While the exterior of the library was designed by architect Ralph Adams Cram, the interiors and the final working drawings for the building were designed by Pasadena-based architect, Samuel Lunden.

[1] With its use of rounded arches, pale brick and limestone, the library was designed to be suggestive of Romanesque style architecture in Northern Italy and additionally, given its association with USC and higher education, is adorned with statues of Shakespeare and Dante in its main entrance and the marble etching above the front doors depicts a sitting scene of a teacher instructing two students.

When the library was initially constructed it was built to hold between 450,000 and 500,000 volumes, but a wing expansion in the 1960 doubled that number, meeting the projects of then head librarian at USC, Charlotte Brown.

[5] The Doheny Library was used as a filming location for Mike Nichols' 1967 film The Graduate, for the sequence in which Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) waits by the fountain for Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross), who exits the library's main door.

[7] Media related to Doheny Memorial Library (USC) at Wikimedia Commons This article about a building or structure in Los Angeles is a stub.