Front Lawn, Forecourt and Statues
The grassy lawn in front of the library's grand entrance on Swanston Street is a popular lunch-spot for the city's workers and students at the adjacent RMIT University. Originally enclosed by a picket fence, then by a wrought iron fence and gates in the 1870s, the space was opened with the removal of the fence in 1939.
A number of statues are in the entrance area. A pair of bronze lions graced the park from the 1860s until 1937. There are statues of Mr Justice Sir Redmond Barry, Q.C., designed by James Gilbert and built by Percival Ball, installed in 1887; Saint George and the Dragon, by the English sculptor Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, installed in 1889; Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc), a replica of the statue by French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet, installed in 1907; and Charles La Trobe, by Australian sculptor Peter Corlett, installed in 2006.
On Sundays between 2:30 pm and 5:30 pm, a speakers' forum takes place on the library forecourt, where orators take turns in speaking on various subjects.
Read more about this topic: State Library Of Victoria
Famous quotes containing the words front, forecourt and/or statues:
“You did not expect to find such spruce trees in the wild woods, but they evidently attend to their toilets each morning even there. Through such a front yard did we enter that wilderness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“There’s a wonderful family called Stein:
There’s Gert and there’s Ep and there’s Ein.
Gert’s poems are bunk,
Ep’s statues are junk,
And no-one can understand Ein.”
—Anonymous.