A man reads on the front façade of the William Rainey Harper Memorial Library at the University of Chicago. 1912. Photo by Justin Kern via Flickr [Creative Commons]. I have recently become obsessed with gargoyles and grotesques who are reading. (Possibly I feel kinship to them.) While doing research on collegiate gargoyles and grotesques a few months ago, I realized how many colleges and universities have at least one sculpture of someone reading a book. Both people and animals are shown in this studious pursuit, and they are charming without a single exception. These stone readers make such a nice contrast to the misbehaving gothic figures I’ve been reading so much about recently.
The William Rainey Harper Memorial Library at the University of Chicago was built in 1912 in memory of the university’s first president. Besides being one of the most beautiful and inviting libraries I can imagine – enjoy the pictures here – it is home to a pair…
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