bookporn #31: public library (II): chicago

what strikes first of all, in the Harold Washington, is the space: ten floors of it, a library with pretensions to the prairie:

even amidst the cluster of shelves, when it looks just like a library ought to, the vanishing point still exerts its strange, distant magnetism, enticing one to plunge ever forward

but, in the spirit of judging libraries by their contents, here is a small sample of things that can be found in Chicago’s public library: a wonderful bust of Saul Bellow

and some writing on the wall — discreet, minimal words under spacious, vaulted ceilings of the entrance lobby

(strangely sanguine words for one who also wrote

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many

and

Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

and

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.)