Clapp Reimagined

It all started with HVAC.

In spring 2022, the College announced a special one-time draw on the endowment of $150 million to address urgent repairs in buildings across campus, including Margaret Clapp Library. At the time, repairs to the library focused on overhauling heating and cooling systems, upgrading electrical and plumbing, repairing the roof, and addressing longstanding accessibility gaps. All essential, but not particularly visible, upgrades.

“There were leaks, and that’s not a good thing to have happening when you are protecting unique items in your collection,” says Sara Ludovissy, College archivist.

By spring 2023, the College expanded its vision of the Clapp renovation project to include several programmatic changes to enhance use of the library. Then, in March 2024, President Paula A. Johnson announced a major gift, from Lia Gelin Poorvu ’56 and William Poorvu, to support the project. With that commitment and the donors’ involvement, Library and Technology Services (LTS) and the College began to think bigger, moving toward reinvention. What had begun as a set of upgrades grew into a reimagining of how the building might function—not just structurally, but academically and as a more accessible community hub for the campus.

Plans expanded to include relocating the Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center (PLTC) and Accessibility and Disability Resources (ADR) to more central, visible locations; installing a new, open staircase; reconfiguring the Archives and Special Collections; redesigning the lobby and service areas to better welcome and orient visitors; and reclaiming the reading room, which had become a catch-all for technology and various collections, to restore the grandeur of the Prudence Slitor Crozier ’62 and William M. Crozier, Jr. Reading and Presidential Portrait Room. New rugs, paint, and furniture throughout were part of the plan, as well. All that, and a café.

The new staircase connects the first and second floors, allowing people to move easily from one to another. It offers glimpses across levels, and delivers visitors to the fun and connection of Saxbys Café and the Knapp Media and Technology Center on the ground floor.

“We didn’t want to spend 90-plus million dollars and have the library look the same,” says Ganesan “Ravi” Ravishanker, the College’s chief information officer and associate provost. “You don’t make transformation through incremental change.”

After 18 busy, muddy, noisy months of construction, Clapp Library reopened its doors in time for the first day of classes in September 2025. It was an exciting time for staff, who had been displaced to temporary offices and came back to new and improved spaces. It was perhaps even more exciting for students, who had been without the library for three semesters.

“It’s been fantastic to welcome everyone back in the building,” says Jenifer Bartle, director of library collections. Staff had labored “right down to the wire to get ready,” she says, reshelving 700,000 books and bringing systems back online. Now, after a full academic year of settling in, Clapp has reclaimed its place as the beating heart of campus.

A walk through Clapp

For a visitor walking through it now, there is a sense that the building has not just reopened; it has returned to the community with a brighter, more welcoming guise.

Boston-based architectural firm Shepley Bulfinch was chosen for the renovation, not surprisingly, since the company has more than 100 years of history with the College. The original library building was designed by Shepley Rutan and Coolidge and opened in 1910. Two subsequent additions were designed by Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott, opening in 1959 and 1975.

The tour begins outside. The College’s iconic statues of Athena and Hestia guard the formal entrance. Athena is the goddess of wisdom and Hestia the goddess of the hearth. The bronzes were donated by the classes of 1887 and 1888 and were relocated from College Hall after the 1914 fire. “The statues were all cleaned up,” says Alexis Veigas, Clapp Library’s office and building manager.

Inside the library, the shift in atmosphere is striking. What had been darker and more enclosed now feels, as Veigas says, “airy and light and bright, welcoming. We reconfigured where our students and staff sit. One thing you’ll see throughout is spaces that are as student-facing as possible.”

Ravishanker adds, “Any space we can make available to students, we should make available.”

And in the spirit of if you build it, they will come, students have flocked back into the renovated library, quickly occupying every nook and cranny. “We’ve seen a significant uptick in our classes—and a big uptick in our reading room. We see increased use compared to before,” Bartle says.

“There are never not students. I see people organically gathering around, chatting. That enhances collaboration in ways we hadn’t even thought about.”

—Jenifer Bartle, director of library collections

Formerly closed offices are open for student use; tables are placed strategically for collaboration. “[The space] is filled with light,” says Bartle. Rooms that didn’t get a lot of student use have become spaces where “there are never not students. I see people organically gathering around, chatting. That enhances collaboration in ways we hadn’t even thought about.”

“It is a very different building,” Ravishanker says.

Upstairs, the change is visible too. “What is new and makes this whole vista more impressive,” Veigas says, “is the third-floor opening.” Where there had once been a closed, circuitous path, there is now openness to the atrium, student seating, and long sight lines across the building.

“We had 398 seats, and now we have 529, and nearly all of them fill every day,” Veigas says. Students spread out across a range of environments—in quiet corners, around tables, in enclosed rooms, and at the long wooden library tables now regathered in the reading room with lamps to illuminate books and papers. “There’s something for everyone as they explore and find their own spaces,” says Veigas. Watching the flow of people through the building, “I realized how much I missed it, just the energy of it,” she adds.

Hanna Matsukawa ’26 is an English major and women’s and gender studies minor—and, for four years, was this magazine’s student assistant. The library was closed from her sophomore spring until the fall of her senior year. “As a humanities major living in Tower Court, I missed the location and space, though its closure allowed me to explore new study spaces like the art and music libraries, as well as spend more time studying in the Science Center,” she says.

In the fall, after the reopening, Matsukawa mostly continued her routine of studying in other spaces on campus. “But in the spring semester, especially as work on my thesis on Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous ramped up, I found myself more routinely spending time in Clapp. I study there almost nightly!” she says.

Matsukawa says the improvements to the library made it one of her new favorite places on campus. “Something I love about Clapp is the variety of spots to do work. As a thesis student, I have a carrel on the fourth floor, which is lovely, but I most often find myself sitting in the reading room, in an empty classroom, or on a comfy chair or couch on the ground floor. These days, my favorite thing to do is to share a table on the first or second floor with a group of friends as we each work on our individual papers and psets.”

Clapp Central

On April 8, a new café opened on the ground floor of Clapp, joining other longtime student-led purveyors El Table and Café Hoop and marking the final touch of the renovation.

“This is a space that really will facilitate community conversation and connections with friends and colleagues,” Johnson said at the opening. “The centerpiece here is the café, a place where we can commune together, eat together, and just replenish our bodies and our minds.”

Ivy Targino ’28 and Chloe Lau ’28 are the Wellesley Saxbys’ chief operations officers. Targino was looking for business experience and came by Saxbys at a Career Education job fair. “I was really looking for the perfect fit, both what I was seeing in a cultural sense, but also in that ability for me to do my job the best way I can,” Targino says.

Lau, who says she has always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur, was drawn to Saxbys’ core values of team-building and community. “Those [values] are really aligned with my values and what I want to do in the future,” she says.

At the ribbon-cutting, Lau, an international relations and history major, said, “My dream is to open a restaurant and have my own ceramic studio on top of it. More importantly, it is my hope to create a community and a team that would last a lifetime and a legacy.”

Targino, an anthropology major, echoed that sense of discovery. Arriving on campus, she saw “an unlimited amount of opportunities” but wasn’t sure “where my place might be.”

Joining Saxbys changed that: “I truly believe that I found a community and an opportunity to better both myself and my skills, but also help better the community around me,” she says.

The café extends the library’s purpose, offering not just food, but space where students, faculty, and staff can find a sense of belonging—and grab a cold-brew coffee.

The renovation also modernized the building’s infrastructure with an electric HVAC system, replacing fossil-fuel-based heating and reducing carbon emissions. LED lighting and motion-sensitive controls reduce energy use while maintaining consistent illumination.

Behind the scenes, advanced building systems monitor performance in real time, allowing staff to fine-tune heating, cooling, ventilation, and climate controls for Special Collections and Archives material. Electrical upgrades support expanded digital learning, and the removal of fixed computers has made classrooms more functional.

At the same time, new spaces signal an expanded vision of what a library can be. A former staff lounge has become a “high-end computing lab, with systems that support virtual reality, data analysis, and multimedia projects,” Bartle says. Nearby, the always busy Makerspace, replete with a wide range of analog and digital fabrication tools, extends that hands-on spirit. “The special thing about the Makerspace is that it is for everyone—faculty and students, and staff as well,” Bartle says.

An entrance for everyone

Before the renovation, access to Clapp Library for people with disabilities was less than welcoming, funneling visitors in through a side door. Post-renovation, an ADA-compliant ramp invites easy access to the front doors. It blends in seamlessly with the stairs, looking as if it has been there all along.

“For someone who used to work in a library that was very inaccessible, the front ramp is awesome, because it’s equitable,” says Courtney Mulligan, director of ADR, who joined Wellesley in fall 2024. “And it’s heated, so in the winter the snow melts.”

The renovation reflects a shift toward accessibility as a core design principle for the College, one that shapes how students enter and experience the building, and how support services are seen and used. All the library stacks can now be navigated by wheelchair.

“The downstairs is fully accessible, and there are multiple, easy ways to get up to the second, third, and fourth floors,” Mulligan says. “Students are impressed by the idea that PLTC and ADR are on the main level. They used to feel [those services were] upstairs and out of the way—almost hidden around corners.”

“For too long, disability accessibility has been seen simply as a legal mandate. I want to shift that.”

—Courtney Mulligan, director of accessibility and disability resources

That visibility matters, not only for current students but for prospective ones. “I think it’s good for students who come on tours, or first-year students and their families, when they come through to see, ‘Oh, my student who’s neurodiverse, or my student has a learning difference—here’s where they’ll be supported, not up in the rafters,’” she says.

The College currently enrolls about 400 students who have significant disabling conditions that impact one or more major life activities, Mulligan says. “Our top diagnoses are mental health challenges, ADHD, and autism neurodiversity,” she says. “For too long, disability accessibility has been seen simply as a legal mandate, I want to shift that. I want the shift to be that disability is identity, that community can be built around that, that there’s excitement and joy to be found in that community, and it is just another piece of the diversity puzzle.” She hopes the newly welcoming spaces in Clapp Library will help make that shift possible.

Opening the archives

During the renovation, the Lia Gelin Poorvu ’56 and William Poorvu Special Collections area was reconfigured with the removal of a wall. What had been a long, narrow classroom in which gathering 15 students was a squeeze has become a large open space. The parlor is equipped with flexible-use furniture, and a new lift makes the entry more accessible.

“Special Collections got what we call a glow up,” Bartle says, “but Archives got a complete gut renovation.” Previously, the Archives stacks were against the windows; the space has been reconfigured to take advantage of the natural light for the new reading room and dedicated classroom. The previous reading room was not set up well for teaching. Now there is a reading room, visible staff space, secure stacks, and a dedicated classroom. “This is really the most remarkable part,” says Ludovissy, “a dedicated classroom for the Archives.”

That classroom has already changed the way the Archives functions. “It’s been completely transformational,” Ludovissy says. She gestures to a large table in the classroom: “Yesterday, this table configuration was completely different, with six different stations, and we had two classes with group work and presentations in here.” Archives staff used to teach four or five classes a semester; that number has risen to 18. And more faculty are bringing in classes to the space to work hands-on with documents.

“One of the big things that we wanted was to have researchers and to be able to teach a class or host a group at the same time,” Ludovissy says. “We wanted the students to feel as if they have an ownership of the Archives. After all, they’re going to be donating their materials here someday.” In fact, thanks to support from generous alumnae, the College is in the process of expanding its digital archives, with the goal of featuring select alums who have made a difference in the world.

“We wanted the students to feel as if they have an ownership of the Archives. After all, they’re going to be donating their materials here someday.”

—Sara Ludovissy, College archivist

Removing heavy shades that had covered the large windows facing Houghton Chapel changed the atmosphere, too. Previously, staff would only peek through them to check the weather, as the darkening shades had to remain closed to protect the delicate collections. Now, a vista stretches to Lake Waban. “It doesn’t feel forbidding anymore. When you walk down that hall to Archives, you’re going to see light at the end of the tunnel,” Ludovissy says, laughing.

Finding your vibe

When you explore the library, it becomes clear that the ground floor is the agora, the gathering place, where laughter, chatting, collaboration, and fun happen. No shushing librarians here. As you move higher, the atmosphere becomes more hushed. It is quiet and contemplative in the reading room. The vibe is studious among the stacks and thesis carrels on the third floor, practical and businesslike on the staff offices floor. (There’s also a surprise on the fourth floor for a persistent explorer: When drywall was taken down, the exterior of the 1910 chimney was revealed. It has been preserved along the wall, its scrolls and gray granite a testament to the solidity of the original building.) Wherever you wander, there is a feeling that Clapp Library belongs to everyone.

“The students live here,” says Bartle. “This is their living room. This should feel like home.”