Saturday Morning Post: You Can't Tell a Book, or Library, By It's Cover

When I mentioned that I was going to a symposium at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, I received several messages about things I had to experience while I was there.  There were messages about pizza, apparently New Haven thinks it has the world's best pizza, and like most pizza wars, there is deep disagreement on who has the best.  I avoided the pizza war, we had nice old school Italian that gave me heartburn.  

The other set of recommendations were about the rare book library. I was sent images of the interior, and links to photos of the interior.  It looked interesting.  And it is across the pedestrian way from the Law School where the symposium was being held. I remembered that it was a "must see."  I am very glad that I was told to look inside.  From the outside it looks like a 1960's brutalist modern windowless building.  The telephone company built dozen of these to contain automated call switch gear across the country.  But we went inside and Oh My Dog!

The rare book collection is inside of a glass box, inside of the building.  It has its own climate control and fire control system. I understand if you enter the glass box you have to acknowledge that if the fire alarm sounds you have moments to get out before all of the oxygen is sucked out of the room.  The bland exterior of the building, creates an interior where light can be controlled.  There were a few treasures in cases outside of the cube, two volumes of Audubon's Birds of North America, the original with hand colored engravings, and a Gutenberg Bible, the first western book produced with movable type in relative large numbers.  Probably a million dollars for each of those three books.  

There is an old saying "you can't tell a book by its cover", I will add to that you can't tell a library by it's exterior.  If I hadn't been told you can't miss this one, I would have walked by looking for a nicer cover. 

Now to be fair, the exterior panels are alabaster, I understand at night when it is lit from inside it has this amazing warm glow.  I was not there long enough to see that (and it was colder than an ex-spouse on Valentine's Day making the thought of a midnight stroll very unattractive.)