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The first time I saw the library at Phillips Exeter Academy, I didn’t understand the fuss. For five hours in the car, my interior-designer mother raved about this triumph by mid-20th-century architect Louis I. Kahn. Arriving at the school’s admissions office for my interview, however, I distinctly remember my 14-year-old self glancing at the library and thinking that nothing about the 1971 building said “masterpiece.”
The brick nine-story cube—its corners chamfered and its windows and doorways forming a grid—stood bulky…