Inside The Reading Room
A large raised engraving (1911) by B.L. Pratt of Collis Potter Huntington, dedicating the building to his memory, greets visitors entering the Reading Room. An oil painting of Huntington, presented to the library by the citizens of West Chester in 1893, is over the fireplace.
Covering the fireplace is a large-scale map, Throggs Neck in the 1850s, drawn by Bronx historian, John McNamara. The original Visitors Register has its own stand and is in use today. The first signature dates to 1891, before the library officially opened. Booker T. Washington registered as a visitor in 1892 and 1894.
The furniture in the library is in keeping with its turn-of-the-century character. Much of it is original. Although no longer in operation, three fireplaces grace the area. The piping for the reading room's original gas lighting is most obvious in the small book stack room in the rear. A wood sculpture of the library, carved by Patrolman John H. Jones in 1901, during his lunch breaks in the park across the street, sits on top of a bookshelf.
The large map case and the library's card catalog are still in use. Other items of interest include vintage typewriters, one a very early Woodstock electric model, and a 1917 Tiffany grandfather's clock.
Read more about this topic: Huntington Free Library And Reading Room
Famous quotes containing the words inside the, reading and/or room:
“There was a young lady of Ryde
Who swallowed some apples and died.
The apples fermented
Inside the lamented
And made cider inside her inside.”
—Anonymous.
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the only way in which Mr. Brooke could be coerced into thinking of the right arguments at the right time was to be well plied with them till they took up all the room in his brain. But here there was the difficulty of finding room, so many things having been taken in beforehand. Mr. Brooke himself observed that his ideas stood rather in his way when he was speaking.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)