Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/406

 352 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO There were also on this first floor two smaller lecture rooms half the size of the large ones. On the east side of the building was a very broad stone stairway leading to the two upper floors. The library stackroom, nine feet high, occupied a mezzanine story extending over the second floor. It was furnished with stacks for seventy-five thousand books. At the north and south ends of this floor were offices for members of the Law School Faculty. On this floor also were the Librarian's room and the Faculty room. On the third floor was the great feature of the building, the reading- room, a hundred and sixty feet long and fifty feet wide. Its timbered ceiling, thirty-five feet high, was ornamented by heavy carved-wood trusses, and it received light from large windows on all sides. Around the room were shelves for twelve thousand volumes The reading tables were furnished with seats for nearly four hundred students. The library delivery desk was on the east side of this noble room, and from the same side the Dean's office opened, above the broad stairway. It was estimated that the building would accommodate about five hundred students, and it was planned to permit of an enlargement to the east that would nearly double its capacity. Like other buildings, the Law Building, for a number of years, served several departments. The libraries of History, Political Economy, Philosophy, Sociology, and Anthro- pology found place in its stackroom, and professors of these depart- ments were accommodated with offices. During the five years from 1889 to 1904 the Standing Committee on Buildings and Grounds had its hands more than full. In addi- tion to determining the locations, securing the plans, and super- vising the construction of the ten buildings already mentioned, during three of these years it was constantly engaged on the per- manent buildings of the School of Education. When, in 1901, the Chicago Institute became the School of Education of the Univer- sity, its architect, James Gamble Rogers, had already prepared elaborate plans for a building. The change in the location and scope of the School made certain changes in these plans necessary, and to these Mr. Rogers and the committee, as well as Mrs. Blaine and the trustees of the Institute, gave long-continued study. By the acquisition of the south half of the Scammon block a location