Who's the Heretic?
Nov 11, 2011
One of the leaded glass windows in the University of Pennsylvania's original library building, now the Fisher Fine Arts Library.
Frank Furness designed the red-brick library, with its massive fireplaces and heavy iron fixtures, in 1888; Frank's older brother Horace, a Shakespearean scholar, selected the window mottoes and other inscriptions. In sharp contrast with the popular architecture of the day, which featured classical motifs and marble columns, Furness's iron-and-brick structure seemed to take its inspiration from Philadelphia's foundries and factories. People hated it, and he was fired from his post as campus architect. Furness's successors designed the neo-gothic buildings that came to characterize the University of Pennsylvania campus through the twentieth century.
