Syracuse: University's Carnegie Library Reading Room to be Renovated

Syracuse University, Carnegie Library. Two recent views, photos: Samuel D. Gruber

Syracuse University, Carnegie Library. Architect's view of planned reading room renovation. Courtesy: Syracuse University Library

Syracuse: University's Carnegie Library Reading Room to be Restored as First Phase in Building Renovation
by Samuel D. Gruber

In my previous post I included a dramatic photo of sculptor Luise Kaish's bronze statue of the Saltine Warrior, back bent and bow taut between two towers of Syracuse University's Carnegie Library. I have good news about the building, designed by Frederick W. Revels and Earl Hallenbeck as part of the 1906 University Plan, and opened in 1907 as one of the most impressive academic Carnegie libraries in the country. The duo designed many of most impressive campus buildings of the first decades of the 20th century (Lyman Hall with it great tower remains my favorite). Their work was imposing and ornate, but never very graceful. Many of these classically inspired Beaux-Arts buildings are bulky and ponderous on their exteriors, but they were well-designed for multipurpose academic use, and most still function today as class buildings. Their virtue is that they are well built and relatively easily adaptabted to all but the most intensely hi-tech fields. Only where their original spaces have been carved up and/or extra floors added - as in Bowne Hall - do they seem really awkward. The recent restoration of Slocum Hall, for example, has returned the building to much of its original spacious and appealing layout and appearance.

The history of the building in word and images can be found at Carnegie Library 1907-2007, a site developed for the building's centennial celebrated in 2007. Click "browse" to view this collection of over 200 photographs of the Carnegie Library, that includes the 1905 ground breaking through the 2007 centennial. The historical images were digitized from the Syracuse University Archives’ collection of campus building photographs. Links to historical news articles and information may be found at the Carnegie Library History.

After a hundred years of hard use, so hard in fact that the original entrance from the very Quad it helped define is now closed, the Carnegie Library will be renovated. Progress depends on money, but already the first of five planned phases has begun. The grand reading room will be restored and returned to its original purposes.

In time other spaces in the building that have been chopped in pieces, as well as blocked circulation paths, will returned a much as possible to their original purpose and appearance. The building is apparently only one of three academic (as opposed to public) Carnegie libraries in the country that still - at least in part - serves it original function. built as the main campus library to replace the much smaller von Ranke Library (now Tolley Hall), the structure is now served by the Science-Technology Library, the Math library and the Math Department. Phase I of the project involves moving some of the Math Department functions from the great second floor reading room to newly newly reorganized space on the first floor. in the reading room floor, ceilings, furniture and lighting will all be refurbished, restored or replaced in accordance to the space's original appearance - updated with plenty of electrical outlets to accommodate laptop computers. In Phase III the building's main entrance will be reopened with new glass doors and railing on the exterior stairs, while new restrooms and other amenities are added inside. You can read more about the renovation on the Syracuse Library website.

Tonto Revisited: Images of Native Americans in Syracuse

Syracuse, NY., Syracuse University. The Saltine Warrior by Luise Kaish (1951).

Syracuse, NY., Washington Park. The Kirkpatrick Monument, Gail Sherman Corbett (1908)

Tonto Revisited: Images of Native Americans in Syracuse
(all photos by Samuel D. Gruber)

This month there are several local exhibitions related to art by and representations of Native Americans. New art of Haudenosaunee artists is on view at the Everson Museum in the exhibition Haudenosaunee: Elements. Popular and especially commercial and advertising images American Indians fill the walls of ArtRage Gallery in an exhibition of the collection of artist Tom Huff, entitled Tonto Revisited. Tom, a Seneca/Cayuga artist living on the Onondaga Nation, has been collecting “Indian Kitsch” for over 25 years.

Images of Indians are hardly new in Syracuse, a city situated in the center of the Onondaga Nation at the heart of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. These exhibitions should make people even more attentive. Here are just of few notable examples. I think it significant that the two greater works of art, that are also the most heroic representation of Indians, are by two notable women sculptors with ties to Syracuse -- Gail Sherman Corbett (1872-1951) and Luise Kaish (b. 1925). Corbett was born and raised in Syracuse. She studied sculpture with Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the Art Students League in New York later studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1898-99), before creating several impressive bronze monuments in her hometown, and then establishing herself in New York.

I've already written about her magnificent Kirkpatrick Monument recently restored in Washington Park. Her representation of the Onondaga goes beyond the (then) popular notion of the 'noble savage," to include them as full community partners - a partnership then denied to both Indians and all American women.

Corbett's contemporary and fellow Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Art Students League student James Earle Fraser (1876-1953) - who created some of the most lasting images of the Western Indian - is also well represented in Syracuse. At the SU Art Galleries in the Shaffer Art gallery you can see several of Fraser's works included a bronze model of his famous End of the Trail, sculpted for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition. This work has been much discussed over the decades. It depicts a weary - perhaps defeated Indian on his horse. The work, .while idealized, is full of pathos. It is a reflection on a passing age, and a passing way of life, but it is not to be taken as a statement of white victory. The SU collection also has a large plaster model of Fraser's design for the Indian head (or buffalo) nickle, minted from 1913 to 1938, with its profile of an Indian on the obverse. The SU library and art collections together have the world’s largest collection of Fraser materials, including dozens of pieces of sculpture)


In 1951 Syracuse University grad student Luise Kaish presented another view of the Indian in her powerful sculpture of the University's then-mascot, the Saltine Warrior. Kaish, a student of Ivan Mestrovic, won the commission from the Class of 1951, and she sculpted a taut and muscular Indian archer shooting skyward - a figure as much in the tradition of Greek myth than the salt beds surrounding sacred Lake Onondaga. As appropriate for a school mascot - White or Indian - the warrior is bent with bow, but unbowed. Kaish almost certainly knew of Mestrovic's own two powerful mounted Indians - the Bowman and The Spearman - sculpted in Croatia but installed in Chicago in 1928.

Kaish went on to a distinguished career (I've written about her grand bronze Aron-ha Kodesh designed 50 years ago for Temple Brith Kodesh in Rochester (where she just spoke two weeks ago). Luise was the first woman to win the coveted Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, among many other awards. She later led Columbia university's fine Arts Program. .

Syracuse, NY. Former Onondaga Savings Bank, dtl. South Salina Street entrance (1897).

I include two other Syracuse representations of Indians - clearly in submissive roles. A stern chief with headdress adorns the former Onondaga County Savings Bank (now M & T Bank) downtown. This is certainly an "honest Injun" encouraging trust in the bank - though the banking industry has hardly served Indian interests in the American western expansion.

Syracuse, NY. Columbus Circle. Columbus Monument.
V. Renzo Baldi, Sculptor, Dwight James Baum, architect (1934)

Similar Indian heads - uncomfortably disembodied - seem to support the figure of Columbus on the Columbus monument at Columbus Circle. These heads hangs like war trophies on the obelisk monument - the way navies have hung the prows of defeated ships on their victory stele.