The Courier-Review.
19
Kansas in the day of peril, saved it to make it glorious for years to come.
At the close of the banquet served in the Library Building, Chancellor Snow rose and proposed the following toasts to be responded to by the various gentlemen present on the occasion:
Henry Van Brunt: "A Modern House for Books."
The architect is no orator save through his building, and, when that building is dedicated to its uses, his impulse is to retire into its shadow and let it speak for itself. If it seems to be dumb, then there is some essential thing wanting in it which should be there. If it seems to deliver its message with an unintelligible utterance or in an unknown tongue, the architectect may then possibly have a function in the ceremony—an humble function—that of an interpreter. In this case who is to blame? The architect who cannot talk plainly in his building, or the people who cannot understand? In the former case I should be standing here merely as an apologist; I have too great a respect for architecture to try to make excuses for it. But if the conditions of the art are such that there is no plain vernacular in which it can express itself and it must needs talk in a tongue more or less learned, more or less derived from the great lessons of history as taught in its monuments, I must patiently wait until this University has raised the standard of civilization and made the language of art intelligible.
I must publicly confess that the unintelligibility of modern architecture in a popular sense is its greatest reproach. The only remedy for it is in the conduct of the schools wherein this great art is taught. The difficulty is recognized by thoughtful men in the professions and they are even now making strenuous efforts to find a remedy. I hope the time is not far distant when in these halls such a school may be established and that your own professors will be lending their aid to the solving of this difficult problem. We do not desire to utter enigmas, but we seek for such sincerity and simplicity of
expression as to impress with a sense of pleasure the most unlettered beholders of our work, for such beauty and perfection of detail as to be intelligible to any scholar capable of poetic emotion.
But accepting things as they are at this moment, and confining our attention to the new library, let me in a few words improve the occasion by stating how this building took its shape and assumed a form, whether good or bad, which must remain more or less of an influence, unrecognized perhaps, but still an influence to affect the culture of every intelligent student of the University for years to come. Do not suppose that the architects, in giving to the building this especial form, have been unconscious of the gravity of their responsibility.
When this project was presented for the consideration of the architects, their first thought was to provide for the accessible and fireproof storage of a collection of books, subject to rapid but irregular increase in its various departments; second, to afford the most convenient accommodations to the administration of the library; third, to welcome the students with amplest provision for their comfort in one great reading hall, abundantly lighted, and in various seminary rooms adjusted to the pursuit of special studies; and, fourth, to provide a lecture hall of considerable dimensions with anterooms. The number of students to be simultaneously accommodated in the reading hall the number of books to be ultimately housed in the fire-proof book-stack dictated the scale and general dimensions of the building, the shape and combination of masses, which are apparent in its external aspects resulted from an attempt to satisfy the four practical conditions of use which I have recited with the most economical structure which could be devised consistent with safety and permanency.
Up to this point of development the building has at least the merit sincerity and honesty of purpose; for to the capable eye the exterior clearly betrays the general divisions of the interior and is the result of practical considerations. No feature of mere caprice has been