildings in the world built specifically to hold rare books and manuscripts.