s a seven-story structure, with eight mezzanine levels interleaved between the main stories. Although encased in a Gothic exterior, the tower's structural system is a welded steel frame, which permits a vertical rise that traditional Gothic techniques would not. The crennalated roof of the tower is elaborately decorated, complete with a castle-like housing for air handling equipment.
Placed end-to-end, the full length of the tower's shelves is estimated at 80 miles (130 km), contained within 6.5 miles (10.5 km) of aisles. In addition to the library collections, the tower houses reading rooms, study carrels, library offices, and special collections, including the Babylonian Collection. Access to the Stacks is restricted to affiliates of the university and library patrons.
Four reading rooms are situated near the nave on the first floor of the library:
- Starr Reading Room, the main reading room of the library, is situated at the south end of the library, adjacent to Trumbull College. It is a reference room designed in the style of a monastic refectory. Under a barrel vaulted ceiling, the room is lined with traceried windows and oak bookshelves decorated with a botanical frieze. A 1998 restoration was funded by The Starr Foundation.
- The Periodical Reading Room, lined with oak shelves like those of the main reading room, is accessible from a vestibule on the north side of the nave. The room can hold 1,800 periodicals and features windows decorated with signs of the zodiac to symbolize periodicity.
- Linonia and Brothers Reading Room, a Tudor-style browsing room at the building's northeast corner. It is named for Yale's two eighteenth century literary societies, Linonia and Brothers in Unity, and holds approximately 20,000 books. Intended to be a "gentlemen's club" for leisure reading, it was not opened to women until the 1960s.
- Franke Family Reading Room, originally a room for frequently-used materials known as the Reserve Book Room, is in the library's southeast corner. Its collections were moved to Cross Campus Library in 1971 and the reading room was converted into a periodical browsing room.
Smaller reading rooms are housed in the tower and are accessible to library affiliates. These include reading rooms for the library's area studies holdings, including African, East Asian, Latin American, Near East, Slavic and East European, Southeast Asian, and Judaica collections. There are also dedicated reading rooms for several fields of study, including American Studies, History, and Philosophy.
Sterling's northern wing, accessed from the nave via a cloister hallway, contains the library's offices as well as three major rooms: a lecture hall, the Memorabilia Room, and the Rare Book Room. The Memorabilia Room hosts temporary exhibitions of Yale's archival collections and university history, and serves as an antechamber to the 120-seat lecture hall.
The Rare Book Room, designed after English Jacobean architecture, was built to allow library patrons to browse Yale's collection of rare books and manuscripts. A vaulted, octagonal chapel behind the room was specially constructed to house a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. The completion of the Beinecke Library in 1963 provided a more secure, climate-controlled repository for rare books, and the room and chapel now serve as a browsing room for the library's Manuscripts & Archives department.
The library originally had two courtyards designed and landscaped by Beatrix Farrand. In 1997, the western courtyard was enclosed and renovated to become the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. Sterling's remaining courtyard, named the Selin Courtyard, features motifs from the history of printing.
The library is one of the most elaborate buildings on the Yale campus. Rogers commissioned artisans, including stained glass artist G. Owen Bonawit and blacksmith Samuel Yellin, who worked with Rogers on many of his buildings, sculptor René Paul Chambellan, and painter Eugene Savage. The building's exterior is decorated with stone gargoyles, reliefs, and inscriptions. The nave is the most ornately decorated