Frederick Law Olmsted just couldn't get UMass trustees to listen a hundred years earlier, when, in 1866, he urged that the campus build small, low buildings, only as many as needed at the time.

Postwar thinking eschewed conformity and a preference for order and embraced instead an architectural pragmatism that favored flexibility and immediacy-or, as the 1961 issue of the Index called it, "simple straight angled functional construction." The trustees had chosen to employ Edward Durrell Stone, one of the best-known architects of the time, because they wanted to make a mark, especially with the university library building. He understood their goals. Stone was indeed one of the stars of midcentury modern architecture, the designer of embassies, corporate headquarters, and New York's Museum of Modern Art (1939). "Now, more than ever before, the Library is the heart of the University," Stone wrote in presenting his plans. "It is also a symbol of the quality of the institution itself. The size, location, and design of the building must honor the role of the Library in the University." 

The building is still serving its intended original use for the university and is a fully functioning library with added study and cafe spaces.

The building and surrounding landscape are in overall good condition with minimal issues on the brick facade that has been addressed at a small scale. Continuous interior renovations and updates have taken place over the years which have modified the aesthetic of the building in different areas. Although these internal modifications have taken place, the exterior of the building still remains close to its original design.

The UMass library conformed to emerging trends in library design, particularly in the decision to create a tower for stacks and office space above a broad floor devoted to user services. The library's expansive main floor is below grade, conserving open space. A courtyard visible through ample glass windows admits light and color to those underground spaces devoted to research and conversation, and is also visible from the plaza above that surrounds it, suggesting a hospitable permeability. The courtyards negative volume offsets the great height of the building, while the surrounding plaza, with bench seating and additional plantings, creates paces for conversation and contemplation.

Location had proven a topic of some debate as planners worked toward the realization of the new library. Sasaki, Dawson, and Demey had recommended three possible sites for the new building. By January 1965, consensus had settled on a site directly behind Goodell Library, but eventually, planners were persuaded a site closer to the current center of campus was preferable.

As forward-looking as the structure was, in the course of the design phase, planners appeared to pull back from their instincts, which initially envisioned limestone, and chose to clad this modernist tower in brick. Stone insisted he was agnostic to the choice of cladding. Writing to President Lederle in 1969, Stone wrote, "I wish I could be more decisive in the choice of the exterior material for our building. In fairness, the design lends itself to either limestone or brick. Therefore, it is a matter of relating it to the existing and future buildings. As the campus exists in its present state, perhaps the brick would be more harmonious. However, you may consider with the advent of the Saarinen building [Kevin Roche's Fine Arts Center] at one end of the open area and the Breuer building at the other [the Campus Center], both of grayish concrete, that the library should harmonize with the new modern buildings on the campus."

In the end, the decision was less about whether the University would project an avant-garde look or a more traditional one. It may simply have been about money. Limestone would have cost close to a million dollars more than brick and would have required removing several floors from the building.

It was the bricks, however, that would detract from an appreciation of the library's many impressive features. The massive piers rising the full height of the building emphasize the building's height, but almost as soon as the building opened, brick fragments began to fall from the tower. In 1979, fearing that the problem was worse than just chipping, the campus administration closed the library for the entire fall semester and 250,000 books were taken back to Goodell, the old college library building. Accusations between architect, engineer, and the building flew-had the architect and engineer failed to account for the weight of the 30-foot stacks of brick when designing the angle irons bolding them in place? Had the engineer failed to calculate the outward pull? Had the builder simply failed to construct the faced well enough? 

Ultimately, the issue was deemed to be minor: a limited number of bricks, at the relieving angles spaced along each side of the library, had been cut back to narrow the mortar joints, thereby making them more susceptible to chipping from the freeze and thaw cycle. The library was reopened before the end of the academic year and years later a campus fund-raising campaign replaced the initial chain-link fence with a more permanent but less obtrusive barrier-but the UMass Amherst library got swept up in the image of a scandal-plagued state procurement system. Unfortunately, the urban legend of bricks regularly falling on students' heads persists. (Other urban legends have accompanied the library, such as one asserting that the architect never accounted for the weight of the books in his designs. That story, in particular, has no basis in fact and is routinely repeated about any number of university libraries.) 

The end result was an icon, visible from miles away, that provided a clear center to the University. The tower was organized with a central core of high-speed elevators and quiet floors with little foot traffic, as is common in low-rise libraries. Students and faculty would be treated to many quiet spaces around the stacks, with spectacular views on all sides, to the Pelham Hills, the Holyoke Range, and the Berkshire Mountains. Like the towers in the Southwest Residential Area, which were intended as a series of stacked "Houses," the library was imagined by Stone as a series of alternating floors, with warehouse floors sandwiched between floors for seminar rooms and carrels for students and faculty in fields related to the nearby books. The plan was never fully implemented, but the uniform appearance from the outside belies a varied set of functions on different floors.

In 1875 the university library consisted of five hundred volumes. When it opened the Du Bois Library was the anchor of a library system of over a million volumes. Today the library consists of eight million books, periodicals, maps, and other collections and has burst the bounds of even this massive structure: a good portion of the UMass library collection lies within the bowels of the Holyoke Range, in a former Col War-era bunker (a 1957 Strategic Air Command facility that, for many visitors, still conjures images from Dr. Strangelove) concealed within Bare Mountain that today serves as the Five Colleg Book Depository. 

Two decades after opening, the trustees were pushed by activist students and faculty to rename the building to date called simply the "tower library." "as we march into the Twenty-First Century," wrote the trustees," we feel that it is time to go beyond the color line and appropriately name the tower library in honor of one of the finest heroes, not only of Massachusetts but of the world - William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. 

Miller, M. R., Page, M. (2013). University of Massachusetts Amherst: An architectural tour.