Friends recalled that Davis was modest, quiet and friendly, and that he was committed to education — sometimes paying for promising students to attend college. His bequest reflected his commitment to education at Exeter. A world traveler and an extensive reader, Davis also enjoyed fine art and the outdoors, often visiting his camp in the Adirondacks, where he would ride, fish and hunt.

Davis Library broke ground in October 1911. It was designed by Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram, noted for his reinvention of American church and college architecture. A champion of the American Gothic Revival movement, Cram believed the Gothic style best reflected the spiritual and community ideals of late 19th- to early 20th-century American schools and colleges.

Cram, born a few miles from the Academy in Hampton Falls, attended Exeter briefly, then left before graduation to start an apprenticeship with the Boston architectural firm Rotch & Tilden. A profound religious awakening on Christmas Eve 1887, during a trip to Rome, may have inspired his preference for Gothic design. Still in business today, Cram’s architectural firm, Cram & Ferguson, has designed 19 Academy buildings, including Phillips Church and the current Academy Building.

Cram’s design for the Davis Library was a departure from his more famous work, like the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Davis was inspired by the 18th-century Merley House in Dorset, England. With origins in British architecture, the Neoclassical style was considered orderly and refined, a perfect context for building that represented classical learning.

Unlike any other secondary school library of its time, the 14,000-square-foot Davis Library was designed to hold 5,000 books in four floors of stacks. Classroom space on the first floor included an art studio, and the second-floor library featured a large librarian’s desk at the top of a marble staircase. The Mary Rawson Amen Room, named for the principal’s wife, Mary, contained books and display cases for rare collections on two levels connected by a spiral staircase. At the time, The Exeter Bulletin hailed the building’s exquisite beauty, noting, “it will lack no convenience for the safekeeping and use of its books and other treasures.”

Davis Library was a popular student retreat. Fred Roe ’39 remembered it as the place where he could indulge in his lifelong fascination with cars — a highlight of his years at Exeter. “Miss Vroom, the librarian, ordered at least two foreign books on automotive history for me,” he wrote in a letter published in the spring 2008 Bulletin. “I tried to spend time at Davis every day.”

In the same Bulletin issue, John C. Stone II ’49 credits the library with helping shape his love of hiking and camping. “When I arrived as a prep, I discovered the mountaineering collection and devoured it,” he wrote. “It really ignited a latent passion” for the outdoors.

Rodney Armstrong ’68 (Hon.), who served as librarian from 1950–73, wrote in the winter 2006 Bulletin that he remembered Davis “as a very welcoming, pleasant building to be in. Whether it was very functional as a library … was another matter.”

The Davis Library collection expanded over the decades, so Exeter planned a larger building. The Class of 1945 Library, designed by Louis Kahn, opened in 1971. Moving 60,000 books out of Davis was a campuswide affair. Students, including Judith Hall Howard ’73, gathered with faculty to form a human chain passing books from Davis to the new library. “Box by box we passed the contents of the Davis Library from one set of student hands to the next,” Howard recalled in the spring 2008 Bulletin.

Clubs met in the second-floor reading room, and students could prepare dinner in the first-floor kitchen or use the three photography darkrooms in the basement. For 15 years, WPEA broadcast from a basement studio in Davis, with a brief off-the-air interlude after thieves stole the station’s broadcasting equipment in 1991. Later, the building became a home base for prep and lower day students.

In 2006, when the Phelps Academy Center opened, Davis was repurposed again. The Admissions and Financial Aid offices moved into the first floor. The Amen Room housed a student lending library. The large reading room was transformed into a studio for the Theater and Dance Department with new sprung floors and floor-to-ceiling mirrors that covered the large windows.

“It was loud, but it brought students in and out of the space regularly,” says Dean of Enrollment John Hutchins, who worked in the building at the time. The dance studio moved when The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance opened in 2018. “We missed the interaction when students weren’t there,” Hutchins says.

Davis Hall

Exeter’s Campus Master Plan, developed in 2019–20, called for renovating Davis for administrative offices. Instead, Principal Rawson suggested preserving Davis for aca-demic use by relocating the Classical Languages Department to the first floor while returning the second floor to study and community gathering spaces. “The Classics were so important to the founding of the Academy,” Taylor, the campus planner, says. “With its beautiful architecture, it makes so much sense for the Classics Department to be in Davis.”

The renovations were made possible, in part, through The Allison S. and Lucile M. Behr Fund, established by the late Charles Allison Behr ’52 to support “the study of the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, culture and history.”

The newly renamed Davis Hall balances old and new. The first floor holds four Harkness classrooms and new instructors’ offices. One classroom is carved from space that used to be book stacks. Several retain their original oak floors. Display cases for department collections line one wall of the main hallway, facing the original 1911 bronze plaque commemorating Benjamin Price Davis, which hangs in a niche above a seating area.

The librarian’s desk is long gone from the top of the marble staircase, but the ornate gold clock, a gift from the class of 1912, remains. Visitors still pass through Corinthian columns into the second-floor reading room, although the dance studio’s sprung floors have been removed, revealing the original hardwood under-neath. The light and airy space is now named the Mary Homeier Rawson Reading Room in honor of Principal Rawson’s late wife, a talented teacher and former Exeter Summer instructor. Students use the wood-paneled space for quiet study and reading, or furnishings can be rearranged for community events. “The room brings together students of the Classics and academics from around campus to study,” Jinmin Lee ’26 says. “It’s the place to study on campus now.”

The Mary Amen Study, formerly the Mary Rawson Amen Room, with its spectacular circular staircase, floor-to-ceiling bookcases and mezzanine, now serves as the Latin Study.  The Kirtland Society, Exeter’s Classics Club, hosts meetings and gatherings there as well. “I appreciate having that room for Kirtland Society meetings,” Lee says. “We use the second floor for orations and speeches.”

Assistant Principal Eimer Page, who was involved in the decision-making about the space, points out: “It’s an odd turn of fate that Principal Amen’s spouse and Principal Rawson’s spouse shared such similar names — with one Mary having the name Rawson by birth and the other acquiring it by marriage — but the values and contemplative spirit of each woman live on in this place of such beauty and calm.”