The Memorial Library Building

The Memorial Library Building

We are pleased to present to the readers of the "Weekly" a picture of the new Memorial Library Building as it appeared on the day of the corner stone laying. The view is from a point near the power house looking south. The incline leading to the scaffold, seen on the left, is at the rear of the building. The chairs arranged for the ceremonies are on the corner nearest Bomberger Hall.

The facing of the walls is of Chestnut Hill stone, a handsome and durable building stone of which the oldest houses of Germantown are constructed. The foundations and backing of the walls are of Skippack brown stone. The middle walls are of hard burned brick. The best of material and workmanship are going into the wall of this building which stands upon the highest point of the campus with a bed of solid rock more than one hundred feet thick underlying it.

Libraries should be built to endure and this one is being erected with this end in view. It will be a safe and permanent place for keeping the books and manuscripts and precious documents of the College. Two spacious fireproof vaults are being built into the basement. Who knows but what these vaults will be explored in some far distant age just as the libraries of old Babylon now buried under the debris of thousands of years, are being searched for their wealth of ancient lore.

The building will be of Colonial style. It is one hundred and three feet long and eighty feet in width from the entrance to the rear of the wings. The interior will include a richly finished vestibule containing on its walls the memorial inscriptions, a large well-lighted chamber occupying the whole of the main building for reading purposes, and the work-rooms, seminar and lecture rooms, a museum, and the office of the librarian. The book stacks, which will be in a fireproof compartment, will hold 60,000 volumes.

Oct. 17, 1921