Grandeur recaptured in WHS library renovation

After seven months of painstaking renovation and restoration work, the Library Reading Room at the Wisconsin Historical Society’s headquarters will be open for free public tours during an open house on Friday and Saturday, April 23–24.

Tours will depart regularly from 1 to 4 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

The work has returned the room — one of the most beautiful and ornate spaces in the state — to the elegance of its original architectural style while furnishing the space to meet 21st-century needs. The project restored historic details missing or obscured since a renovation undertaken in 1955, including a magnificent replicated stained-glass skylight in the room’s 30-foot-high ceiling.

Surrounding the central skylight, banks of ornately trimmed ceiling coffers with hanging lamps light the room from above while re-creations of the original bronze wall sconces illuminate the room’s perimeter. The ceiling sparkles with color while the subtle tones of a historically appropriate paint scheme complement the room’s neoclassical architecture.

New and restored tables and lounge furnishings give the room a warm and elegant character. Replicas of the massive brass table lamps that shone on the books of students in 1900 look just like the originals but now contain outlets in the bases to power laptop computers.

“The challenge we faced in this restoration and renovation project was to marry the aesthetics of 1900 with the technological needs of the 21st century,” says Ellsworth Brown, the Ruth and Hartley Barker Director of the Society. “I think we met that challenge successfully.”

The project’s remarkable success shows on visitors’ faces. Typically, as first-time researchers enter the room, their eyes immediately gravitate to the ceiling, and a sense of awe washes over their faces.

Campus users are clearly voting with their feet. With no advertising — just word of mouth — students have returned to the Library Reading Room in numbers seldom seen before. Patrons are using the computers more heavily, and visitors are almost always sitting in the comfortable furniture reading books, working on laptops or just leaning back to gaze at the ceiling.

“It’s wonderful to see the numbers of visitors to this grand room swell as word gets out about what we’ve done with it,” says Peter Gottlieb, who administers the society’s Division of Library-Archives. “And it’s very satisfying to know that, amidst the turn-of-the-20th-century architectural grandeur, patrons can harness the latest technological tools to conduct their research.”

Funding for the $2.96 million project came from three principal sources: the State Building Commission, which funded the bricks and mortar, and combined support from the UW–Madison Library System and the Wisconsin Historical Foundation, which raised funds privately to fund furnishings and equipment necessary to meet the needs of a modern audience.

Staff of Isthmus Architecture worked with historical society’s librarians and preservationists to develop plans for the renovation. Skilled craftspeople and managers from Findorff & Sons, the general contractor, carried out the project with great attention to detail and completed the work on time. Staff from the Department of Administration oversaw all aspects of the project.

The Wisconsin Historical Society is located at 816 State St. on the UW–Madison campus. For more information about the open house events, contact the society at 264-6586.