Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Furness, the leading architect in Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century, was commissioned to build this library. Like other university buildings of the era, its exterior belies a highly workable and rational plan. It was recently restored by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.
Synopsis
Cloaked in its brilliant mantle of brick, fiery terracotta and red sandstone, the University of Pennsylvania Library stands as the mature-period masterwork of Philadelphia's premier Victorian-era architect, Frank Furness. Conceived in consultation with two eminent library theoreticians, the library plan evolved from practical experience with the inadequacies of nineteeth-century library buildings; the result was a modern factory for learning, a machine for the use and storage of books. Furness's rationalized plan, expressed on the exterior as a bold design, was challenged for decades, and anti-Victorian sentiment threatened the edifice with demolition as late as the 1960s. Renewed appreciation has since come full circle, however, culminating in a dramatic interior restoration by the eminent Philadelphia practice, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. Frank Furness's academic monument thus stands today as a defining architectural landmark of Philadelphia.