ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Academic library postcards, part II

By Billy R. Wilkinson

Director, Albin O. Kuhn Library ir Gallery University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Interior views of notable libraries.

Editor’s Note: In November 1988 we published the author ’s article on postcards with exterior views of academic libraries. He regaled us with a discussion of his and others’ collections of cards ranging from pioneer cards to the contemporary. In this issue Billy Wilkinson, back by popular demand, holds forth on interior views. His future plans include an article on foreign library postcards, particularly if he is successful in obtaining a grant to study interiors of libraries in England. He is also peddling a bimonthly column to the media entitled “My Favorite Library Postcard. ”

Scarce, rare, even precious, might be the words to describe library postcards with views of interiors of academic libraries. In the author’s November 1988 article in C&R.L News (pp. 646-651; please see for a general background on library postcards and those who collect them), a count of individual cards in two leading collections revealed that the largest number of cards of an academic library was 57 for the Low Library at Columbia University, in the author’s collection of 5,205 library postcards. The Judith E. Holliday Collection had 38 Low Library cards. These are in contrast to the 158 New York Public Library and 156 Boston Public Library cards gathered by the author and 48 NYPL and 75

Boston Public ones held by Holliday. In even greater contrast, both the Holliday and Wilkinson Collections have no interior views of that magnificent McKim, Mead and White building, the Low Library. How strange that the glorious marblecolumned Low Rotunda is missing in Postcard Land? Not even the Columbiana Room now in the Low Library has an interior card. Does anyone have a postcard with the Low Rotunda?

Cornell and Yale Libraries

What about interior views of the other academic libraries that are most numerous in the Holliday and Wilkinson Collections? The exterior of the 1890 Cornell University Library with its distinctive clock tower numbered 16 in the Holliday Collection and 41 in the Wilkinson Collection. There are no interiors in either collection! Not even of the triple-tiered Andrew Dickson White Historical Library, the scene of one of the murders in that delightful mystery, The Widening Stain, by W. Bolingbroke Johnson (pseudonym of Morris Bishop), which is set in the Cornell Library. Surely someone out there has a postal of the White Library?

Marjorie Markoff has a wonderful postcard of the main reading room of the Cornell Library showing readers at long tables with bentwood chairs (mailed from Courtland, New York, to Quincy, Illinois, in 1908; see below for a description of the Markoff Collection.)

In the Wilkinson Collection, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is represented by 23 cards (Holliday Collection: also 23). The interiors of Sterling Memorial Library are seen on 14 cards (Holliday: 11). When one counts the “Old Library,” the “New Library,” and the Cross Campus Library, Yale is represented by an additional ten cards for a total of 47 postals of its libraries in the Wilkinson Collection (Holliday: 40 Yale cards). We finally find some interiors. In the Wilkinson Collection, 14 of the 23 Beinecke cards are interior views and three of the 14 Sterling Library cards are also interiors. There is one interior of the Cross Campus Library. The Holliday Collection has four interiors of Beinecke and four of Sterling.

The Markoff Collection

Recently Marjorie Markoff has kindly furnished data on her outstanding collection. She estimates that she has 6,500 library postcards, of which approximately 1,000 show academic libraries. Does she have the second largest library postcard collection in private hands (only surpassed by the Norman D. Stevens Collection)? Only about 300 of all her cards are of interior views, and only 36 are academic library interiors. That’s 0.0055% of the Markoff Collection! The special collection librarians of the profession would definitely declare interior views of academic library postcards rare.¹

Questions for discussion

Why are interior views of academic libraries so rare on postcards? Which are extant? How may they be categorized? Do other countries do better than the U.S. in publishing interior views of academic libraries? Do public, special, and other kinds of libraries, as well as other kinds of organizations, publish more interiors of themselves than do academic libraries?

In contemplating why interior views are so rare, perhaps it is because academe’s library buildings lack the statues or the architectural monumentality of the great public and special libraries. We have no Patience and Fortitude, the lions in front of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. We lack the Court of Neptune Fountain, with large figures spouting water in front of the Library of Congress. On the inside we do not have the murals of Clio, Minerva, Labor, Invention, and many others adorning the walls of the Library of Congress. We lack the Grand Stairway of the Library of Congress. Only the Boston Public Library has the Delivery Room designed by Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911) as the setting for his “Quest of the Holy Grail” murals. The author’s collection contains many of these lovely interiors, including 80 different cards of the murals in the Library of Congress.

Academe, however, does it occasionally and much more subtly. There is the postcard of a small fountain with four figures in the Librarian’s Court Yard of the Sterling Library at Yale (Fig. 1). It is not flaunted on one of New Haven’s busy streets, but inhabits an interior, private place for more intimate enjoyment. It might be used for chilling champagne at a reception. There is the columnar Delivery Room of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (Fig. 2). There was space and funding in at least one library in the American heartland to increase the scale and importance of the circulation desk lobby.

An astute observer of both postcards and architecture suggests that interior cards are scarce because interiors are very difficult to photograph. They were even more difficult to photograph in the past when we lacked the sensitive film, reflectors, flashes, and other recently developed equipment. The cavernous spaces of the Low Library Rotunda are especially difficult to photograph if you lack equipment to light the upper reaches.

The religious colleges and seminaries may have cared more about their libraries—even enough to publish a postcard. Two examples are the College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee, Massachusetts (Fig. 3) and the Crozer Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania (Fig. 4).

But one has to go abroad in academe to match the monumentality of the vaulted ceilings, grand staircases, and columnades of the interior postcards of the NYPL, Boston PL, or LC. An excellent example is the Upper Library, Old College, University of Edinburgh (completed in 1827) which certainly soars, at least in the postal in the author’s collection (Fig. 5). The Divinity School, Bodleian Library, Oxford University also flies exquisitely high (see cover).

Back home again in Indiana, there were arches above chairs awaiting students and faculty at the Valparaiso University Library (Fig. 6). The postcard designer even threw curves into the card.

Special collections and rare book libraries

Back in America, academe seems most interested in immortalizing through postcards its special collections departments in the main college or university libraries, or really flaunting the separate buildings for rare books, manuscripts, and other special collections—if one may judge from the author’s collection.

In the beginning, there was the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Handsome black and white interior postcards were published. Then there was the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington with early color chromes published for each of its special rooms (see Figure 7 for the Poetry Room of the Lilly Library). The author has five postcards of Lilly interiors and only one of its exterior. The culmination of these very special academic library postcards might be the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University—that “tower of books rising six stories high and encased in glass.”² As noted above, the author has 23 Beinecke cards with 14 of them showing the interior’s glorious display.

Fig. 1. Fountain, University Librarian’s Court Yard, Sterling Library, Yale University.

Fig. 2. Delivery Room, University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Fig. 3. Reading Room, Library, College of Our Lady of the Elms, Chicopee, Massachusetts.

Fig. 4. Library Room, Crozer Seminary, Chester, Pennsylvania.

Fig. 5. Upper Library, Old College, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Fig. 6. Reading Room, University Library, Valparaiso University, Indiana.

Did academic libraries borrow the idea of publishing postcards of the interiors of these special libraries from the many postcards of Thomas Jefferson’s library at Monticello, George Washington’s library at Mount Vernon, the Harry S Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, and many other such special libraries? Or are they simply marketing the cards in response to a demand by tourists? Or responding to requests by the campus bookstore, the development/fundraising office, or their own Friends of the Library group?

Major categories

Just as exteriors of academic libraries may be divided into various categories (pioneers, linens, chromes, leather, photographic, or even ones with glitter; advertising cards, political and social history, sets, signed artists, or “Greetings from …”)— so can interiors. Unhappily, the author has no pioneer card of an academic library interior. There is no leather one or an interior to which a loving hand has glued glitter. That seems to be the thing to do with the exterior of Low Library at Columbia. On the other hand, there appears to be a marked difference in the prevalence of linen and chromes. There is only one linen interior (Fig. 8). The author, however, bought 25 copies of this linen card in San Francisco: it depicts the fireplace of the Rudisill Library, Lenoir Rhyne College, Hickory, North Carolina, a few miles from his hometown. In contrast, he has many linen exteriors.

Chromes are plentiful in both interior and exterior academic cards. A good example of an older interior is the Lilly Library (Fig. 7). An excellent contemporary chrome of the Law Library at Golden Gate University, San Francisco, graces the cover of this issue. The author has resisted the temptation of including a hideous 1950s chrome in bluish green showing acres of tables and chairs under fluorescent lights in a “modern” university library reading room.

The interior fountain of the Yale University Librarian’s Court Yard (Fig. 1) is a perfect example of the photographic postal.

Once again as with exterior cards, all interiors are in one sense advertising cards. The interiors of the Lilly Library market the library and the Indiana University campus to prospective faculty, students and parents.

The Wilkinson Collection lacks a political and social history interior. Did ACRL president-elect Moffett publish a campaign postal of himself sitting at his desk in the Seeley G. Mudd Learning Center at Oberlin and neglect to send it to the author? It is rumored that the Norman D. Stevens Collection, however, acquired a wonderful card showing a replica of Azariah Root, the great Oberlin librarian, sitting at a computer terminal.

The author also lacks a set or series of academic library interiors and is still searching for a signed artist card of either an interior or exterior academic library. With a dearth of illustrative material for this final section of the article, he was tempted to include his favorite non-library interior postcard. It is the “Rest Room, Womans Building, Sandusky, O.” (with aspidistra, fern, wicker chairs, and reclining cot) and was purchased in beautiful downtown Sandusky as the author and his companions stopped to visit on the way to an ALA conference in Chicago. Suspecting that the esteemed editor might delete such an irrelevant illustration, the author was in despair.

The Davis Gift

The finale, however, was beautifully provided by James Davis, special collections librarian at UCLA’s University Research Library. A friend recently sent him an elegant English card of Longleat House and Safari Park (Fig. 9) and Davis immediately donated it to the Wilkinson Collection. The accessions officer/cataloger, Ann Wilkinson, protested that the card should not be included in the collection because the word “Library” does not appear anywhere on the card. This has previously been a requirement for inclusion in the collection. She was, however, overruled on the simple premise that such a delightful card cannot be excluded.

Several of you more fastidious readers may write to point out that Longleat House is not an academic library, and you are right. But the card must be seen by those who will appreciate it. Important trivia from the card’s verso: “In the Spring of 1966, the Marquess of Bath and Mr. Jimmy Chipperfield established in the grounds of a Stately Home, the first Safari Park in Europe.” The lion on the postal is Marquis, the first cub born at Longleat.

One more American illustration must also be seen (Baltimore chauvinism wins). The author will refrain from illustrating the lovely cards showing the “Great Window in the Vassar College Library” with the central figure of the window being “Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman in the world to be granted the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Padua, June 25, 1678”; the handsome color card showing women studying at Agnes Scott College’s Carnegie Library (from the Marjorie Markoff Collection); the black and white view card of the “Library in Academic Hall” of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis (also from the Markoff Collection); and the rare early color view of the Cornell University Library discussed above (again a prized item from the Markoff Collection) .

Fig.7. The Poetry Room, Lilly Library, Indiana University.

Fig. 8. Reference Room, CarlA. Rudisill Library, Lenoir Rhyne College, Hickory, North Carolina.

Fig.9. Library, Longleat House, Warminister, Wiltshire, England.

Baltimore’s best is the golden interior of the Peabody Library, Peabody Institute (Fig. 10). It is truly one of the great interior spaces of any academic library in the world; some would say one of this country’s great interior spaces!

Nor is there space to explore various other theories concerning academic library postcards, such as the Molesworthian one that the number of postcards of an academic library is in inverse proportion to the functional qualities of the building— with the Sterling Library at Yale and the Low Library at Columbia clearly demonstrating the point. The author instead invites his colleagues who care about library postcards (interior, exterior, academic, public or whatever) to pursue that and other ideas in future articles in this and equally appropriate journals.

Postscript

It is impossible to list the many donors (some as far away as Brazil) who responded to the plea for postals by the author in his first article. He, however, has written his thanks to each person for the 198 postcards of libraries which he received. Twenty-four of the cards were of interiors, with the most exquisite gift being ten photocards of the Sterling Library at Yale University from Gay Walker, curator of the arts of the Book (see Fig. 1 for one of the more active and probably the innermost of the cards: the fountain in the Yale Librarian’s Courtyard). She and the other donors are also thanked publicly for their largess with such gems as the “Nyack Public Library, Nyack on the Hudson, New York,” framed in living color with lovely blue forget-me-nots; and the “Rosenberg Day, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas” postcard with many citizens and their children proudly posed in front of the building. Public thanks are also gratefully extended to two continuing donors of many postals: Frederick Duda and James Davis.

Fig. 10. Interior, Peabody Library, Peabody Institute, Baltimore.

Second plea

As announcers on radio programs continually repeat: “Keep those cards and letters coming!” The author asks for more. He received cards and letters from old and new friends along with library postcards. He continues to welcome postcards (academic interior or exterior), questions and comments mailed to him at the Kuhn Library and Gallery, UMBC, Baltimore, MD 21228. He again promises to send you a library postcard in return, but probably not an interior.

Notes

1. The author has recently applied to the Molesworth Institute, Storrs, Connecticut, for a grant to seek definitive quantification with an exploration of the Norman D. Stevens Collection of Librariana.
2. MarjorieG. Wynne, The Rare Book Collections at Yale Recollections, 1942-1987. Malkin Lectureships in Bibliography (New York: Book Arts Press, Columbia University School of Library Service, 1988), 7.