Johns Hopkins University has announced that work will begin July 10 on a $130 million “transformation” of the six-level Milton S. Eisenhower Library, and that the building will be closed to students and faculty while work is underway.
The Johns Hopkins Club building on the Homewood campus, a three-level dining and meeting facility that has been shuttered since 2021, will be repurposed as a temporary library when the Eisenhower Library closes in July, and other study and research spaces will be available on campus as well.
This is a change from what the university indicated in 2021, when planners said the construction work would be carried out in phases so the Eisenhower library could remain open throughout the renovation period. Officials haven’t said how long the work will take to complete, but an April 2 article in the JHU Hub called it a “multiyear renovation” aimed at making the library “a more modern, accessible and innovative resource for digital and print-based scholarship” at Hopkins.
The Hopkins Club building on Bowman Drive will be the “dedicated library service point’ during construction, according to an interim library service plan outlined in a message sent to students.
Like the Eisenhower library, “this building offers a variety of space configurations that can be differentiated by study preferences: quiet rooms with carrels for individual study and collaborative study areas for those who prefer a more bustling atmosphere,” Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Archives and Museums Elisabeth Long and Homewood Student Affairs Vice Provost Rachelle Hernandez said in a joint email message. “Library services will include book pick-up, course reserves, printing, and research consultations with your liaison librarians,” they added.
Located at 3400 N. Charles Street and named after Hopkins’ eighth president, the Eisenhower library is the largest building in the Sheridan Libraries network at Hopkins and its principal study and research library. It was designed by Wrenn, Lewis and Jencks and opened in 1964. In the planning stages for a decade, the renovation will be the library’s “first large-scale modernization” since it opened.
As the Hub article noted, the 182,000-square-foot building was designed for a different era of research, a time before the internet, the introduction of digital archives, and an increase in the size of the student body. Although the project was initiated to address a need to upgrade the library’s mechanical systems, administrators say, Hopkins is also transforming the interior to bring the building into the 21st century.
“How we study, how we research, and how we do our work as a university is radically different from what it was in 1964,” Hub writer Claire Goudeau quoted Long as saying. “We’re looking to transform MSE into a modern library that meets modern needs.”
The work will involve updating the library’s health, safety and mechanical systems and making improvements for accessibility and sustainability. New spaces will be introduced, including a Digital Scholarship Lab; a Material Collections and Research Center, exhibition areas, an event room and designated graduate student spaces. Quiet and collaborative study spaces will be expanded. Wi-Fi service will be upgraded.
Pfeiffer Partners, a Perkins Eastman Studio, is the architect of record for the renovations. Clark Construction Group is the construction manager. Four of the building’s six levels are underground, and the exterior is not expected to change significantly. The main change will be to the eastern entrance, which faces Charles Street and the sloping lawn known as The Beach. The doors there will be lowered several feet to make the entrance more accessible by eliminating stairs.
Closed since 2021
A longtime dining and gathering spot for Hopkins faculty, alumni and guests, and site for many years of the popular Community Conversations series, the Hopkins Club closed after its lease with the university expired on June 30, 2021. It also was closed during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020.
The club was founded in 1899 and is a corporate entity separate from Johns Hopkins University. Initially located at 706 St. Paul Street, where it opened in 1900, the club later moved to 516 Park Avenue, 227 West Monument Street and Homewood House on the Homewood Campus.
In the 1920s, Hopkins announced plans to convert Homewood House to a museum, and the club was homeless between 1924 and 1937. Using a $50,000 memorial fund from Hopkins trustee Theodore Marburg and his sister Amelia Marburg, the university in 1936 began construction of the current Hopkins Club building and leased it to the club. Wrenn, Lewis and Jencks was the architect, and the three-level building opened in 1937.
According to a letter sent to club members in July of 2021 by the club’s Board of Governors, renovations were needed to upgrade the aging building and “help to ensure the Club’s future.”
A companion fact sheet on the club’s website stated that the club’s lease was not renewed after it expired on June 30 of that year. A new lease will be negotiated with the club’s board “in the future,” the fact sheet stated.
According to a joint fact sheet distributed by the university and the club in 2021: “The University has always owned the building and the Club has been the sole occupant since 1936. The University has identified several significant infrastructure issues with the building that are consistent with an 80-year-old facility. The University has described potential plans to renovate and update the building, which will prevent occupancy until renovations are complete.”
That evaluation led to the decision to end the club’s lease on the building, according to the joint statement.
“In order to plan, fund, and complete renovation of the building, the University would not be in position to honor the long-standing lease with the Club,” it stated. “Accordingly, the University exercised its option to end the [Memorandum of Understanding] and lease of the building to the Club effective July 1, 2021. In the meantime, the Club’s corporate status is not affected and the Club will remain a separate corporate entity as it has always been. Once the renovation is completed, the Club will negotiate a new lease for use of the building.”
The University “is committed to modernizing the building, rendering it an attractive, accessible, and vibrant hub of activity for the entire Johns Hopkins community, including members of the Club,” the joint statement said. “The University will determine the best use of the facility and will seek input from Club leadership as it develops programming and designs plans for the building.”
The building has been closed as a gathering spot since the club’s lease expired in 2021, and the contemplated renovation work has not all been completed. In October of 2021, Alex Cooper Auctioneers organized a sale of much of the contents, including furniture, artwork and numerous items with the Hopkins crest or name on them. The repurposing and reopening of the building as a “library service point” will be the first time it has been occupied in three years.
‘One-stop’ location
According to Director of Media Relations Jill Rosen, Hopkins’ Sheridan Libraries division maintains a high-density service facility in Laurel, Maryland, and that’s where the majority of its collection has been housed since 2010. She said the Laurel facility will continue to house and service books during the renovation.
Rosen said the Hopkins Club building will receive minor finish upgrades and relocated furniture, and will serve as the one-stop on-campus location for core library services and student study space starting in July. Asked about plans for the Hopkins Club building after the Eisenhower library renovation is complete, she said she did not have further details.
In a recent email message to The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, Hopkins Club president Christopher Dreisbach expressed hope that the club will be able to return to the building once renovations there are complete.
“The gathering spot – the Club building – has been taken offline temporarily given the need for major renovations,” the News-Letter reported Dreisbach as saying. University President Ron Daniels “told me that the study spaces in the Club building would be temporary and would not affect the eventual renovation of the building or the Club’s opportunity to be a tenant in the building once it has reopened.”
Other available spaces
In addition to the repurposed Hopkins Club building, the university’s interim library service plan identifies several other campus buildings that will be available as replacement study space and for other library-related needs. “We’re closing the building, but not our library,” Hopkins’ website states.
Brody Learning Commons, south of the Eisenhower library, will remain open with access to Special Collections, the quiet reading room, group study rooms, printers and the Brody Café.
The Hutzler Reading Room in Gilman Hall will remain open, and reference collections for Classics, History of Art and Near Eastern Studies will be moved there. The reading room will gain more book shelves, a teaching space and a reservable seminar table for classes that need access to these reference collections.
Hodson Hall will be outfitted with various seating options to create new study spaces in the reading room and lobby areas throughout the building. More tables will be added to the outdoor terrace for studying outside in warm weather. The third-floor boardroom will be dedicated to graduate student study and will provide a preview of the graduate space planned as part of the Eisenhower Library renovations.
Other major projects
The Eisenhower library renovation is one of several major projects underway on the Homewood campus. Others include a $100 million headquarters for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute on Wyman Park Drive, targeted to open later this year; a $250 million Hopkins Student Center under construction on Charles Street and targeted to open in 2025, and ongoing renovations to the former Baltimore Marine Hospital on Wyman Park Drive, now called the Wyman Park Building and designed to contain faculty offices and meeting spaces.
In the design stage is a two-building, 500,000-square-foot Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Instituteplanned for the intersection of Remington Avenue and Wyman Park Drive, with ZGF Architects as the architect and Olin as the landscape architect. These projects follow last year’s opening of the $647.5 million Hopkins Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D. C.
Administrators say the Eisenhower library will remain fully open and operational for the rest of the spring semester and a student-curated exhibit and other activities are planned to mark the Eisenhower library’s 60th anniversary.
Hopkins has scheduled a Student Town Hall with Dean Long for anyone seeking information about library services during the Eisenhower library renovation. It will take place in the Clipper Room of Shriver Hall on April 24 at 5 p.m. and will be viewable on Zoom at https://jh.zoom.us/j/96853306615.
