Reading Room is refreshed and reopened

On Sept. 3, 2024, Langdell Hall’s iconic Reading Room reopened after being closed since mid-May.
 
While it was closed, the Reading Room – which spans the length of the building at 480 feet (longer than a standard American football field) – was refreshed with a new coat of paint, a deep carpet cleaning, and three new waste stations [more information below]. The room’s massive chandeliers were cleaned, their bulbs changed from incandescent to LED lighting (in line with HLS’ goal of being a green institution), and the ceiling braces were inspected for safety. 

The Reading Room was last renovated in 1996 when the impressive chandeliers – each made of 300 pounds of glass and metal – were installed to improve the lighting in the room. In fact, the room had a history of being one of Harvard’s “poorly lit libraries” mentioned by President Barack Obama (HLS ’91) in his memoir. 
 
The retrofit put into motion a long line of processes that began with consulting an art conservator on how to safely protect the art collection during the project. It was determined the scaffolding could be constructed in a way that allowed the art to remain in place. The bookcases and their contents remained and were covered during the project.

To accomplish this enormous undertaking, a team specializing in building large scale specialized scaffolding was brought in. Throughout the summer, the mammoth staging structures were erected over the existing bookcases, then disassembled and erected again just a few yards away – each time moving slowly and deliberately like animated dinosaurs stepping over buildings as they make their way through a fictional city.

After each scaffold was built, a team of experts from New Hampshire was brought in to retrofit each chandelier. And then the process started again. The project took all summer to complete but the Reading Room has now reopened and is brighter than ever!