Baker Memorial Library

Coordinates: 43°42′18″N 72°17′21″W / 43.705°N 72.28917°W / 43.705; -72.28917

Fisher Ames Baker Memorial Library is the main library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The fresco, The Epic of American Civilization, was painted by José Clemente Orozco in the lower level of Baker Library. Baker's tower, designed after Independence Hall in Philadelphia, stands 200 feet above campus and is often used as an iconic representation of the college.

Baker Library opened in 1928 with a collection of 240,000 volumes. The building was designed by Jens Frederick Larson, modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and funded by a gift to Dartmouth College by George Fisher Baker in memory of his uncle (Fisher Ames Baker, Dartmouth class of 1859). The facility was expanded in 1941 and 1957–1958 and received its one millionth volume in 1970.

In 1992, John Berry and the Baker family donated US $30 million for the construction of a new facility adjoining the Baker Library. In 2000 the Berry Library, designed by architect Robert Venturi, opened. The Dartmouth College libraries presently hold over 2 million volumes in their collections.

  • Section, Dartmouth mural (1932–1934)

  • Departure of Quetzalcoatl, Dartmouth mural

  • Gods of the Modern World, Dartmouth mural

Famous quotes containing the words baker, memorial and/or library:

    “OUR WORLD IS TOPPLING. AFFECTIONATELY YOURS.”
    —Josephine Baker (1906–1975)

    “I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
    —Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    “It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn’t.”
    —Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)