Yale's new library, a magnificent cathedral-like edifice costing six millions, will rise within the next two years to accommodate, with facilities and equipment equal to the best in the country. Yale's collection of over 1,500,000 volumes, now in the Chittenden Library and Linsly Hall or else scattered about in either the attics or basements of seven nearby buildings. The new library will give a relief which has been needed for many years, the collection having grown from 71,000 books in 1864 to 1,500,000 today.

Predominating in this new structure of Gothic architecture will be the large Book Tower, 192 feet tall and 85 feet square. The massiveness of the tower will be relieved by slender lancet windows medieval ornament and allegorical sculpture. In front of the Book Tower will be the entrance tower, slightly less than half as tall and wide. The entrance will have the shape of a tall carved arch with ornamental iron gates. The beauty of the smaller arch will be greatly enhanced by numerous exquisite stained glass windows.

The entrance hall will have lofty stained glass windows, a massive vaulted roof supported by stone piers, and a testalated pavement. On each side of the entrance will be two undergraduate reading rooms: the Reserved book room containing nearly 40,000 volumes for general use and the Linonia and Brothers' Room with over 30,000 books of general character. The last named room will be, in purpose and use, almost exactly like the Farnsworth Room of Widener Library. This room is planned to be the most beautiful in the building.

A unique feature of the New Sterling Memorial Library will be an open courtyard which is entered through a passageway lending from the rear of the enhance ball. In the courtyard will be a flowing fountain, trees, and cloistered walks.

Complete accommodations will be maintained in the library for 2,000 readers. The general plan is to have the main floor rooms used for those who are acquiring knowledge rather than creating it, while the Book Tower is intended for the creative scholar. In these 22 floors no shelf will be more than seven feet high. In the 50 rooms of the tower there will be over 400 desks where professors, graduate students and visiting scholars may study and keep their books and papers in privacy.

The most adequate and up-to-date equipment and accommodations will be installed. All of the reading rooms will be connected with the more remote stacks by a barrage of pneumatic tubes which will speedily supply any books requested. Since such a large number of Yale's students commute from nearby towns, there will be a so-called "Non-Resident's Room" which will contain thoroughly adequate cloak room facilities, seats, encyclopedias and reference books for 300 students. Adjoining this room will be the Andrews Loan Library, which has about 10,000 textbooks which may be used by self-supporting students. Many self-supporting students will have the opportunity of getting employment on the library's force of several hundred.

The donor of this lasting gift is John William Sterling, a Yale graduate of '64. Six million of the Sterling legacy of $15,000,000 will go to the erection of the library. John Sterling, who died in 1918, was one of New York's most prominent lawyers. His gift to Yale is one of the largest in the history of American colleges. It differs from most gifts in that there are few restrictions, the one specific direction being that there shall be "at least one enduring useful, and beautiful edifice which will constitute a fitting memorial of my gratitude to and affection for my Alma Mater."