The Phillips Exeter Academy Library was designed by Louis Kahn for the private secondary school in Exeter, New Hampshire, and completed in 1971 as one of Kahn's late masterworks. The building's plan places book stacks in a windowless inner concrete ring around a soaring central atrium, reading carrels along an outer brick perimeter lit by tall arched windows, and a circulation zone of stairs and walkways between the two, a layered organization Kahn described as protecting books from direct sunlight while giving readers natural light at the building's edges. The atrium itself rises the full height of the building beneath a skylight, its walls interrupted by large circular openings, cut through diagonal concrete cross-bracing, that give views into the stacks from the open central space. Kahn clad the building's exterior in brick laid with deep, precisely detailed joints, a material choice matching the campus's older Georgian buildings while the interior concrete structure remained frankly modern. The library is widely regarded as one of the finest library buildings of the twentieth century and a defining statement of Kahn's mature architectural philosophy.
Facts
Building Type Completed Year Classification
Standing Status Building Type
Building Type (category) Connections
Has Building Type
Entity-backed identity for the building-type enum value this building already carries, resolved to an architecture concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The building-type fact itself stays on the building unchanged.
In Style
Source Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Wikipedia
Uses Element
Source Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Wikipedia
Source Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Wikipedia
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Wikipedia
Introduction, first sentence
Phillips Exeter Academy Library is a library that serves Phillips Exeter Academy, an independent boarding school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, United States.
Introduction, first sentence (location clause)
Phillips Exeter Academy Library is a library that serves Phillips Exeter Academy, an independent boarding school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, United States.
History section
it was ready for occupancy in 1971
Description section
The library has an almost cubical shape: each of its four sides is 111 feet (33 m) wide and 80 feet (24 m) tall.
- infobox building_type/type field: Secondary school library
Entity description and the lead/infobox of the Wikipedia article
Phillips Exeter Academy Library is a library that serves Phillips Exeter Academy, an independent boarding school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, United States. It is the largest secondary school library in the world, containing 160,000 volumes over nine levels with a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes.
When it became clear in the 1950s that the library had outgrown its existing building, the school initially hired an architect who proposed a traditional design for the new building. Deciding ins
In Style: Modernist Architecture, Wikipedia categories
Category:Modernist architecture in New Hampshire
Uses Element: Brick, Wikipedia lead
The outer ring, which is built of load-bearing brick, includes all four exterior walls and the library carrel desks immediately inside them.
Uses Element: Reinforced Concrete, Wikipedia lead
The outer ring, which is built of load-bearing brick, includes all four exterior walls and the library carrel desks immediately inside them.
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