BLEGEN LIBRARY: CELEBRATING 75 YEARS

“For books are not absolutely dead things but do contain a potencie on life in them to be as active as he whose progeny they are.”

These words by John Milton from his Areopagitica are carved on the front of Blegen Library. The inscription is just one element illustrating the heritage of education and the history of the book on this beautiful Art Deco building. The structure is remarkable for its bronze work, sculptural panels, and other architectural details that celebrate the written word and the exploration of learning.

By the 1920s, only 20 years after opening, it was widely acknowledged that Van Wormer, UC’s original main library, was too small to accommodate the growing university and its library collections, which then stood at 108,699 volumes. University Librarian Edward A. Henry began planning for a new campus library in 1927. In 1928, Henry met with a committee of faculty to determine how the new library should look in architecturally expressing its purpose. What they came up with was a timeless design as relevant now as then.

The new main library was to be filled with symbols and words from the past that had some relevance to learning, books, and knowledge. To that end, sculptures, bronzes, and other architectural details were created. Ernest Bruce Haswell, a UC faculty member, made many of the models for the sculptural elements. Other sculptors included New Yorkers Mundhenk & Schoonmaker and Cincinnatian George Marshall Martin. The building was designed by Harry Hake and Charles H. Kuch and constructed for $892,000. Groundbreaking took place on January 2, 1929, with the opening just a short 18 months later.

The rich sculptural and design details of the building began with the building’s façade and continued throughout its interior. On the outside of the building were various panels depicting outstanding contributors to civilization including Moses, Confucius, Euclid, Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dante among others. A center panel on the building appropriately read: “The University Library is dedicated to the Advancement of Learning.” Inscribed on either side of the entrance were the names of major fields originally covered by the library: Philosophy, Science, Literature, Religion, History, and Politics. Sculptural details graced the entrance to the building and included a blazing sun disk and faces symbolizing Phospher, the morning star of the East, along with Hesper, the evening star of the West. On each exterior pylon, sculptured panels honored history’s great printers such as Benjamin Franklin, William Morris, Christopher Plantin, William Caxton, Aldus Manutius, and Johannes Gutenberg.

Inside, the library was built for comfort, efficiency, and style, and contained technology such as pneumatic tubes that carried books from the stacks to the Circulation Desk on a different level. The design of major library buildings in America in the 1920s and ‘30s often featured a central core of stacks where the floors were supported by cast-iron shelving structures. Openings between the stack levels and grate-like shelving encouraged airflow.

Throughout the library today, the decorative elements remain, including many other lovely details: sculptures, crown moldings, marble, and bronze work such as that found on the massive glass and brass doors leading to the old Circulation and Reference Reading Rooms on the fifth floor (now the entrance to the Curriculum Resources Center). Also on the fifth floor, where the Reference Reading Room was once located, are three chandeliers meant to inspire. On the first chandelier is the Hebrew inscription of Proverbs 3:13: “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding.” The second chandelier bears the Latin inscription from Terrence: “Nothing human do I consider alien to myself.” On the third chandelier, the Greek inscription by Democritus reads: “Do not aim at knowing everything.”

Built to hold 600,000 volumes and accommodate 1,000 readers, by the mid-1970s the library was becoming increasingly short of study space with carrels placed in the lobby and the hallways. A new library had to be planned and built, and, thus, Langsam Library opened in 1978 and continues to serve as the main library for the university.

The old Main Library underwent renovation, and in 1983 was reopened and renamed in honor of Carl Blegen, UC’s famed archaeologist, excavator of Troy, Pylos, and Nemea, and head of the Classics Department from 1951 to 1957. Blegen also served for a time as the assistant director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and was considered one of the leading students of ancient Greece. Given the building’s architectural links to the classical past, Carl Blegen was a perfect choice as namesake for the building.

When renovating the building, effort was made to preserve and clean the architectural details, although regrettably some things were lost. Broken marble had to be removed or reused elsewhere. The clock that once stood above the exhibit case in the main entryway was removed, though its outlines can still be seen today. At the front of the building, one can still look up to the top and find the panel illustrating the female figure of Civilization holding the lamp of knowledge. At this entrance can also be seen a depiction of the goddess Minerva surrounded by symbols of wisdom such as sunburts, five-pointed stars, keys to knowledge, dolphins, owls, and roses.

Minor renovations to the building have continued. In 2004, the entry bridge to the library was replaced. As in 1983, the architectural elements were carefully preserved, and the concrete side benches that were removed during the first renovation were restored.

Today, Blegen houses the Gorno Memorial Music Library, the John Miller Burnam Classics Library, the Curriculum Resources Center, the Archives and Rare Books Library, as well as the Classics Department, and offices for University Libraries’ Digital Projects Department and the College of Education, Human Services, and Criminal Justice. Serving the University of Cincinnati for 75 years, Blegen Library remains a vital library and academic building and its architecture is both visually stunning and intellectually stimulating.

For more on the history of Blegen Library and University Libraries, read The History of University Libraries, 1895-2005 by Don Heinrich Tolzmann, available online at <www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/archives/news.html>.

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