Dedicated on April 11, 1972, the library is named for Rebecca Kranz Crown, the wife of Colonel Henry Crown, Chicago philanthropist, and the library's principal benefactor. Designed by the architects Perkins & Will Corporation, the 76,656 square foot building originally housed 260,000 volumes. The Graduate School of Library Science (now known as the School of Information Studies) was one self-contained unit on the ground floor while the three floors above served as the university library for 800 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students in the library sciences school.