FACILITIES & CAMPUS LIFE

A New Beginning for Billings

Billings Library is the most historically significant structure among many that enjoy historical status on the University of Vermont campus. Built between 1883 and 1885 by the distinguished architect Henry Hobson Richardson of Boston, the building is named after Frederick Billings, UVM Class of 1844, and a native of Woodstock, Vermont.

Billings is an important figure in the history of philanthropy at the University of Vermont. He provided the funds to construct the building as a library to house the 12,000-volume collection of George Perkins Marsh, a boyhood friend who would become a noted congressman, diplomat, conservationist, and gentleman-scholar. When it was completed, the Billings Library was recognized as a triumph of architectural vision in classic Richardsonian Romanesque style. As Richard H. Janson, a former director of the Fleming Museum, once wrote, "A monument of indestructible solidity and romantic vision, the building belongs to an age of energy and ambition."

Billings Library went through several transitions over the years, having most recently been converted into a student center in 1963 and extensively renovated and expanded between 1984 and 1986.

And soon, thanks to a $5 million gift from Leonard Miller '51 and his late wife Carolyn Rosen Miller, Billings will add still another chapter to its distinguished history of service to the University of Vermont community. The Miller gift will be used to renovate Billings Library as a permanent home for the Center for Holocaust Studies, the Center for Research on Vermont, and — returning a part of the building to its original function as a library — the UVM Libraries' Special Collections.

Additionally, $2 million of the gift will endow two new professorships in Holocaust Studies, the first of which will be named after eminent Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg, who died in August, 2007, after a distinguished 35-year career on the University of Vermont faculty. Hilberg was the author of The Destruction of the European Jews, (1961), which meticulously documents the Nazi killings of 6 million Jews and is regarded by Holocaust scholars as a masterwork in the field. The University established its Center for Holocaust Studies to honor his teaching and research accomplishments. The Center offers an academic minor in Holocaust studies and promotes knowledge of the Holocaust through lectures, courses, seminars, visits to local schools, and cultural events on campus.

Leonard and Carolyn Miller supported the Center for Holocaust Studies since its inception, having established the Miller Endowment, which provides faculty support and funds the Miller Symposium in Holocaust Studies every other spring at UVM.

"Growing up in Burlington's Old North End, I would never have dreamed that some day I could do something meaningful to assure that the horrors of the Holocaust would not be forgotten," Miller said in announcing the couple's gift. "By supporting UVM's Center for Holocaust Studies, Carolyn and I are very pleased that we're able to take a substantial step in that direction and help the University at the same time."

Indeed Miller, and every other alumnus and alumna who made a gift to the Campaign for the University of Vermont, are fulfilling Frederick Billings' own hope that they remember their alma mater "with gifts and help her to add to her … renown, and ever be worthy of her name."