Hargrove Music Library construction begins

By Cathy Cockrell, Public Affairs

A rendering of the main entrance to the new Hargrove Music Library, as seen from Wurster Hall Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects graphic

16 October 2002 | With the arrival this week of construction trailers and excavation crews on the Arts Quad, work on the long-awaited new home for the campus’s extensive music collections has begun in earnest.

Workers are now in the process of removing truckloads of soil from the site — which occupies the northeast corner of North Field, near Morrison and Kroeber Halls — and will begin work on underground utilities and the building’s foundation next week. The project will continue through next summer, with the completed Hargrove Music Library scheduled to open next fall.

Campus pedestrian traffic will be affected during the coming months, as construction materials are delivered to the worksite. In general, trucks will enter the campus from Gayley Road near Haas School of Business, traveling downhill between Wurster and Minor Halls, near the optometry clinic, and then across the plaza south of Hertz Hall; they will exit onto Bancroft Way via the pathway between the tennis courts and Hearst Gym. A mobile fence will be moved out to occupy part of the pathway during construction work and will be moved back in the evenings. Signs will be posted and flag people will be present to help ensure safety during high-traffic times.

The campus music library currently contains some 160,000 volumes of books and printed music, 45,000 sound and video recordings, and extensive collections of manuscripts, microfilms, and musical instruments — five times more material than it held in the late 1950s, when the department’s current facilities opened. Among its treasures are sketches for a Beethoven string quartet, the original manuscript of Stravinsky’s ballet “Orpheus,” and the only known score of Alessandro Scarlatti’s 1683 opera, “L’Aldimiro,” which received its modern premiere at the 1996 Berkeley Festival.

The new Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library will be a three-story facility. It will include high-tech equipment designed to make its collection of unique manuscripts, scores, and recordings readily available to students and scholars. Bay Area concert pianist and arts patron Jean Hargrove, ’35, donated $4 million for its construction.

For information about the project, contact Christine Shaff, Capital Projects communications manager, at cshaff@cp.berkeley.edu or 643-4793.