原名罗氏图书馆，1916年落成后为图书馆，又称纪念堂。现称红楼图书馆。
红楼图书馆的前身是罗氏图书馆。1915年岁首，奠定隅石，次年初夏落成。“红楼”可谓“楼如其名”，从外墙、窗格、正门到屋内的木梯都是红色，这也延续了圣约翰建筑群的整体风格。立面形式仍然采用清水砖墙、硬山屋顶，不同的是圆拱券窗不见了，全部为狭长的平窗。正立面二楼为一排布置紧凑的狭长平窗。中西参半两层建筑，钢筋水泥及砖木结构，入口朝东，突出轴线，讲求对称，总体感觉庄重肃穆。
The Red Building Library was formerly the Low Library. At the beginning of the year 1915, the university laid the cornerstone of the library, which was completed in the early summer of the following year. The red building , as its name suggests, has its exterior wall, window panes, front door to wooden staircase inside all painted in red, which carries on the overall style of the St. John’s building complex. The facades are still dry walls of bricks and Chinese gabled roofs, with the exception that the round-arch windows are replaced by long and narrow casement windows. On the first floor of the front facade is a row of long and narrow casement windows in compact arrangement. It is a two-storey building with a mixture of half Chinese and half Western architectural elements, and reinforced concrete and brick-and-timber structures. With an east-facing entrance, it maintains symmetry of the structures along a prominent axis. Overall, it conveys a feeling of solemnity and dignity.
图书馆藏书极为丰富，曾任美国纽约市市长、哥伦比亚大学校长的罗氏也与其弟向圣约翰捐赠多种书籍，故圣约翰图书馆被命名为罗氏图书馆。1932年统计，图书馆藏书量达43000余册，中西文各半。1949年时藏书量更是达到12万余册。
The collection of books in the library was extremely abundant. St. John’s Library was named “the Low Library” in gratitude for Seth Low (who had been mayor of the New York City and president of Columbia University in the United States) and his brother, both of whom generously donated a variety of books to the library. In 1932, the library collection reached over 43,000 books, half in Chinese and half in foreign languages. By 1949, the collection reached more than 120,000 copies.
1952年，华东政法学院成立并接收这座图书馆。1958年，华东政法学院与上海财经学院、上海复旦大学法律系、中国科学院上海经济研究所和上海历史研究所合并，成立了上海社会科学院，该馆便成了上海社会科学院图书馆。1963年和1979年华政两度复校后，该馆仍为上海社会科学院所有，直到1999年上海社会科学院将图书运走后移交空馆舍。
In 1952, East China Institute of Politics and Law was established and took over the library. In 1958, it became the library of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences when it was established by merging East China Institute of Politics and Law with Shanghai Institute of Finance and Economics, the Law Department of Fudan University, Shanghai Institute of Economics and Shanghai Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The library remained under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences after the two reopenings of ECUPL, in 1963 and 1979 respectively, until 1999 when the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences removed the books and transferred the vacant building to ECUPL.
