Taihoku Imperial University Library (now NTU Gallery of History)

The Taihoku Imperial University Library (台北帝国大学附属図書館, Taihoku Teikoku Daigaku Fuzoku Toshokan) was constructed in 1929 and completed on January 19, 1930, soon after the establishment of Taihoku Imperial University in 1928. The building stands beside the iconic Royal Palm Boulevard (椰林大道), the grand palm-lined axis of the campus. Designed by the engineering department of the Taiwan Governor-General's Office (台湾総督府) in a Western eclectic architectural style, the two-story reinforced concrete structure features distinctive arched windows, red-brick accents, and classical proportions characteristic of Japanese colonial institutional architecture in Taiwan.

The library was organized with book stacks on the first floor and reading rooms on the second floor. From its inception, the collection grew rapidly to support the university's unique academic mission focused on tropical and southern region studies. By 1944, the library's holdings ranked third among Japan's nine imperial universities — a remarkable achievement for a colonial institution only 16 years old. The collections were particularly strong in materials relating to tropical agriculture, colonial administration, Southeast Asian ethnography, Austronesian linguistics, and tropical medicine, reflecting the university's role as the academic arm of Japan's nanshin-ron (南進論, "southward advance") policy.

During the wartime period (1937–1945), the library served as an essential resource for the university's expanding strategic research apparatus. The Tropical Medicine Research Institute (熱帯医学研究所, established 1939), the Southern Humanities Research Institute (南方人文研究所, 1943), and the Southern Resources Science Research Institute (南方資源科学研究所, 1943) all relied on the library's collections for their research into tropical diseases, occupied Southeast Asian societies, and natural resource exploitation. The library also housed rare manuscripts, maps, and government documents essential to Japan's colonial governance of Taiwan and its wartime administration of occupied territories in the South Seas.

On May 31, 1945, during the devastating Taipei Air Raid (台北大空襲), 117 B-24 Liberator bombers of the U.S. Fifth Air Force struck targets across Taipei. While the university campus sustained damage, the library building itself survived the war largely intact, preserving its irreplaceable collections. Following Japan's surrender and the transfer of sovereignty to the Republic of China, the library was renamed the National Taiwan University Main Library (國立臺灣大學圖書館) in November 1945 and continued to serve as the university's central library for over five decades.

By the 1990s, the aging building could no longer accommodate the university's growing collections and modern library needs. In November 1998, library operations were relocated to a new purpose-built Main Library at the far (eastern) end of the Royal Palm Boulevard. The historic building passed to the College of Liberal Arts, and its second-floor reading room was repurposed as the Gallery of NTU History (臺大校史館), inaugurated on June 22, 2005 and opened to the public that November as a museum documenting the university's evolution from its colonial origins through the postwar era. The building, listed as a monument in 1994, has been a Taipei municipal monument since 1998, recognized as one of the finest surviving examples of Japanese colonial institutional architecture in Taiwan. Its arched entrance, grand interior staircase, and original structural elements have been carefully preserved, offering visitors a tangible connection to the intellectual history of Japan's imperial university system in its colonial territories.