The Langston Hughes Library features books by African American authors and books about the black experience for readers of all ages.
In 1998 Maya was asked to design a library. But this was not going to be any ordinary library. It was to be used as a reading room and conference center for the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). The CDF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping American children, especially those living in poverty.
In 1994 the CDF purchased the Haley Farm in Clinton, Tennessee, to use as a retreat for leadership training. The large farm had belonged to Alex Haley, an African American writer whose award-winning novel Roots had been made into one of the most popular television series of all time. Roots traced the history of Haley’s family, going back to one of his ancestors, an African captured, enslaved, and brought to Virginia.
The CDF wanted to have a library that would feature works by and about African Americans, to inspire young leaders.
When Maya visited the Haley Farm, to her delight she found an old barn that had been built in the 1860s. It was a typical Tennessee cantilevered barn, with the upper level extending beyond the vertical supports. The barn perched on top of two corncribs made of rough logs. The cribs were for storing dried corn that was used as winterfeed for animals. Maya loved the building. She said,
“I’d never seen a shape like that before and wanted to save it.”
She came up with the concept of an elevated reading room. “The idea was to maintain the integrity and character of the old barn yet introduce a new inner layer.”
Maya kept the silvery outside of the barn, but she took apart the inside. Working with Knoxville architect Margaret Butler, Maya dismantled beams and rebuilt the structure. She “slipped in” a steel foundation underneath for support and created an entirely new interior. For the cozy yet airy reading room, she used recycled, environmentally friendly materials, such as soybean husks for the tabletops. To bring the outside in, she designed a large picture window in front of the reading area with views of the pond and trees. Rows of skylights provide even more natural light. Maya said she wanted people in the library to “always feel connected to the land.”
The Langston Hughes Library’s reading room honors writer and civil rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou, and Dr. John Hope Franklin, a leading scholar of black history.
Below, she wrapped the cribs in an inner layer of translucent glass. Rays of light shine between the logs. She said, “As you walk inside, you see the shadow of the exterior timbers.” One crib contains a bookstore, and the other has a stairway and elevator to the upper level. In the space between the cribs Maya designed a garden with a stone fountain that marks the entrance to the library.
The project was completed in 1999. An art critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote that Maya had transformed the barn into a “marvel of colored light and air.” Margaret Butler said it “glows like a Chinese lantern.”
The Langston Hughes Library shines brightly and illuminates the night.
The library was named for Langston Hughes, an African American poet who celebrated the lives of ordinary black people. In his poem “My People” he wrote,
The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
His complete works are in the library’s collection along with thousands of books for children and adults on subjects ranging from African American history and the civil rights movement to fine arts and literature from many writers and cultures.
The reading room was dedicated to poet and novelist Dr. Maya Angelou and historian Dr. John Hope Franklin. They both attended the dedication ceremony on March 19, 1999, along with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Of course, Maya Lin and her family were there, too. By this time Maya was married to Daniel Wolf, a photography dealer and collector of pre-Columbian furniture and crystals. Like Maya, he is passionate about art as well as the outdoors. Their daughter, India, had been born in 1998, a few months before Maya began the library project. A few months after she completed the project, Maya gave birth to another daughter, Rachel.
Dedication ceremony of the Langston Hughes Library in 1999. From left to right: Frank Diggs, mayor of Clinton, Tennessee; Marian Wright Edelman, founder of CDF; Hillary Rodham Clinton, First Lady and former CDF board chair; Len Riggio, CDF board member; and Maya Lin.
While raising her children, Maya continued to work in her studio designing private houses and public parks and making small sculptures. She started an environmental project in the Pacific Northwest and wrote an autobiography, titled Boundaries. “I do a lot of projects at once,” she says. But after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, everything changed. “My love of creating disappeared,” she said. “I think a lot of artists felt similarly lost.”
Then the CDF asked her to design another project—an interfaith chapel on Haley Farm. They wanted to give people a place to find comfort and peace. Maya was moved and accepted the commission. She said, “Working on a spiritually based project that focused on helping others was the only thing that could get me to start making things again.”
A drawing of a small boat on a stormy sea by a seven-year-old girl that was featured in the CDF logo sparked an idea. The boat reminded Maya of Noah’s ark, a symbol of shelter and protection. She envisioned a simple wooden structure that would be shaped like an ark. Maya said that her design expressed the purpose of the CDF, “to carry the nation’s family of children to safe harbor.”
The CDF logo contains a prayer that founder Marian Wright Edelman first saw on a desktop ship in the office of Robert F. Kennedy, the U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and an advocate for the civil rights movement.
The Riggio-Lynch Chapel, which resembles a huge ark, seats 250 people.
The chapel is situated near a pond across from the library. For the outside of the building she used locally grown cypress. Inside, the ceiling has curved beams that arch overhead like embracing arms. There are no windows, but natural light pours in through skylights. Maya said,
“My goal was to quietly raise people’s hope and elevate their spirits through beautiful surroundings.”
