The library was built in memory of Major Alexander Laughlin Jr., president of the Central Tube Company and a major in the American Expeditionary Forces of World War I, who died in 1926 from an infected tooth extraction. His grieving family commissioned Pittsburgh architect Eric Fisher Wood (1889–1962) to design this Italian Renaissance–style building of Indiana limestone. A tall flight of stairs leads to the round-arched, flat-roofed entrance portico supported on four slender Doric columns. Oversized, round-arched windows at each corner are set off by bands of limestone. All exudes a rather tomblike dignity. The interior is warmly lit and pleasantly open due to the clerestory windows illuminating the central square above the information desk. Sixteen monolithic black and gold composite Italian marble columns rise thirteen feet above the marble floor.