#the harold washington library

[theinternetisaweboflies]

My favorite place in Chicago is probably the Winter Garden at the top of the Harold Washington Library.

[copperbadge]

[ID: An architectural model standing on a wooden plinth; the model has cut-away walls and funky windows, and shows four floors of a large public building with tables, shelves, chests of drawers, stairs and escalators, etc. including tiny models of people going up the stairs.]

The Harold Washington Library Center or HWLC as we call it (I always say "HWLC!" like I'm a viking about to recite an epic poem) is a massive nine-storey library in downtown Chicago, and it's also my local library. I've been going there lately some evenings to write without being harassed by cats. The Royals And The Ramblers really should be dedicated to the Harold Washington Library.

ANYWAY, on the eighth floor they have an exhibit off in a corner of models of rejected designs for the library. Above you can see one of them, but if something looks a little off, it did to me too. It turns out that the glue holding the ceiling tiles of the model in place has begun to fail, and a terrible structural collapse has struck.

OH THE HUMANITY! Someone rescue that poor woman! That dude on the right nearly got his head taken off! THERE ARE CHILDREN ON THE STAIRS! SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!

[ID: The second image is a close-up of the main stairs of the model, which shows a number of ceiling tiles have fallen to the ground. Some have knocked over a woman who lies among them; others block peoples' way, or lean precariously over them while balanced on railings. It looks actually very convincingly like the model of a real disaster.]

[sdpubliclibrary]

Temporary Services

The Library Project

[pandora-books]

Altar for the Unbanned, Harold Washington Library, Chicago. Model: Sunshine

[kodachrome-net]

Let the Light In. Harold Washington Library, April 2024

[rabbitcruiser]

Bibliomania Day

Stephen Blumberg loved books. It has been written that “it was his habit to read constantly through the night, cat-napping, walking, reading, dozing, waking, reading again, never fully sleeping.” Stephen Blumberg didn’t just love books, he was a bibliomaniac. Bibliomania is when someone has a strong love of books, where they collect them to the point of hoarding, and social relations and health may suffer. Symptoms may include acquiring more books than would be useful for any reason or getting many copies of the same book. The term was coined by John Ferriar, who published a poem in 1809 with the word as its title, for his friend Richard Heber, who had the condition. The term became used to describe obsessive book collectors. That same year, Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin published Bibliomania; or Book Madness. Bibliomania is different from bibliophilia, which is a healthy form of love for books.

On March 20, 1990, Stephen Blumberg’s bibliomania caught up with him. He was arrested for stealing more than 23,600 books (weighing 19 tons) from 268 libraries, universities, and museums. It had taken him over 20 years to steal them, and he got them from 45 states, Washington D.C., and Canada. After originally being thought to be valued at around $20 million, the value of the books was estimated at $5.3 million. He is known as the number one book thief in American history and became known as the Book Bandit. The books he stole, which included a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin among other rare books, became known as the “Blumberg Collection.”

An acquaintance of Blumberg, Kenneth J. Rhodes, turned him in for a $56,000 reward. During Blumberg’s trial, a psychiatric doctor let it be known that Blumberg had gone through psychiatric treatment as an adolescent. The defense claimed that Blumberg had stolen the books because of psychiatric issues beyond his control. According to the defense, Blumberg had thought he was saving the books from destruction by stealing them. He thought that the government was trying to keep them so that everyday people wouldn’t have them, and he thought he was acting as custodian of the books and doing something good. Because he was well-intentioned, he said he would have never sold any of the books for a profit, and hoped they would go to another person who would take good care of them after he was gone. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 71 months in prison and given a $200,000 fine, and insanity or psychology wasn’t factored into the decision. He was released on December 29, 1995, and has since been arrested for burglary multiple times.

On Bibliomania Day, we remember Stephen Blumberg and his remarkable feat of stealing over 23,600 books. Could you buy, steal, or gather together that many books? Probably not, but you aren’t the world’s most famous bibliomaniac. Perhaps on Bibliomania Day, you could at least try.

How to Observe

Celebrate the day by getting as many books as possible. It’s probably best not to steal them as Stephen Blumberg did, but that’s a decision you will have to make for yourself. You could start by getting some books about bibliomaniacs, such as A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books or The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. After that your options are limitless. As bibliomaniacs tend to collect any and all books, regardless of their value, you could just start trying to gather up any books you can find. But maybe it’s best to start by getting some of the best fiction or non-fiction books of all time.

Source

[blorboresidue]

our library system also has the first volume of よつばと！ yet another big W for the chicago public library system 👍👍👍

[curfewplugs]

The Harold Washington Library–State/Van Buren station in Chicago should be a meme

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: the Winter Garden of the Harold Washington Library, Chicago.

[theinternetisaweboflies]

Art Institute Lion visits other Chicago landmarks

[copperbadge]

Prowly thinks this book is an instruction manual and he is interested in learning.

[ID: Prowly the Halloween Owl is sitting on a shelf at the Harold Washington Library Center; he is seated in amongst volumes on publishing and bookbinding. Directly behind him are three copies of The Map Thief, a book about a rare map dealer who made a fortune selling stolen goods.]

[weirdquark]

My household calls this the Batman building because it looks like Batman should be perched on the corner decorations

Warning: Certified library post incoming

Went to the Harold Washington Library today for the first time!

From Wikipedia:

The Harold Washington Library Center is the central library for the Chicago Public Library System. It is located just south of the Loop 'L', at 400 S. State Street in Chicago. […] Opened in 1991, it functionally replaced (after more than a decade) the city's 19th-century central library.

The building contains approximately 756,000 sq ft (70,200 m2) of work space. The total square footage is approximately 972,000 sq ft (90,300 m2) including the rooftop winter-garden event space. It is named in honor of Mayor Harold Washington.

It’s a Postmodern building that borrows elements from many of the classic post-Great Fire Chicago buildings that surround it; with a base of large granite blocks, with a red brick exterior, evoking the Beaux Arts style; with patinated aluminum acroteria ornaments in the forms of owls and seed pods. It looks deceptively older, but then you notice details like the playfully swoopy lanterns over the doors.

part 1 of 5, see reblog chain

[dlyarchitecture]

[archinform]

"Elevated R.R. Loop, Van Buren St., Chicago"

Postcard, mailed 1906

This is the curve of the el tracks at Van Buren and Wabash. Old Colony and Fisher buildings in the background; low buildings in middle left are current site of Harold Washington Library; A.W. Rothschild store on the right.

[scoobydoo-ghoulschool]

I knowww it's because they filmed the majority of the show in Toronto but the fact Fraser doesn't get to enjoy like any of the fun bits of living in a city like Chicago is a travesty. No theater? No Art Institute? No Museum of Science and Industry? No Millennium park? Grandson to two librarians never seen near any of the 81 Libraries????

Thankfully I don't have to work on location for fic writing, so I found out it's only a 21 minute walk to the Harold Washington Library from the Canadian Consulate building. Yay.

[say-it-with-sizzle]

Yeeeeeah, maybe it's a taller order than I thought. Sorry about that, heh.

It still amazes me that legendary Pokémon can just... appear! And you can see them! And, like, you can look 'em up on MewTube! Not that I know who they are.

Ohhh, yeah! Hear a lot about Team Plasma these days. The book being in first-person is gonna be a LIFE-SAVER, oh my gosh. I'm awful at lists of facts, like you said.

Thanks so much for the book recommendations! I'll check 'em out! The Elliott Electrode Public Library is MASSIVE, ten floors tall! I love to sit in there and read. I'm sure they have it.

Hey! I need your help! If, uh, if that's okay.

There's SO much history in this world, oh my cod. And I don't really know any of it. Faller stuff, y'know? But I notice it a lot on this site and off it, and I'm tired of falling behind in conversations! So I wanna find a history book. But I'm... not exactly great with textbooks. If it's too long or too boring, it's just a slog to get through. SO: Do you have any history book recs that are short or funny enough that I can finish 'em?

-@say-it-with-sizzle

Oh, just all of human and Pokémon history! Easy task, clearly.

…I joke. You’d probably be better off with something that focuses on the highlights, right? Unfortunately, a lot of history happens every day here, so you might have to look up some things from the past few years in Galar and Paldea.

For the world as a whole, I’d say Living Legends is a good record of sightings of Legendary Pokémon across many years, and, for the more recent sightings, everything preceding and following those sightings. Lots of pictures and news coverage. There’s always a story when they show up.

And then… you’re in Unova, right? Plasma’s most relevant to you then. I’d recommend Blood and Plasma. Based on the accounts of some grunts, some testimony from Sages on trial, some external witnesses, and some inference based on leaked documents. Each chapter’s from a different perspective, but it goes through the rise and fall and re-rise of Plasma. Gives you a good sense of the stakes, too, so it feels less like a list of facts. Let me know if you need anything on other regions, too.