The Fisher Fine Arts Library supports study, teaching and research in contemporary and historical aspects of art, architecture, city and regional planning, historic preservation, landscape architecture, studio art, and urban design. Text and image collections, in analog and digital form, have a global reach and concentrate on the arts of the western experience, Islam, South Asia and East Asia, from prehistory to the present. Our digital and print resources are designed to meet the needs of students and faculty of the departments, schools and progr,ams of the University of Pennsylvania.
The University of Pennsylvania's first library building was designed by Frank Furness (pronounced "furnace"), in consultation with library authorities Melvil Dewey and Justin Winsor. The collaboration produced a technologically advanced and utilitarian facility which, thanks to Furness's flamboyant style, was anything but mundane. The cornerstone was laid in October 1888, and the University of Pennsylvania Library was formally dedicated on February 7, 1891. The window mottoes and other inscriptions in the building were chosen by Horace Howard Furness (Frank's older brother), a Shakespearean scholar and prominent member of Penn's faculty in the late nineteenth century. Though destined to accommodate decades of collection expansion as projected in the 1880s, the building already was becoming crowded by the first decade of the twentieth century. Over the next thirty years, several major alterations and additions were made to accommodate heavier-than-expected use and to house various special collections, including the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library, and the Henry Charles Lea Library. In 1962, the main and special library collections moved to the newly-constructed Van Pelt Library.
The former University Library, renamed the Furness Building after its architect, was home to the Fine Arts Library and an array of architectural studios, including that of Louis I. Kahn. The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1985. Major restoration work, planned and directed by the firm of Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, was carried out from 1987 through 1990, with rededication taking place on the centennial of the original ceremony. In 1992 both the building and the library were formally renamed the Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library to honor the principal donors to the restoration project.
Most of these titles (all in print) are available in the Fisher Fine Arts Library.
University of Pennsylvania Library: Frank Furness by Lewis, M. J. (2009, Nov 14). "This library speaks volumes --- Frank Furness treated reading as an active enterprise." Wall Street Journal
Wojtowicz, R (2013, Jan. 12) "Frank Furness: Making a Modern Library—From Gentleman’s Library to Machine for Learning." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians **An exhibition review.
Thomas, George E.. 2002. “The Happy Employment of Means to Ends": Frank Furness's Library of the University of Pennsylvania and the Industrial Culture of Philadelphia”. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 126 (2). 249–72.
Hine, T., & Thomas Hine. (02/17/1991). "Giving Furness a facelift at the Univ. of Pennsylvania..." Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA), p. H01.
