Robert M. Hughes Memorial Library
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Hughes Hall, the former Robert M. Hughes Memorial Library, is a notable building on the Old Dominion University campus in Norfolk, Virginia designed by Edward Durrell Stone in 1959. When the building was dedicated, it was the Norfolk Division of the College of William & Mary. In the book Architecture in Virginia, published by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, author William B. O'Neal writes that the building, completely encased in a solar block screen, has a glass interior. While it has practical energy saving benefits, O'Neal says the blocks give "a beautiful unity and a repose not always found in libraries today."
The building was named for Virginia lawyer Robert M. Hughes, who helped establish the Norfolk division of William & Mary in 1930 along with J. A. C. Chandler, Joseph Healy and Albert Foreman [1]. It was dedicated with speech on "The Place of the College Library" by historian Louis B. Wright, editor of the colonial diaries of William Byrd of Westover.
It sits at the corner of Hampton Boulevard and 49th Street in Norfolk. Today it holds many of ODU's Computer Science faculty offices.[2]
