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Date: October 1, 1997
Expanded Woolworth Center, Scheide Music Library to Give Musicians More Space
Use of light creates exciting building
Princeton, N.J. -- Princeton's Department of Music will gain space and a new library this month when the University rededicates an expanded Woolworth Center for Musical Studies and dedicates the Scheide Music Library on October 17.
The dedication, which starts with a 3:30 p.m. reception and follows with a 4:15 p.m. ceremony, marks the completion of the two-year project, which has increased available space for music students and faculty by 75 percent. The project's total cost will be $11.5 million, an amount that includes funds for outfitting studios, creating "smart" classrooms, acquiring state-of-the-art audio and video equipment and software.
"For the first time, we have everything -- carrels, a listening room, reading room, video viewing area, graduate seminar room and library under one roof," said Paul Lansky, professor of music and department chair.
The new Woolworth is distinguished by its design, which is the work of Juan Navarro Baldeweg of Madrid, with drawings and specifications implemented by Wank Adams Slavin of New York City. The new center is bathed in "vast amounts of natural light," Lansky said. "You walk into an atrium illuminated by huge skylights. You can see the three floors of the library on one side enclosed in glass, the classroom wing on the other side and the administrative offices above."
According to Lansky, the department aimed to provide "spaces for social interaction and discussion, which are important to the creation and study of music." The department chair declared that the new center "will be the most exciting and original building on campus."
Michael Keller, director of Stanford University Libraries, was the library consultant. Carl Rosenberg of Acentech of Cambridge, Mass., served as acoustic consultant. Rosenberg helped in the design of the new McAlpin Rehearsal Hall, located underneath the library, and the new music technology studios.
The Scheide Music Library represents the largest portion of the expansion. Before the library's completion, holdings of the Department of Music were housed in Firestone Library. The new music library holds 30,000 books, 35,000 scores, 4,500 selections on microfilm and 46,000 recordings, in addition to expanding selections on video and CD-ROM.
The original Woolworth Center was built in 1963 and named for Frank Winfield Woolworth, the discount-store founder and grandfather of
Frasier Winfield McCann, Class of 1930. McCann and his sister, Helena McCann Charlton, donated funds to build the center. The building held the sound library, practice rooms and some faculty and administrative offices. In addition to the department's collection of books and music, Firestone Library housed musicology seminars and some faculty offices.
The new Scheide Music Library is named for William H. Scheide '36, a leading expert on Johann Sebastian Bach and owner of the Scheide Library, one of the world's preeminent collections of rare books and manuscripts, which is housed in Firestone Library. Established in the 1860s by Scheide's grandfather, this library has some 3,000 volumes, including a Gutenberg Bible, a 1456 Papal bull, a 14th-century Magna Carta and a first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost.
In 1946, as a way to bring more of Bach's works to the public, Scheide founded the Bach Aria Group in New York, a chamber ensemble with both vocalists and instrumentalists that made numerous recordings and performed regularly on radio and on tour. Scheide personally managed the group before retiring in 1980.
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