Billings Memorial Library was built in 1883 and designed by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson to resemble the Winn Library in Woburn, Massachusetts. Frederick H. Billings of Woodstock donated it to the University of Vermont.
It opened in 1885 and was a central part of campus life. In 1961 the university built a new library because Billings was too small, and in 1963 the old one became a student center.
After the Davis Center opened in 2007 as the new student center, Billings got an $11.4 million renovation that finished in 2018. It is home to academic departments again, including Special Collections.