Reading Room
The libraries’ reading room is located just inside the Michigan Avenue entrance of the Museum, to the south of the grand staircase.
The original Ryerson Library was comprised solely of the Franke Reading Room. Design in the 1880s by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the Franke Reading Room was built at the site of the building’s original courtyard.
Elmer Garnsey designed the interior’s decorative scheme and Louis Millet designed the central skylight. Both the interior and the stained glass ceiling fixture have been restored during the 1990s by the architect Johh Vinci, who was also responsible for work done on the Chicago College of Performing Arts.
Included in the design is the inscription of significant writers in art and architecture on entablatures that circle the reading room. Throughout the space are artworks from the Art Institute's permanent collection. In alcoves surrounding reader workspace are shelves of reference books, indexes and select current periodicals.
Read more about this topic: Ryerson & Burnham Libraries
Famous quotes containing the words reading and/or room:
“The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“You never saw this room before a show,
Full of lank, shivery, half-drowned birds
In separate coops, having their plumage done.
The smell of the wet feathers in the heat!”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)