Lunt Hall: A Second Look at Northwestern's First Library: Weinberg College

Lunt Hall: A Second Look at Northwestern's First Library

old image of Lunt Hall

by Rebecca Lindell

Home to Northwestern mathematicians driven by the same curiosity that inspired Euclid and Archimedes, Lunt Hall retains the classical presence and proportions that drew admiring tributes upon its dedication in 1894. The opening of Lunt signaled a milestone for Northwestern, whose growing size and stature in the late 19th century warranted the construction of its first standalone library.

And what a library it was, for its time. A capacious, light-filled reading room housed more than 100,000 books. A gracious second-floor auditorium seated the entire student population of 500. And the top floor was home to the University Guild, keeper of Northwestern’s most treasured cultural artifacts.

As Northwestern evolved throughout the 20th century, so did Lunt, which would assume a series of identities after being supplanted by Deering Library in 1933: as an administration building in the 1930s, a barracks for naval radio trainees during World War II, and a base for the Naval ROTC in the 1960s.

Lunt’s interior has long since been remade, but its graceful profile and geometric details remain, rendering it an apt domain for today’s Department of Mathematics.

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Lunt Hall anchored the north end of a loose semicircle of buildings that encompassed almost the entirety of Northwestern’s built environment at the time. Its design was influenced by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which inspired a boom in neoclassical architecture.

A portrait of commodities trader and philanthropist Orrington Lunt (1815–1897), one of the founders of Northwestern, overlooks the second-floor stairs. Lunt provided $50,000 (nearly $1.5 million in today’s dollars) toward the cost of the $100,000 building.

Original details, such as this ornate fixture at the foot of Lunt’s gracious stairwell, reflect the sensibility of architect William Augustus Otis (1855–1929), who learned his craft at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Lunt’s reading room still houses thousands of books under its coffered ceiling. Today’s collection covers the gamut of mathematical topics, from asymptotic analysis to commutative ring spectra.

The top floor of Lunt once showcased a variety of treasures, including replicas of classical statuary and a frieze by artist Ida Burgess, noted for her displays at the Columbian Exposition. The space has since been partitioned into offices for the Department of Mathematics.

“The interior of the building is calculated to draw the admiration of all visiting librarians,” a local newspaper declared upon the opening of Lunt. Innovations such as a book lift and speaking tubes connected one floor to another, distinguishing Lunt as “one of the finest, if not the finest, college library in the West.”

Light streams through a Palladian window on the second floor, one of many sources of natural light in a building designed to foster reading and study.

Lunt’s basement has proven to be surprisingly adaptable over the years. It served first as a storage space for books, and then as a dining hall for radio-operator trainees in the 1940s. Today, it features offices for math faculty and a chalkboard for impromptu problem-solving.