The Book Brigadeby Anita Cirulis

The line of students and faculty snaked into the main entrance of Zwemer Hall, up the steps to the building’s second and third floors, down the back fire escape, over to the newly constructed Ramaker Library—and back to Zwemer Hall.

The wooden pop bottle crates they carried as they left Zwemer were full of books; those same crates were empty on the return trip to Zwemer. And so it was, on a winter day in February 1964, that the entire contents of Northwestern’s library were moved from Zwemer to their new home.

“We did it in one day, but we didn’t have too many books back then,” quips Virg Muilenburg ’62, who was in his first year of teaching biology at NWC.

After 47 years, memories are fuzzy regarding how long the transfer of books took or how many people helped. Helen Van Wechel, the head librarian, planned the effort. Dave Van Engelenhoven ’65, the student body president, recruited the volunteers.

“Classes were canceled,” Van Engelenhoven says. “We didn’t have a lack of person-power, even though the great majority of students at that time were commuters.”

The ready availability of volunteers probably stemmed from their eagerness to begin using the new library. Van Engelenhoven remembers the old library in Zwemer being “very cramped, with almost more books than could fit in the space and not much study area at all.”

Ramaker Library, built for $357,000, was designed to hold 100,000 volumes and provide seating for 250 students. Groundbreaking for the 29,000-square-foot building took place during Homecoming on Oct. 13, 1962. It was opened for use on Feb. 17, 1964—just four days after the book brigade filled its shelves.

“It was a night-and-day difference,” remembers Van Engelenhoven. “Here was this beautiful new building with all the windows on the north side and way more space than it seemed to need at that point and all kinds of study areas. It was a big deal. It was seen as a huge improvement to the campus.”

Among those celebrating Ramaker’s opening was Dr. Sylvio Scorza, a member of Northwestern’s religion faculty. Rendered a paraplegic after a car accident, he had been unable to use the library in Zwemer because of its location two stories above the ground floor.

Ramaker Library, by contrast, had a ramp leading to the front entrance and an elevator to book stacks on the second floor, making the library fully accessible—and filling Scorza with one emotion as he watched the books being carried into their new home: joy.