University of Pennsylvania Library: Frank Furness (Architecture in Detail)

Cloaked in its brilliant mantle of red brick, fiery terracotta and red sandstone, the University of Pennsylvania Library stood, at its dedication on 7th February 1891, as the mature-period masterwork of Philadelphia's premier Victorian-era architect, Frank Furness. Conceived by Furness in consultation with two eminent library theoreticians, the library plans evolved from practical experience with the fundamental inadequacies of 19th-century institutional library buildings. The result was a modern factory for learning - a machine for the use and storage of books. Furness's highly rationalized plan, expressed on the exterior as bold, ecclesiastical 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 and rehabilitation by the eminent Philadelphia architect, Robert Venturi.