It was created in line with the Constitution and Laws of Rensselaer, which stated that the school would have "a very ample scientific library to which members of the institution will have free access".

[3] The earliest librarian was a student named Albert Danker from the first graduating class, and the collection consisted of a sparse number of scientific works.

[3][4] Relocation and reconstruction began on 8th Street in Troy, and in 1864, the library of 396 volumes moved into the Main Building, where it would stay for another 30 years.

[5] Student use increased during the period of 1912 to 1927 as the curriculum of the institute expanded and more volumes were added to the collection to supplement professors' instruction.

The Amos Eaton building offered sufficient space for a little over 30 years, until a growing number of publications written after World War II forced the collection to move again to the recently purchased St. Joseph Convent chapel.

Up until 1950, the collection had been largely technical, but expansion of the Humanities and Social Sciences as well as increased research created an intense demand on the library.

The report stated that "The Library is the information center of the university, providing resources to the scholars who are making, doing, and thinking things".

The institute hired Quinlivan Pierik & Krause, an architecture firm centered in Syracuse, to evaluate the campus and determine a possible location for the new library.

On October 23, 1970, the firm requested a meeting with the president at the time, Richard Folsom, to discuss the possibility of a staged construction procedure where the facility would be built in iterations.

Professor Howard Litman, the chairman of the committee at the time, issued the statement "In summary, the most recent proposal for providing new facilities for the Rensselaer library is a workable but undesirable plan of development.

It will, for the short term, provide desperately needed space, but in the long run yield an unexpectedly costly facility in the wrong place.

The new library would have an underground annex and a pedestrian plaza that would connect it to St. Joseph's Chapel (now the Voorhees Computing Center), and would cost approximately $6.9 million.

In 1972, James C. Andrews, the Director of Libraries at the Institute at the time, issued a report pointing out weaknesses in the recently reaffirmed proposal for construction.

"[13] However, the notion of libraries sinking into the ground is not confined to the RPI campus; other communities and colleges also report the same issues, even though it was debunked by snopes.com.

The redesign, a product of cooperation between an alumnus and Rensselaer's Design and Construction group, focused on creating a more welcoming space and improving the overall image of the building.