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Renovating the Special Place That Is Lilly LIbrary

Lilly Library is one of the oldest and most architecturally significant buildings at Duke, serving more than 1,800 first-year students on East Campus. Unfortunately, it has not been expanded or substantially renovated since it was completed in 1927. While Lilly Library and its staff are popular with first-year students and other library users, the lack of services and adequate study and research space prevents it from fully meeting their academic needs.

Renovating and expanding Lilly would retain the charm of its most beloved spaces, such as the Thomas Reading Room, while at the same time modernizing the aging building structure and adding new spaces for study, collaborative research and crucial services. An added café would become the crossroads for East that von der Heyden is for West, encouraging informal interactions between faculty, graduate students and undergraduates.

A renovated and expanded Lilly would dramatically improve the student experience at Duke. Thee result would be a reinvigorated and better integrated East Campus, with Lilly serving as the focal point for a new academic neighborhood that welcomes first-years and build a foundation for their entire academic career.

Support the Lilly Project: https://library.duke.edu/support

Originally filmed prior to March 2019.