It's amazing, huh? When I looked up the address, I discovered it is housed right next to (in the same massive building with) the Carnegie Museum of Art. Which had a show I wanted to see. And, when we got there, we discovered the Carnegie Music Hall and Carnegie Museum of Natural History are also there. This is one of the entrances:
Worth the price of admission, I said, which at this point was zero. There was a sculpture of a tightrope walker above our heads. We shortly learned that to go much farther, it would cost each of us significantly. Plus, with so much art and history to see, we decided we'd be better off to slate a whole day for it. And by luck, there is a free day next Sunday - hooray! So, we went a door over to the library. It is enormous, marble steps, iron-and-glass floors, soaring arches.
I had to tell myself not to look around too much or I'd end up checking out an armload of books. I'd gone to get two books (Push by Sapphire and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn), which is about my limit in addition to the hundreds of pages I'm supposed to be reading weekly...not to mention the hundreds of pages I'm supposed to be writing. So it was kind of like going into Target on a Friday that's not payday. Just steer clear of the clearance racks, or bad things will happen. (So, this was earlier today, and as I write this, I'm almost done with Push and it is amazing, and I need to tell you if you are reading this you should shut the computer and go get that instead and read it.) The DVD/multimedia section alone was an entire room.
One of the most captivating things about the library was its architecture. So much of the architecture here is fascinating, it makes me wish I knew more about it. Maybe I'll check a book out of the library... Anyway, here is what the floors looked like in the stacks:
The panes are some kind of composite, very thick glass. And the library is three floors and a basement. It took me two floors before I discovered this:
Not only is the glass semi- translucent (meaning you can see light and shadows from above and make out shapes below your feet)...if you look down by the bookshelves, you can see ALL THE WAY DOWN! In this picture you're looking down through the floor to two more floors' bookshelves. I can only imagine that this is some kind of showcase of the mastery of metal in Steel City. At any rate, for four floors to be constructed this way amazes me. While we walked aisle after aisle looking up and then down, we also discovered this:
That's right, a --free-- view of some dinosaur bones. Lucas was pretty proud we did not have to drop any Lincolns for this. Definitely looking forward to going back for a museum day and walking through there...though I must say, we had a rare view of the tiny bones at the brontosaurus' tail-tip, and how they were suspended from the wall. Also, the tree is fake.
Time for a parting shot of some real trees, outside the main entrance of the library:
Oh, for a picnic! Bellissimo! Wish you were here!
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