The Rauner Special Collections Library, housed in Webster Hall, is the primary special collections and archival library of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The library holds 140,000 rare books, millions of manuscripts, and the archives of Dartmouth College. It is named for former Illinois governor Bruce Rauner and his wife Diana, who partially funded the library's construction.
The original building was designed by Charles A. Rich and named for statesman and Dartmouth alum Daniel Webster. It was constructed in 1907 and served as the college's primary campus auditorium for the first half of the 20th century, hosting commencement ceremonies, guest speakers, and musical performances. After the opening of the Hopkins Center for the Arts in 1962, the building saw less frequent use as an auditorium. Plans to renovate and convert the building into a special collections library were developed in the 1990s, with Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates serving as the lead architects. Conversion work began in 1997 after the Rauners' donation, and the library opened in 1998.
The building features a red brick facade with terracotta cornices and limestone trimmings. The entrance features a portico with limestone Corinthian columns. Inside the building is a central reading room surrounded by a mezzanine converted from the original auditorium's balcony seating. At the northern end of the reading room is a four-story glass enclosure storing many of the library's rare books, and underneath the building is a series of underground stacks. The library has of stacks in total.
History Planning and construction of Webster Hall In 1893, Dartmouth president William Jewett Tucker developed an initiative for the expansion of Dartmouth's campus. Architect Charles A. Rich, himself a Dartmouth alum, presented the first master plan for the expansion shortly after Tucker's inauguration in February 1893.Meacham, Scott B. "'The Shaping Hand Was at All Points the Same': Charles Alonzo Rich Builds the New Dartmouth ," Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, April 1998, Vol. XXXVIII(NS) No. 2, ISSN 0011-6750. Retrieved February 15, 2026. Although no records of this original plan have survived, it was described as featuring "efficiency, beauty and an almost hygienic separation of uses into distinct buildings."
On June 8, 1894, the Trustees of Dartmouth College approved the construction of part of Rich's plans, which included a plan to construct a quadrangle north of the Dartmouth Green.Cronenwett, Philip N. "'The Transformation of Webster Hall' ," Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, April 1998, Vol. XXXVIII(NS) No. 2, ISSN 0011-6750. Retrieved June 22, 2026. The location was chosen at the advice of landscape architect Charles Eliot, who argued that the alternative area for expansion, to the east of the Green along College Park, would have been costly due to the need for grading and would have damaged the campus' natural beauty. At the time, the chosen location was occupied by residential properties. The college began purchasing the properties to make way for the development, and a new area for residential development was made available along Occom Ridge to the north to compensate.
Rich published the design for the quadrangle in August 1895. The plan included the first design for what would become Webster Hall at the corner of Wentworth and College Streets. The original design was to serve as a memorial hall for alumni and featured an ornate dome. President Tucker had sent out a brochure to alumni requesting donations to fund the memorial hall. The quadrangle scheme was later reworked, however, and the Trustees approved a new design for the memorial hall, again published by Rich, in May 1901.
The building broke ground as Webster Hall, named after Daniel Webster,Cronenwett, Philip N. "'The Growth of Special Collections' ," Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, November 2000, Vol. XLI(NS) No. 1, ISSN 0011-6750. Retrieved February 15, 2026. in September 1901, during a series of special events celebrating the centennial of Webster's graduation from the college. As described by Frank Sherman Streeter, then the chair of the Trustees' building committee, the building was planned to house administrative offices as well as a hall preserving "all that will keep fresh in the general mind the romantic beginnings of the College, her splendid history, and the fine achievements of her more illustrious sons in the work of the world." However, work on Webster Hall was suspended in 1904 after a fire destroyed Dartmouth Hall, leading all available funds to be redirected to its reconstruction, and Webster Hall's construction did not resume until Dartmouth alum Stephen Crosby donated $50,000 to its completion. The project's total cost was later capped at $116,000 (equivalent to $ in ), with a $5,000 appropriation added in 1907 for seating. The building's bronze doors were also donated in 1907 by alum John Weyman Jones as a memorial to the class of 1841.
Operations as Webster Hall Early use as campus auditorium
Webster Hall hosted the opening of Dartmouth's 139th academic year on September 26, 1907. The building had its formal opening ceremony on October 18, 1907, during which President Tucker gave the opening address and dedication in the building's auditorium to an audience of 1,700, including students and alumni. At opening, the auditorium was decorated with portraits of significant Dartmouth alums and tablets displaying artifacts significant to Dartmouth's history, and the hall's apse displayed a mahogany desk once owned by Daniel Webster.
Webster Hall went on to host the college's commencement ceremonies from 1908 to 1931. Due to New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation presidential primary, the hall also held debates among presidential candidates. Other notable speakers and performers include lawyer and orator William Jennings Bryan, who gave an anti-evolutionist address at the hall in December 1923, pianist and composer George Gershwin, who performed there in January 1926 alongside Paul Whiteman's Orchestra, and poet Robert Frost, who gave a series of lectures and poetry readings at Webster Hall during the 1930s and 1940s. The hall was also the site of a significant student protest when Alabama governor George Wallace gave a speech there on May 3, 1967. Wallace spoke to a full audience of 1,400 in the hall in addition to 1,000 bystanders listening from outside the hall. During his speech, members of Dartmouth's Students for a Democratic Society and Afro-American Society began booing and shouting over Wallace before staging a walkout. Shortly after, students listening from outside the hall broke past police barriers and stormed the center aisle. As Wallace was rushed out of the hall, students gathered around his car, pounding it and throwing rocks at it.
Even as it continued to host events for much of the 20th century, demand increased by the late 1930s for a larger auditorium to replace Webster Hall. In December 1938, the President and Trustees proposed a new auditorium to be built once the necessary funds were available. However, in 1939, The Dartmouth reported that these plans would potentially be delayed as a result of World War II. A new stage was installed in the building in 1941, and, after the Nugget Theater in Hanover burned down in 1944, the hall was renovated to be able to serve as a screening venue for use by the Theater. A projection booth was installed in addition to concrete exit stairs on the east and west sides of the building. The Nugget's films continued to be screened in Webster Hall until 1951, when the theater moved back into a location in downtown Hanover.
Decline and alternative uses Webster Hall experienced less use as a performance hall after the opening of the Hopkins Center for the Arts in 1962. The facade was crumbling by 1970 and was repaired that year, with temporary staging being used to prevent debris from falling on passersby. That same year, The Dartmouth characterized the building as a "white elephant". In 1976, the Facilities Planning Board authorized a study on potential uses for the building, including one option to convert it to a student center. College President John G. Kemeny stated at the time that "having [Webster Hall] used only ten times a year as an auditorium is a waste of one of the most central buildings on campus." A committee was then established in 1978 to study potential uses for the building. Suggestions included converting it into classrooms or lecture halls. The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine noted, however, that, because the building was designed as an auditorium, heating, egress, and the addition of floors could serve as challenges for a conversion. By 1980, a renovation plan originally proposed in 1962 was further delayed, and another plan to convert the building to a social sciences center was abandoned in favor of the construction of the Rockefeller Center.
Webster Hall assumed several other uses while the College worked on a permanent plan for the building. At one point the hall was used for art storage. By 1977, the hall was being used for dance classes, but students and faculty noted problems with the building, including poor lighting and heating, as well as splinters caused by the stage floor. By 1988, it was being used as a temporary student center.
Library conversion Special Collections before Rauner As early as the 1960s, Dartmouth began exploring the addition of new library spaces. In 1964, the Trustees Planning Committee tasked the Libraries Studies Council with creating a report on potential library expansions, which was released on May 1, 1966. The report recommended using an available space in the "library quadrangle"—the block bounded by Main, Elm, College, and Wentworth Streets—for a library expansion. The report also noted the potential future need for a separate building in the library quadrangle to house special collections. Webster Hall was not explicitly mentioned in the report, however. Chief of Special Collections Walter Wright furthermore proposed in 1969 that the college find a new space for a special collections library.
Dartmouth's special collections had been housed in the northwest corner of Baker Library for several decades prior to Webster Hall's conversion."'Journey's End': Farewell to the TR," Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, November 1998, Vol. XXXIX(NS) No. 1, ISSN 0011-6750. Retrieved February 15, 2026. The college originally had separate units for the Rare Book collection, the college archives, manuscripts, and the Stefansson Collection on Polar Exploration, but these collections were combined into one special collections unit in the late 1960s. The special collections reading room and public services were located on the building's first floor in what was known as the "Treasure Room", while staff offices and stacks were located in various places on all four floors of the building. The Treasure Room was dedicated in 1929 as a memorial to Charles Merrill Hough, a member of the Class of 1879, and the words "Hough's Room" are written on the room's door in brass lettering. The room features stained glass windows with imagery memorializing the college's history. In 1984, the special collections were renovated with climate control and improved security systems and received additional stack space. However, the department was still dealing with "critical space issues," and by 1998 the collections serviced by the Treasure Room had grown more than a hundred times larger than they were at the time of the room's opening.
Conversion planning and construction