Cloaked in its brilliant mantle of brick, fiery terracotta and red sandstone, the University of Pennsylvania Library stands as the mature-period masterwork of Philadelphia's premier Victorian-era architect, Frank Furness. Conceived in consultation with two eminent library theoreticians, the library plan evolved from practical experience with the inadequacies of nineteenth-century library buildings; the result was a modern factory for learning, a machine for the use and storage of books.

Furness's rationalized plan, expressed on the exterior as a bold design, was challenged for decades, and anti-Victorian sentiment threatened the edifice with demolition as late as the 1960s. Renewed appreciation has since come full circle, however, culminating in a dramatic interior restoration by the eminent Philadelphia practice, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. Frank Furness's academic monument thus stands today as a defining architectural landmark of Philadelphia.