The Libraries of the SJSU Site at
4th and San Fernando Streets (and close by)

The first full-time librarian - Ruth Royce, was hired in 1881. She stayed for 37 years!  She was an 1877 alum of the Normal School.  Miss Joyce Backus served as college librarian from 1923 to 1965 (42 years!).

A separate library building was built at Washington Square in the early 1900s - but it was a public library built on land transferred from the school to the city. On June 27, 1901, the Trustees of the Normal School agreed that the northwest corner of the Washington Square site would be transferred to the City of San Jose so that a public library could be built. In 1903, the San Jose Carnegie Library opened at the corner of 4th and San Fernando Streets. It was constructed with a $50,000 donation from multimillionaire Andrew Carnegie.

Photo source: The California Room at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Main Library.

In 1936, the City Council of San Jose agreed to sell the Carnegie Library to the college for $55,000. The college used the building as a Student Union.

In 1941, a library building was completed, located at 4th and San Antonio Streets. A Library Annex was added in 1956 and Library North opened in 1961.

The above aerial photo of the campus in 1955
shows the Carnegie Library building in the corner of the campus that is about in the 
middle left side of the photo (in 1955, the building housed the Student Union, not the public library).
The Clark Library was later built on a portion of the empty land shown at the top of the photo.
Photo source: SJSU Special Collections at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.

In 1961, Wahlquist North opened. It was a 6-story addition to the nearby library buildings and was constructed at a cost of $2.6 million. As described in the 1962 La Torre (SJSU Yearbook), this wing offered "a reading room on each floor, educational and instrumental facilities, typing rooms, and two conference rooms. There [were] three subject-division rooms in the fields of creative arts, language arts, and education." The building had an open book design on the exterior of the building (see this photo from the SJSU Special Collections). Also, the 1881 bell that currently resides in the Spartan Rose Garden near Tower Hall was placed in an archway near the entrance to Walhquist library (see photo from the SJSU Special Collections). This bell was originally in the second main building that was dismantled after the 1906 earthquake, placed in the third main building (Tower Hall) and then removed when the quadrangle was demolished in the early1960s.

John T. Wahlquist was President of San Jose State College (now SJSU) from 1952-1964. 

This photo of Wahlquist North is from the 1962 La Torre  (SJSU yearbook).

The Clark Library was completed in 1981. Because it could not hold the university's entire collection (over one million volumes), portions were housed in the old library buildings referred to as Wahlquist South, Central, and North at the corner of 4th and San Fernando Streets.

The Robert D. Clark Library shown above was not at 4th and San Fernando Streets. 
It was located between Tower Hall and the Engineering Building.

Photo Source: 1990-1992 SJSU Catalog (front cover photo)

The Wahlquist Library was torn down in 2000 to begin construction of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. One of the trees longstanding at the site had to be cut down - see photo.  However, it lives on in a different form in the new library. You can find out how by looking carefully at the pillars that run from the Lower Level to the 8th floor - one is different from the others.