Andrews Study Room in Sterling Library will close June 18 for renovation

The Andrews Study Room in Sterling Memorial Library will close to library users at end of day on Wednesday, June 18, for refurbishment. The project, to be completed by late August, will include new paint and lighting, replacement of damaged flooring, and refinishing and reupholstering of the room’s well-worn furniture. 

Andrews is among the smaller and least known—even to students—reading rooms in Sterling Library. It occupies Room 215, which was designated as the English Study Room when the library opened in 1931. In keeping with the room’s original focus, the stained glass windows are decorated with scenes from scenes from works of English literature, including “Oliver Twist,” “Vanity Fair, ” and “Gulliver’s Travels.” 

Today, the room is named for a collection of books once owned by Charles McLean Andrews, a historian of early America who taught at Yale from 1910 to 1931. He served as professor emeritus until his death in 1943. The Charles McLean Andrews papers, documenting his personal and professional life, are in Yale Library Special Collections. 

With its worn furniture and looming shelves topped by frowning busts, the room “is not for the faint of heart,” according to one student.  “Yet, despite its intensity, Andrews is oddly comforting,” Baala Shakya ’28 wrote in a recent “Yale Daily News” article that ranked Andrews No. 2 among 13 Sterling Library study spaces. “The couches are temptingly plush, and the wooden tables, the flickering lamps, the musty scent of old books feels somehow novelistic—like the place where great ideas are born.”    

The renovation, to be completed by late August, is an element of Sterling 2031, a multiyear initiative to rethink and revitalize the library’s iconic spaces in preparation for the building’s centennial and to support evolving modes of research, teaching, learning, and community.

Learn more about the windows in the 1931 Yale Library Gazette. See all Yale Library study spaces.

—Patricia Carey

Photos by Beth Cunningham and Grace O’Brien