3(>8 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1903. 



at the head of hroad Hiohts of steps. In Romane.squc architecture 

 according- to thir French conception, magnificent with its tine pillared 

 portico and dome rising above the whole, it is worthy of comparison 

 with the best modern buildings of P^uropean capitals. Three stories 

 surround an imposing central hall, and the whole rests upon a raised 

 ground floor 200 feet square. The center of the dome is 137 feet 

 above the surface of the ground. 



The library also acconunodates those faculties whose equipment 

 consists only of books and who, as yet, have no building of their own. 

 Thus, the northern wing belongs almost exclusively to the law faculty. 

 On the second stor}- is the section of the library belonging to that 

 facult}^; on the third the reading room, with 140 seats; on the fourth 

 an auditorium for 240 hearers; all three, like the raised ground floor, 

 containing side rooms for administration, seminars, professors, and 

 students; constituting, so to speak, a building for the law faculty 

 within the university library." They are, however, already thinking 

 of erecting a special law ))uilding. 



The schools of political science and philosoph}^ are in like manner 

 accommodated in the western and eastern wings; only that here, 

 instead of the reading room on the third floor, eight seminary rooms 

 are to be divided into library sections which will serve for the corre- 

 sponding schools; that is, for philosophy, pedagogics, literature, phi- 

 lology, political economy, pu))lic law. and liist()r3\ Two such seminary 

 rooms for Latin and Greek are located on the second floor. This is an 

 ingenious arrangement, which, so far as I know, has nowhere else been 

 carried out in this manner. A half story of the entire wing forms a 

 single room, the inner three-fifths of which are occupied by 26 book- 

 stacks, for the most part 20 feet long, while the outer two-fifths are 

 empt3\ One can therefore look through from one end to the other, a 

 distance of 110 feet. In the partition planes of the two-sided book- 

 stacks of 12 by 12 feet run massive sliding doors of oak, reaching to the 

 ceiling, of such dimensions as are perhaps seldom seen. These, how- 

 ever, may be easily handled, and by their means the outer open space 

 may be divided into as man}^ larger or smaller single rooms as may be 

 desired, up to eight each. Every such room is provided with tables 

 and chairs, so that one may sit secluded in the library of any par- 

 ticular })ranch. This arrangement seems to me as original as it is 

 practical. The library is not so much a storehouse for books as a 

 laboratory for study with books. Exactly as much care has been 

 bestowed upon the reader as upon the books. On the fourth floor of 

 each of those two wings there are four auditoriums, each accommo- 

 dating 85 to 58 persons, as w(>Il as administrative and other side 

 rooms. In the south wing, moreover, there are two auditoriums, 



«See illustrations in the Green Bag, May, ISfl.S, p. 199, ami in ('i>himbia VnirersUy 

 Quarterly, 1, 1.S99, y\). 185 and 141. 



