Stop 12 - Archbishop Alemany Library

Benincasa c.1950s

Benincasa c.1930s

Library Exterior  circa 1963

Tour Highlights

• Originally part of the Buck Estate purchased by Dominican College in 1935, which housed the Buck family summer home called Benincasa (built c.1884) after the surname of Saint Catherine of Siena
• Benincasa was originally used as a senior residence hall and campus club meeting space
• Benincasa was demolished in 1961 to make space for the current library building
• Archbishop Alemany Library is named in honor of Joseph Alemany, the first Archbishop of San Francisco and the archbishop who brought the Dominican Sisters to California
• Opened in 1963, Alemany Library was one of seven libraries to be awarded for architectural excellence in the 1964 American Institute of Architects Library Building Awards Program
• Built by architects, Howard Friedman and Henry Schbart
• In aerial view the building is a cruciform
• The library features book collections, computer facilities for students, study areas, the San Marco Gallery, and classrooms
• 1992 a scene from Basic Instinct was filmed in the library, but extras wore UCB sweatshirts

Library Group Study and Reference

Library Lobby

Education

The Sisters had great significance with women’s opportunities and women's rights specifically within the realm of access to education; from the mission behind the founding of the school, to the parallels with the women’s rights movement, and in the ways they continued to work around gender roles that were given to women at the time, without the sisters a lot of women would not have had the education that they deserved.

The Sisters were way ahead of their time because of their perspective on education and the emphasis that they held for educating women specifically. This eventually led them to spearheading the charge on challenging the stereotypes placed on women during this time.

Another way the Sisters were able to create the best learning environment was by partnering with the University of California, Berkeley. The women were allowed to complete their first two years of schooling at Dominican, then transfer to the highly esteemed Berkley.

There was a strong group of young women who wanted to continue their education into a four year program and pressured the Sisters to start one. Those were the women whose conferral of degrees match up with the ultimate success of the suffragettes in 1920.