Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library was dedicated and opened September 12, 1932. Cost: $1,100,000. It was a gift of E. L. Doheny in memory of his son. Cornerstone laid Dec. 3, 1931.Romanesque design was in keeping with the rest of the campus's architecture. The Doheny building is noted for hand chased bronze doors, 13 foot frieze of Porto Santo marble, Roman travertine floors and stairway. The main reading room is 131 feet long, 46 feet wide, and 27 feet (2 1/2 stories) high. It has shelves for 6,000 books and accomodates 400 readers.
The Doheny building is one of the oldest buildings on the USC campus, contains the largest collection of books and journals on the USC campus, specializing in the fields of humanities and social sciences. The building was closed between December 1999 and Spring of 2001 for a historic preservation and a seismic retrofit. This page provides access to some historic information about the building.
- Doheny Library circa 1998.
- Historical Tour of Doheny.
- Doheny tour podcast, September 2007.
- Joseph Conradi, facade sculptures of Dante and Shakespeare.
- Facade relief of students reading, east side, exterior of entrance to LiteraTEA and courtyard.
- Archway with mosaics by Roger Hayward and relief by Joseph Conradi over the main entry.
- University seal mosaic, main entry.
- Sarcophagus, main entry.
- Porto Santo marble in the main rotunda.
- Grand chandelier, main rotunda.
- Stained glass in the main rotunda.
- Ceiling decorations and design, including Giovanni Smeraldi's work in the Times Mirror Reading Room, the main hall, the main corridor, and the periodicals reading room.
- Woodwork in various parts of Doheny.
- Printers' marks in the Times Mirror Reading Room.
- Clock in the Times Mirror Reading Room.
- Joseph Mario Korbel, bust of Edward Doheny, Jr. Marble.
- Samuel Armstrong, examples of murals in the Treasure Room.
- Merrell Gage, Bust of Rufus B. von KleinSmid near the Dean's suite.
- Levi Scofield, Mortar Practice.
- Bust of Jose Marti.
- Drinking fountain and various kinds of metalwork.
- Lion Feuchtwanger plaque.
- Brief biographies of the artists an designers who worked on the Doheny Memorial Library in the 1930s.
- Contractors who worked on the Doheny Memorial Library.
- Gustave Dore paintings, 1933-1982.
- The Citadel (or Mephistopheles) by Clarence Addison Shaler.
- Early USC Library History.
- Doheny Library Bibliography.
- The Doheny building on Film.
Special Thanks to Eileen Flick for pulling together much of the the information in the historic tours
Do not reproduce information from this site without acknowledgement of the artists and their works, or of the authors of this site.
Ruth Wallach, USC Libraries
1998, 2/2005, 10/2008, 4/2011, 05/2015