Robarts Library - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Robarts Library is thought to be the model for the secret library in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Eco spent much of the time writing the novel at the University of Toronto, and the stairwell of the secret library bears a particularly strong resemblance to that in Robarts Library.

The library was featured in the episode "The One Where Joey Speaks French" of the popular television series Friends. Robarts Library is shown briefly during a scene transition and is implied to be the outdoor view of an unknown New York hospital where actress Jennifer Aniston's character Rachel visits her father, who has just suffered a heart attack.

The library was also shown in an episode of Sliders titled "El Sid". It is shown briefly as a still visual after a commercial break, in an episode where the story takes place in an alternate San Francisco that has become a giant prison. It was also seen during a slide transition during the season finale of The Amazing Race 8. The Bransen Family were running past it after finishing a Detour (a game task) at the nearby Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.

Robarts was used for exterior shots of the prison setting in Resident Evil: Afterlife. The entire building is visible numerous times, having been digitally edited and transplanted from its downtown Toronto location to Los Angeles. In the film, it has been surrounded by a prison wall and hundreds of thousands of zombies. While the exterior retains its triangular shape, the interior is rectangular.