On Dec. 11, 2025, Cratsley Lounge on the second floor of McCabe Library underwent a sudden change in appearance. Featuring the blue armchairs and wood-top tables which first decorated the space in the 1960s, the lounge was rearranged to mirror its original appearance, transporting viewers back to the time of McCabe’s opening. Glass displays containing various objects and documents from McCabe’s past line the walls, an old red oak veneer door stands in the corner, and a sample of the stone from which the building was constructed sits on a wooden display stand.
These artifacts, along with many others, are part of the “McCabe Library from Dirt to Dust” exhibition. Curated by the students who took Associate Professor of Art History Brian Goldstein’s Art History 067: Building Architecture from Dirt to Dust, the exhibition recounts the history and ongoing life of the campus’s central library. The exhibition, originally set to close on Mar. 1, has been extended to Mar. 29.
As the final project for his course, Goldstein asked students to select and write descriptions for three to four objects from the archives that would eventually be exhibited in the library. Each student focuses on a different theme, including dirt, material, design, construction, capital, furnishing and decor, media, renovation, maintenance and care, and dust.
“I designed this course as a kind of way of thinking about architecture as a series of people, processes, and forces that shape buildings [but] that aren’t necessarily the person whose name is on the door of the architecture office,” Goldstein said. “Creating an exhibition about McCabe Library allowed students to take those lenses and apply them to a single place.”
Completed in 1967, McCabe Library serves both as a social hub and a repository for information. While the library’s collections hold historical and cultural significance, its physical structure, which is often overlooked, is equally meaningful. Zoe Sperduto ’26, who worked on the “material” aspect of the exhibition, told The Phoenix that “a lot of the buildings at [the college] have a really deep history in terms of their material, and a lot of it’s local to Swarthmore.” For instance, she pointed out the Wissahickon schist in McCabe, which is from Crum Creek, as well as concrete and cement drawn from the Lehigh Valley area, about an hour from Swarthmore.
In addition to the material used, the stories of construction workers, quarrymen, carpenters, and others have contributed to the unique narrative of the building. Without their help, the creation of McCabe Library would have been impossible. Today, building maintenance is spearheaded by the Environmental Services (EVS) team, who work to keep the college’s facilities clean and safe for the community.
Figurines of the EVS team — along with other staff members who support the campus — are displayed on the right side of a ceramic chess set in the exhibition’s “maintenance and care” section. The chess set was originally created in support of the college’s living wage campaign from 2001 to 2004, which aimed to raise the minimum wage and provide health care benefits for all staff members on campus. Words like “savings” and “education” were also etched on the props in front of the figurines. According to its description, the set highlights staff members’ “instrumental role in maintaining and caring for McCabe and other campus buildings,” while also reminding viewers that “the benefits of this college should reach everyone who frequents and contributes to the campus — not just the students.”
Although McCabe plays an important role in campus culture, it’s also a place with which many “students have a complicated relationship,” Goldstein said. Indeed, the library has gone through various obstacles since its construction nearly 60 years ago. Photographs focusing on the “dust” section of the exhibition show rare books covered in mold — a problem caused by McCabe’s HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system. Next to these photographs is a white cloth smeared with brown spots of dust from reference books. These “dust tests” showcase the declining use of physical reference books and their replacement by the internet.
Associate Curator of the Friends Historical Library Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, who worked with the class to create the exhibition, believes that addressing these problems compels us to “think about how we can keep the things we like about the building while also making changes … [to keep the libraries] functional for everybody in the campus community.”
Meanwhile, the college has made various changes to ensure the library continues serving its purpose for students and staff. These changes were explored in the “renovation” section of the exhibit, which was the theme Xinyun Li ’27 researched. One of the objects she chose was an email written in 1999 from college Librarian Peggy Seiden to former President Al Bloom. In the message, Seiden discussed the need for renovation, as students at the time were so frustrated by the library that they called it “McCage.” According to Seiden, students believed the library’s environment was “oppressive and not conducive to study.” The following year, McCabe saw its first wave of renovation.
In recent years, more open study spaces have been added, as well as facilities supporting interdisciplinary learning, such as the Color Room in 2018 and the LibLab in 2020. Goldstein also mentioned talks of a complete renovation or the creation of a new building altogether — both possibilities emerging from “an effort over the last few years to create a master plan for the future of McCabe.”
After researching themes that recurred throughout McCabe Library’s evolution, students said their own perspectives towards the library expanded.
“These kinds of exhibitions,” Goldstein observed, “help students reinterpret the places where they’re spending an awful lot of their time.” Li agreed, sharing that “it wasn’t just McCabe to me after this class. Now, it’s more than a place where you just come in and study. You realize everything [within it] is full of purposeful decisions, and they’re made by a lot of people. I’m very excited about what it’s going to be like in the future.”
While the long-term future of McCabe remains uncertain, Goldstein’s students’ exhibition paints a picture that allows for a better understanding of the library’s present. As Goldstein remarked, the exhibition shows that McCabe is part of a “more complicated story of change and transformation and budgets … and ways that people have tried to change it to make it work better.”
