OLD
HAUNTS, NEW LIFE
Vintage Law School building becomes a law library
77
West Eagle is new and improved
In a project with special resonance for UB Law School
graduates – especially those who attended classes at the school’s old downtown Buffalo
home – the law library of the State Supreme Court, Eighth District, is now in a
new home.
The library’s new address is 77 W. Eagle
St., known to generations of UB Law graduates as the Law School’s longtime
home. The school moved to its current Amherst facility in 1973.
The state Unified Court System chose the
four-story building at 77 W. Eagle for its new library facility, as part of an
$87 million court facilities improvement project. It is the first segment of
that project to be completed after completion of the new Erie County Family
Court building in 2001.
“We had been in old County Hall (at 92
Franklin St.) since the 1870s, so obviously it was time for things to be
redone,” said Law Librarian Jim Sahlem. “We had 12,000 or 13,000 square feet
there; here we have about 21,000 square feet. We no longer have to insert new
out-of-state statutes with a shoehorn.”
Other highlights, he said: “The office
area is improved. Our technology room now accommodates eight PCs instead of the
three or four that we were using before. There is significantly more space for
microforms. Literally every part of the facility is improved, including the
atmospherics, with central air filtration and central air conditioning.”
Most notable from a UB Law point of view
is the library’s new fourth-floor reading room – installed in the area that
used to contain the UB Law School library. “It is an absolutely wonderful
room,” Sahlem said. “Everyone raves about it.”
In large part, that is because the room was
furnished and remodeled to be true to how it looked during its Law School days.
“We were lucky enough to find microfilm that the facilities group at UB had on
file that had all the original blueprints of the library,” said architect Paul
Battaglia of Hamilton Houston Lownie.
“When the county took it over, they put in a lot of
partitions and suspended a ceiling, to make chambers for the judges. We took
out all those partitions and the ceiling. There is a beautiful plaster cornice
around the entire perimeter that we were able to restore. Also, we found most
of the original white oak shelving units in various offices. We rebuilt the
ones we were able to salvage.”
In addition to the reading room, the
building’s main halls, entrance and stairway were restored to retain a lot of
its original character, Battaglia said.
The library and its staff of nine
primarily serves members of the local bar and bench, but members of the general
public also are allowed to use it. The law library occupies the top three floors
of the building; the ground floor is a day care center for the children of
county employees.
The UB Law connection is a strong one.
Says Sahlem: “Practically every attorney who graduated from UB Law School when
this was a Law School building asks one question in particular: ‘Do you have an
elevator?’ They were never able to get one.
“Yes, we do.”
Law Library reading room looking
south
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