From the Director: Bancroft's New Building?
Because of the serious deficiencies of the Doe Annex, the building that houses Bancroft (see Bancroftiana, n. 116 [Spring 2001]), last year we commissioned Mark Cavagnero Associates to carry out an architectural study to document Bancroft's current condition and future space needs. In addition to an aging infrastructure, the building is rated seismically poor and is utterly inadequate to house Bancroft's collections. We have been unable to make any net additions to the collections stored on campus since 1980. For every book or carton of manuscript materials we add, we must send one to off-campus storage at the Northern Regional Library Facility in Richmond.
The Cavagnero space study was given added urgency this past summer when Tom Koster, Assistant Vice Chancellor — Capital Budget & Planning, called to tell me that the Office of the President had determined that funds would be made available to start seismic retrofitting in 2004. Within the university's complex system of managing capital projects, 2004 is just around the corner. The call came, fortunately, the day before Bancroft's strategic planning retreat; so we were able to use part of the retreat to map out the issues that we would need to resolve in light of the imminent seismic work.
Because of the urgency of retrofitting the university's infrastructure to make it earthquake proof, the state of California has determined that it will fund only seismic work on existing buildings. "Programmatic enhancements," i.e., renovations or expansions necessary to provide more space or to upgrade existing space, must be funded from other sources.
A tall order. In the first place we had to determine how much money the state would provide for seismic retrofitting of the existing building. At the same time we had to determine how much it would cost to provide the space that the architectural study has shown that we need. Then we would have to find some way of providing the difference between these two sums — and all this within a very tight time frame. In fact, by this summer we must have a formal Project Planning Guide that defines in detail the scope of the project and identifies the source of at least 80% of the funding for it.
Bancroft currently occupies just under two thirds of the Doe Annex building (66,000 of 103,000 "assignable square feet"), with the rest occupied by other library operations, including the offices of University Librarian Tom Leonard. The Cavagnero study has determined that Bancroft needs about twice as much space, approximately 122,000 square feet.
The only way to accommodate this need is to expand the current building. What makes the most sense to us is a three story underground addition directly east of the Doe Annex, exactly similar to the underground stacks for the main library (constructed 1990-1994). The new addition would house the on-campus collections in a state-of-the-art facility with appropriate security mechanisms for both life safety and theft. The current building, then, could be devoted exclusively to public and semi-public space for technical and public services staff, exhibitions, seminar rooms, teaching laboratories, classrooms, offices for visiting scholars, and graduate and undergraduate research groups.
A renovated and expanded Bancroft, by allowing us to integrate research and teaching into the warp and woof of Bancroft programs, would turn Bancroft into one of the intellectual centers of the Berkeley campus, just as it is today the physical center.
Bancroft has three strong research programs that could serve as nuclei and models for similar programs: The Regional Oral History Office, the Mark Twin Project, and the Tebtunis Papyri Project. With adequate space, each of these programs could begin to develop joint research and teaching projects with other academic programs on campus. Thus ROHO could become a Center for Living History; the Mark Twain Project could develop into a Center for the Study of Gilded Age and Progressive-era United States, while the Tebtunis Papyri Project could become the research arm of the Departments of Classics and Near Eastern Studies and the graduate Program in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archeology. Bancroft could then also contemplate serving as a home for the long-contemplated program in the History of the Book.
We still don't know if such an ambitious building project is feasible, either financially or technically. We are currently assessing both areas and expect to have answers later this spring. However, if we are given the green light by campus authorities, and if we can raise the necessary funds, the chronology will look something like this: 2002-2003, selection of an architect and preliminary design work; 2003-2004, completion of working drawings; 2004-2006, construction of underground addition and decanting of Bancroft collections and staff into the new space (Phase I); 2006-2008, seismic upgrade and partial renovation of Doe Annex (Phase II). Phase III, the final renovation of the Doe Annex, would then take place at some as yet undetermined time.
And all of this comes as we are preparing to celebrate the centennial of the University's acquisition of The Bancroft Library in 1905. You will be hearing more about a Centennial Campaign for The Bancroft Library.
Editors Note:
This is an historic edition of Bancroftiana: our first color issue.
This new color printing allows Bancroftiana to showcase many of our photographs, artwork, and other visual materials to full advantage. You can expect more colorful, art-enriched illustrations to appear in future issues.
—Camilla Smith
Volume 20
Spring 2002
Table of Contents
From the Director: Bancroft's New Building?
Students Examine Original Documents
