Belated Appreciation
In 1957, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin columnist and cartoonist Alfred Bendiner invited Frank Lloyd Wright to tour the Victorian behemoth, then threatened with demolition. The architect proclaimed: "It is the work of an artist."
The Furness Library was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1985. It is also a contributing property of the University of Pennsylvania Campus Historic District.
Between 1986 and 1991, the building was restored by a team that included Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, Inc., CLIO Group, Inc., and Marianna Thomas Architects. On the occasion of its centennial in February 1991, it was rededicated as the "Anne & Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library" (named for the restoration's primary benefactors). The $16.5-million restoration garnered rave reviews from New York Times critic Paul Goldberger, and received national awards from the American Institute of Architects (1993), the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (1992), and the Victorian Society in America (1991).
The restored building was featured prominently in the 1993 film Philadelphia.
In a 2009 appreciation in The Wall Street Journal, architectural historian Michael J. Lewis called it "a cheeky act of architectural impertinence" and "the last of its kind": "Today, the University of Pennsylvania building, now known as the Fisher Fine Arts Library, is widely acknowledged as one of the great creations of 19th-century American culture, and the principal work of its architect, Frank Furness (1839-1912)."
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Skylights light the 1st-story seminar rooms, and arched clerestory windows light the Rotunda Reading Room. The auditorium (now an architecture studio) occupies the apse's 3rd and 4th stories.
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Furness Library, from College Green (2007).
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The tower at night.
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Detail of the porch.
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The porch and main entrance at night.
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Lantern of the porch and the leaded glass fanlight.
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Interior view of the leaded glass fanlight (with a Shakespearean quote).
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The tower's staircase. The newelpost lamps are re-creations from the 1991 restoration.
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Looking through the arcade into the Rotunda Reading Room.
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Famous quotes containing the word appreciation:
“We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine. It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find in woman, though not the appreciation of it; perhaps it is not to be found at all in woman, but is only the feminine in man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)