New Bodleian Library (formerly Nos. 35–47)
James (Jan) Morris, Oxford (1965):
"If you are in your fifties, nothing will reconcile you to the Bodleian extension at the end of Broad Street, which looks like a well-equipped municipal swimming bath, and replaced a nice corner of jostling old houses in the late 1930s"
Despite the above comment, the New Bodleian Library became a Grade II listed building in October 2003. In 2009 it is being refurbished, and when this is complete it will be renamed the Weston Library.
The picture below (reproduced with kind permission of Sue Chaundy) shows (running from right to left) Nos. 45, 46, and 47 Broad Street (just three of the thirteen houses demolished to make way for the New Bodleian Library). Then come Nos. 48 and 49, which had to be rebuilt because of the effect the demolition process had on their foundations: these now form the right-hand side of Blackwell’s. Only then do the shops become familiar: 50 and 51 (now the left-hand side of Blackwell’s, followed by the White Horse and No. 53.
The report of a University Commission published in 1931 led to the building of the New Bodleian Library, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, at a cost of £1 million. It was opened in 1940 by George VI, when unfortunately the silver key broke in the lock.
As well as reading rooms, the library has an eleven-floor book stack with space for 5 million volumes connected to the old Bodleian Library by an underground conveyor belt.
A south-facing extension was built on the roof to the designs of Robert Potter in 1966–68 to accommodate the Indian Institute Library when the old Indian Institute was converted into offices.
On the wall of the New Bodleian is a row of cartouches containing the arms of the following, running from east to west: Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Sir Edmund Craster, Lord Halifax, Viscount Grey, the City of Oxford, the Stationers' Company, Cecil Rhodes, John Radcliffe, Duke Humfrey, Thomas de Cobham, William Laud, William Herbert, Sir Kenelm Digby, Richard Rawlinson, Francis Douce, the University of Oxford, John Selden, Thomas Tanner, Richard Gough, Lord Sunderlin, and Thomas, 2nd Earl Brassey.
The decision to demolish thirteen superior houses to make room for this building was not taken lightly. See H.E. Counsell, 37 The Broad (London, Robert Hale Ltd, 1943), where the author, a doctor at No. 37, gives his reaction on hearing in 1934 that his house was to be pulled down:
I received notice from the University who owned the property that at any moment the house might be pulled down with all those from the corner of Parks Road to Blackwell’s bookshop to make room for the new Bodleian Library. This was no surprise to me as for several years various schemes for the site of the new Bodleian had been the subject of hot discussion in the University and the public press. Once the Broad Street site was definitely turned down by Convocation, and to celebrate the good news we hung a flag from the windows of "Thirty-seven"; but when a commission reported that Broad Street was their choice we knew that our days there were numbered.
