The model for the central structure and the dome was that of the Low Memorial Library at Columbia University.
Legend has it that the first freshman to find the owl tucked within the folds of the Daniel Chester French sculpture of Alma Mater that sits on the steps of Low Memorial Library will graduate as valedictorian.
The foyer contains a white marble bust of Pallas Athena, modeled after the Minerve du Collier at the Louvre and donated by Jonathan Ackerman Coles of the Columbia College Class of 1864, an alumnus of Columbia's Philolexian Society.
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Low Library was officially named a New York City landmark in 1967, then a National Historic Landmark twenty years later.
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Proposed as "South Hall" by the University's former President Nicholas Murray Butler as expansion plans for Low Memorial Library stalled, the new library was funded by Edward Harkness, a Columbia alumnus who was also donor of Yale's residential college system, and designed by his favorite architect, James Gamble Rogers.