Benjamin Franklin

A DESCRIPTIVE REPORT
ON THE
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
GENERAL LIBRARY BUILDING

With particular attention
to the interpretation of the sculpture, the
chandeliers, and the printers marks
which are used as decoration

Prepared by Edward A. Henry

As a supplement to the
Biennial Report for the years 1949-1951

Cincinnati
University
Library

            The University of Cincinnati General Library building is unusual in that it was built in a natural amphitheater. Construction began with a great wall across the amphitheater. Then as earth was excavated for the foundation of the building it was used to fill up the shallower portion of the amphitheater and so provide a level approach to the building. The building is seven stories high with the main doorway at the fourth level. Entrance is by means of a bridge from the top of the great wall to this doorway. Below the bridge, at the third floor level is the service driveway and the lower entrance. By this driveway all mail, express and freight is received and dispatched.

            The general idea in planning the building was that the undergraduate college student who comes to study for an hour between class periods will be served on the entrance floor. Here on one side of the entrance is the Reserved Book Reading Room with 208 seats and all books reserved for undergraduate courses. On the other side is the Periodical Reading Room with 132 seats and current issues of over a thousand magazines and newspapers, including such popular ones as Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, etc. At the rear end of this floor are the Stephen Collins Foster Memorial Room, the George Elliston Poetry Room and ample rest rooms. When the student wishes to do more intensive reading he will walk up one flight of stairs to the fifth floor. Here will be found the Dictionary Card Catalog, the Circulation Desk where all general circulating books are drawn out, the Main Reference Desk, the General Reference Reading Room, the Rare Book Room and the library offices and work rooms.

            The second, third and sixth floors of the building serve primarily graduate students and upper-class students who are majoring in certain departments. The main book stacks are located below the entrance floor in the rear portion of the center section of the building on the first, second, and third floor levels. These stacks have a working capacity of about four hundred and fifty thousand volumes and have entrances from the various reading rooms.

            On the second floor level at the south end of the building is the reading room for Political Science and Municipal Reference. At the north end is the reading room of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, whose books occupy about one-eighth of the bookstacks.

            On the third floor at the south end is the Graduate Reading Room for the humanities and social sciences except those mentioned elsewhere. At the north end is the Mathematics Reading Room. Here also is the room for binding preparation, receiving and shipping.

            On the sixth floor at the south end is the headquarters of the Classics Department with eight faculty studies, the Burnam Classics Reading Room, and, on the seventh (attic) floor above, a bookstack room with a capacity of about 600,000 volumes. At the north end is another larger reading room planned for the Modern Languages but not in use at present.

            Scattered over the building are 52 private studies for members of the faculty who are engaged in research and four rooms for small graduate seminar classes.

            Of particular interest are the various decorations of the building. As one approaches from Clifton Avenue he will observe the front of the building is divided into a large central section with the seven great windows of the Reference Reading Room and two pylons, one at either end.

INSCRIPTIONS AND SCULPTURES

            On the parapet of the central section are two inscriptions. At the north, one from Sir Francis Bacon’s Essay on Education:

            READ NOT TO CONTRADICT AND CONFUTE NOR TO
            BELIEVE AND TAKE FOR GRANTED NOR TO TALK
            AND DISCOURSE BUT TO WEIGH AND CONSIDER

At the south, one from John Milton’s Areopagitica:

            FOR BOOKS ARE NOT ABSOLUTELY DEAD THINGS
            BUT DO CONTAIN A POTENCIE OF LIFE IN THEM
            TO BE AS ACTIVE AS THOSE WHOSE PROGENY THEY ARE

            In the center of the parapet is a sculptured panel representing modern civilization as the product of the east and the west. A female figure, civilization, holds up the lamp of knowledge as men representing the east and the west stand by her. Behind the figure representing the east is a panel in three sections. Above, upon a scroll, is the Hebrew word ? ? ? (light), in the middle there are three Egyptian pyramids, and below is an Assyrian winged lion with a royal human head. Behind the western figure is a similar panel. Above, upon an open book, is the Latin word LUX (light), in the middle is a medieval castle, and below is a wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. Below the fifth floor windows in the two pylons are rather large sculptured panels which pick up these themes. That on the south pylon represents the eastern contributors to civilization. Reading from right to left they are Sargon the Great, Cheops (seated with a model of a pyramid in his lap), Hammurabi, Moses (with his tablet of commandments), Darius the Great (with a model of the Behistun inscription by means of which cuneiform writing was the first deciphered), Confusius, Gautama the Buddha, Jesus and Justinian (with a volume of the Corpus Juris Civilus in his arm and a relief of the Sancta Sophia Church in the background). Below are carved the words EX ORIENTE LUX, (light from the east). On the north pylon the similar panel, from left to right shows Euclid (with a geometric pyramid on his hand), Homer (with his lyre), Phidias (with a model of his statue of Athena), Plato, Herodotus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Galileo (with an astronomical instrument in his hand), and Dante. Below are the words EX OCCIDENTE LUX (light from the west).

            At the level of the fifth floor on each pylon are three small sculptured panels honoring great printers. Around the corner on the north end is Benjamin Franklin, on the front at the left is William Caxton, at the right Aldus Manutius. On the south pylon as the left John Gutenburg, at the right Christopher Plantin and around the corner at the south end, William Morris.

            The sculptured entrance is crowned by a blazing sun-disk. At the right end and left ends are faces symbolizing Phospher the morning star (the east or Orient) and Hesper the evening star (the west or Occident). The legend on the center panel reads:

THE
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
DEDICATED TO
THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

            All of these sculptures are the work of the New York sculptors Mundhenk and Schoomaker working under the general supervision of Lee Lawrie. However the themes were suggested by the University Librarian.

            Above the three windows on either side of the entrance are words chosen by Dean Louis T. More, then chairman of the Faculty Committee on the Library, to indicate some of the more important fields of knowledge covered by the library. They are PHILOSPHY, SCIENCE, LITERATURE, RELIGION, HISTORY, POLITICS.

            In the doorway are two groups of bronzes. Over the transom is a large bronze grill designed to show various symbols of wisdom. In the center is an almost life size figure of Minerva. Around her are sun-bursts, five-pointed stars of human wisdom, six-pointed stars of divine wisdom, the key to knowledge, the dolphin, the owl, the rose, etc. The group is a series of eight silhouette bas-reliefs over red Verona marble which tell the story of early writing and book making. On the soffit is “oral tradition.” An old man passes to the father the lyre to the music of which he sings the stories of the past of the past which the father, upon receiving the lyre will, in turn, sing to his children who are behind him. On the left door is the early Pyrenees cave man drawing pictures upon the cave wall which may or may not be writing. Below is the Assyrian scribe writing cuneiform, a sample of which may be seen on the side of his throne. On the right doorpost is the Hindu scribe writing upon a palm leaf book similar to one in our Rare Book Room. Below is an Egyptian scribe writing upon a papyrus scroll. Over the center door are shown a boy and a girl, modern youth using the product of this long history. All of these bronzes were designed by George Marshall Martin, then of the Hake & Kuch architectural firm. They were modeled by Earnest Bruce Haswell, now a member of the College of Applied Arts Faculty.

            Entering the building one passes through a vestibule done in bronze on the inside of which are shown the signs of the zodiac and two inscriptions. The one at the left, in Greek, is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 15:4. The one on the right, in Latin, was found in an old European Monastery. In translation the two read, “Whatsoever things are written aforetime were written for our instruction in order that we might have hope,” “Now read, now pray, now labor with thy whole mind thus will thine hours be short and thy labor light.” The latter was supplied by Dr. Robert Shafer. The former was selected by the University Librarian to go with and balance the Latin.

THE CHANDELIERS

            Another interesting feature of the building is a series of chandeliers bearing proverbs in various foreign languages cast in bronze silhouettes which hang in the fourth and fifth floors. Just inside the doorway is one with a Japanese proverb which was provided by Professor Shiro Tashiro of the College of Medicine. A free English translation runs, “There are no age limits to learning. Anyone can learn anything if he studies it a hundred times.” This chandelier is repeated seven times in the corridor of the two floors. In the center of the entrance lobby is a large chandelier with an Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription supplied to us through an old teacher, Dr. J.H. Breasted, by Dr. John A. Wilson of the University of Chicago. It is a saying of Ptah-hotep, an early Egyptian sage. In English it may be read, “Be not proud because of thy knowledge; be not puffed up because of thy manual skill; no art can be wholly mastered; no man can attain perfection in manual skill.”

            In the Reference Reading Room the south chandelier bears a Hebrew inscription from Proverbs 3:13. In English, “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding.” The center chandelier bears the familiar Latin inscription from Terence, “Humani nihil a me alienum puto,”—(“Nothing human do I consider alien to myself.”) The north chandelier bears a Greek inscription from Democritus which may read, “do not aim at knowing everything.”

            In the Rare Book Room is a Chinese Proverb given us by a Chinese graduate student. It may be read, “Libraries are valuable to readers because they preserve the riches of the world from which come the beginning of wisdom. Everything in the heavens or upon the earth is for our appreciation.”

PRINTERS MARKS

            Most early printers used one or more devices as a sort of trade mark to identify their books. We have used 27 of these as decorations in our building. One of the most familiar ones is the anchor and the dolphin of the Aldus Manitius of Venice which may be seen in bronze above the drinking fountain on the side of the grand staircase. Aldus was the first printer to specialize in editions of the Greek and Latin classical authors. Above the display case opposite the stairway is the device of Estienne Dolet of Lyons, France. At the south end of the fourth floor corridor above the door to room 410 is the device of Thielman Kerver of Coblenz, Germany. At the north end of the same corridor is the device of Clard Mansion of Bruges, Belgium, who worked many years with William Caxton.

            In the bronze inner doors of the vestibule we have reproduced six of the many devices using combinations of the cross, the orb, and the old merchant’s mark 4. Starting from the left, the first mark is that of H. & P. Hurus of Zaragonza, Spain. The second is the mark of Nicolaus Jenson who was associated with Johannes de Colonia in Venice and was one of the greatest designers of type of all time. This device has been taken over as the trade mark of the National Biscuit Company so is well known today. In the center door the left hand device is that of Bernardinus de Vitablius who printed in Venice from 1494-1536. The other is the mark of Guilluame Le Rouge who printed at Troyes from 1491-1496.

            As one starts up the stairway he will discover four devices along the edge of the fifth floor. The one at the south end of the east edge is that of Sixtus Reisinger who printed in Naples, Italy, from 1471-1479. To the left of that is the mark of Laurence Andrewe who was printing in London in 1527-1530. Around to the north the first one is the device of Augustin Courbe who was printing in Paris in 1644, and the last one is the well-know mark of one of the greatest printers of Paris, Robert Estienne, or, as he is often known, Stephanus. He took over his father’s press in 1524 and became famous for his great dictionaries of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and many other fine books.

            Going up that stairway one sees above the door to Room 510 another widely known device, that of John Froben of Basie. Perhaps he is best known as the favorite printer of Erasmus. Incidentally his device is very much like the caduceus of Mercury and the modern medical corps.

            The six doors to the Circulation Hall have above them six devices which are copies from books in our Rare Books Room. Above the center door on the south side is the mark of Octavinius of Scotus of Modoetia (Monza), Italy, who printed and published from 1498 to about 1522. The work is a four volume set of writings of John Duns Scotus bound in two volumes and printed at Venice by Bonetus Locatellus for Octavianus Scouts. Over the other two doors on that side are two shields copied from the colophon of the Supplementus Sumnae Pisanellae of Nicolaus de Ausom printed at Nuremberg in 1475 by Johann Sensenschmidt (at the left) and Andreas Frisner at the right.

            On the north side of the hall the mark at the left is that of Giles Widdows of London in 1630. In the center is the familiar device of Christopher Plantin of Leyden, Holland, from whose presses we have volumes, chiefly classic texts. The one at the right is of particular interest because it is an Aztec-Spanish, Spanish-Aztec dictionary by Alonso de Molina. It was printed in 1571, just 69 years before the Bay Psalm Book which was printed in Plymouth Colony in 1640 and is usually referred to as “the first book printed in America.”

            The remaining seven printers marks are cast in bronze and arranged in slightly different order in the bronze grills over the triple windows on the fourth floor level of the two pylons on the front of the building. We will describe them as they are arranged at the north window.

            In the center of the left-hand narrow grill is the “Anchora Sacra,” (or four fluked grapnel), the mark of Theodoric Martens who printed at Antwerp from 1493-1497 at at Louvain from 1498-1528. (The figures above and below are mere decorations.) In the large center grill the device at the top is the first one ever used in a book. It is the mark of Fust and Schoeffer and was first used in the great Psalter of 1457. Fust was the goldsmith who twice loaned Gutenberg money to print the great Bible which was the first book of any size printed in Europe. When Gutenberg failed to pay the notes on time, Fust seized Gutenberg’s property, took over his presses, and engaged Gutenberg’s illuminator, Schoeffer, to continue the printing business. The device of William Caxton, the former English foreign agent who made a fortune, retired and in 1471 went to Cologne, Germany, where he learned the printing trade under Huldrich Zell. He returned to Bruges were, with Colard Mansion as aid, he printed several books in English. Probably Mansion was the actual printer. Caxton was editor and publisher. In 1476 he took his equipment to Westminster and became the first printer in England. There, before his death in 1491, he printed many very fine books of which his Chaucer is possibly best known.

            At the bottom of the grill with the word “Kelmscott” in a decorative panel, is the mark of William Morris the brilliant British artist and poet. His interest in typography began in 1889 and fifteen months later he set up a hand press in Kelmscott Manor, designed and cast his own type, and in about six years until his death in October 1896, accomplished a revival of interest in Britain in printing as a fine art. He designed and cast three different fonts of type and issued many very handsome volumes the last of which was his great Chaucer, which is counted by many to be the finest book ever printed in English. It required three years of planning and designing and two years for the actual printing. It was completed in June 1896, just about three months before his death.

            At the left of the Caxton device is the armillary sphere device which appears in an edition of Bocaccio’s Decameron, printed in Amsterdam by Daniel Elzevir in 1679. He was one scion of the great Elzevir family which issued scores of well edited classic texts in tiny 24mo and smaller formats for more than a century. Louis, the first Elzevir, issued his first book in 1583. His usual mark was a tree very much like the Estienne device which appears in our stair-hall.

            At the right is the fleur-de-lis mark of Lucantonio Giunta of Florence who was the founder of a family of printers which issued books in Florence, Venice, Cremona and one scion of which moved to Lyons. Lucantonio was active from 1482-1536.

            A few final words of statistics. The planning for our library building was begun in 1927 by Mr. Julian S. Fowler who was then the University Librarian. The site and general dimensions of the building were agreed upon by March 1928 when he accepted a call to become Librarian of Oberlin College. In April the undersigned was invited to become University Librarian an dtook over the planning task at once. He was elected on May 1 and spent several days each month with the architect and the president until he came to Cincinnati to take formal office on August 1. The working drawings were completed in early November by the architects, Hake and Kuch. Bids were taken in early December and contracts award. Ground was broken on January 2, 1929. The building was opened to the public on June 10, 1930, almost three months ahead of the terms of the contract. It has never been closed since except on Sundays, legal holidays, and for two weeks during the 1937 flood when neither city water nor heat was available.

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