Charged to construct the "best college library in America", famed architect Frank Furness developed the design for this library with consultation from Melvil Dewey (inventor of the Dewey Decimal System) and Harvard librarian Justin Winsor. A step into the interior reveals a grand staircase, lofty reading rooms and more impressive architectural details.
Addition, 1916
The Duhring Wing was built at the south end of the stacks, making their designed expansion impossible.
Addition, 1931
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Architect Robert Rodes McGoodwin drew up plans to cloak the entire building in sedate Collegiate Gothic brick and stone. The first step toward this was the 1931 addition of a reading room facing College Green (now the Arthur Ross Gallery) that masked the iron-and-glass stacks.Almost perversely, McGoodwin's incongruous Collegiate Gothic addition was dedicated as a memorial to Horace Howard Furness, however H.H Furness's Shakespeare home library home was housed in the addition before being moved to Van Pelt Library. A garden with plants found in Shakespeare's works was grown in front of the addition.