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--photo: Carol M. Highsmith-
Furness’s library at Penn is a large Gothic structure of red brick, brownstone, and terra-cotta. With its separation of the reading room from the book stacks, the building was considered highly innovative in its day. Light was admitted to the book stacks through a sloping glass roof and down through translucent glass floors. Furness studied in the atelier of Richard Morris Hunt and later became a mentor for Louis Sullivan.
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 6, 2007 8:02 AM.
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Comments (3)
Furness makes the list?! After losing so much of his energetic work to public disfavor... I imagine him now gruffly reflecting, "They like me, they really like me."
A wonderful building.
Posted by Amy M | February 9, 2007 12:33 PM
Posted on February 9, 2007 12:33
"He wore a marvelous red beard and designed buildings of red brick, trimmed with red sandstone and red terra cotta. He wore checked suits and shirts and adorned his interiors with checked patterns. He drew and swore at the same time."--An employee describing Frank Furness.
Posted by Vernon Reed, FAIA | February 10, 2007 2:34 PM
Posted on February 10, 2007 14:34
I recall how my wife and I would laugh at this building as ugly and overdone, out of place among the starker,other buildings of the Penn campus. But that was 1964 and we were just kids, awash in the Scandinavian simplistic craze. Looking back now I treasure those times I spent in its inviting alcoves, pulling books at random. Furness knew how to create a surrounding that would draw the intellectually curious into an unplanned hour of perusal.
Posted by Wallace | March 31, 2007 9:08 AM
Posted on March 31, 2007 09:08