Projects by Name

Breuer’s office began working on the comprehensive plan for Saint John’s Abbey and University Complex in May of 1953. The library, designed by Breuer and his associate, Hamilton Smith, faced the monumental abbey and campanile across a plaza, it’s rectangular façade intentionally muted so as not to compete with the church. The façade of the two-storey, reinforced concrete building consisted of a series of bays. The lower half of each bay consisted of granite panels separated by vertical windows. Breuer and Smith shielded the larger windows of the upper half with sunscreens of terracotta flue tiles like those used at Hunter College. Stacks filled the basement. More book shelves flanked patron tables on the lower level, which also contained spaces for rare books and other special collection materials along with audio-visual screening rooms. Mezzanine areas contained projection rooms, a bindery and processing spaces. Offices and seminar rooms lined one side of the large reading room on the upper floor whose focal point was the branching, reinforced concrete pillars resembling trees that supported the roof and served as utility conduits. The library was completed in 1966, but Hamilton Smith designed an addition known as the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, Bush Center in 1974.