Henry Hobson Richardson designed Billings Memorial Library in 1883 for the University of Vermont campus in Burlington. Built in 1883 and designed by Henry Hobson Richardson to resemble the Winn Library in Woburn, Massachusetts, this building was donated to the university by Frederick H. Billings of Woodstock. It opened in 1885 and has been a central part of campus life since that moment, yet it has remained architecturally similar to its original appearance despite the university’s growth.
When space ran out, the Guy W. Bailey Library was built in 1961 (now known as the Howe Library), and Billings was converted to a student center in 1963. Later, the Dudley H. Davis Center was completed in 2007 to serve as the university’s new student center. Most recently, an $11.4 million renovation completed in the summer of 2018 returned this most architecturally significant building to academic use, and it now houses academic departments including Special Collections, the Miller Center for Holocaust Studies, and the Humanities.
This building you're facing has worn many hats — library, student center, and now academic home again — since an $11.4 million renovation in 2018.