Johnson Controls — Protecting Civilization

Johnson Controls helps protect prominent library collection

April 1, 1982  (PD: 201304)

The Chicago North Loop News reported on April 1, 1982 that Chicago’s Newberry Library’s new ten-story book stack building had been finished, complete with a Johnson Controls computerized system to monitor security, fire detection, temperature and humidity.

The Newberry was founded in 1887 following a bequest from the estate of Chicago land developer and city leader Walter Loomis Newberry.  Free and open to the public, the Newberry has since grown into one of the world’s leading repositories for materials relating to the civilizations of Western Europe and the Americas.

The library’s vast collection included (in 1982) some 1.4 million volumes, 5 million manuscripts and 60,000 maps – all of which had to be moved into the new $12.5 million book stack building.  The move was expected to take forty days at a rate of 1,000 shelves, or 39,000 volumes, a day.