Parks Library Architectural History

Construction began on the Iowa State College Library in April of 1923, at an estimated cost of $400,000. The firm of Proudfoot, Bird and Rawson designed the original building in a classic revivalist style. Sugarman Construction finished building the library in 1925.

Brooks-Borg, a successor firm of the original architects, designed two additions to the original library. In 1961, the Howard Thomas Construction Company built the addition to the north*. In 1969, the Weitz company built the addition to the west.

In 1983, Charles Herbert and Associates designed the most recent addition. Story County Construction completed construction that same year. The design integrates the traditional limestone facade of the original building and interior spaces of the library with a large south facing addition featuring a glass curtain wall providing panoramic views of campus from every floor. The library is 325,488 total square feet.

In 1984, the building was named the William Robert Parks and Ellen Sorge Parks Library after the university's eleventh president and his wife.

Before 1925, Old Main first held the collections from 1868 to 1892. In 1892 they moved to Morrill Hall. In 1914, the collections relocated to what is now Beardshear Hall (then known as Central Hall).

 

Photograph of a large windowed wall with sunlight peeking in and students seated by the wall taken from stairs in the library.

Parks Library exterior carvings

Location: On the outer walls on the south, east, and north sides of the original library building, along Morrill Road

South exterior

Engraved text

Names highlighting great thinkers: LINCOLN – WASHINGTON – MORRILL

  • Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865) - 16th president of the United States
  • Washington, George (1732-1799) - 1st president of the United States
  • Morrill, Justin Smith (1810-1898) - American legislator and financier

East exterior

Engraved text

Text is in all capital letters on the exterior, presented below in quotes:

  • "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Source: Bible, John 8:32

Highlighting the names of scholars from history:

"Agassiz – Pasteur – Faraday – Shakespeare – Emerson – Newton – Darwin – Liebig"

  • Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe (1807-1873) - Swiss-American Naturalist, Geologist, and Teacher
  • Pasteur, Louis (1822-1895) - French Chemist and Bacteriologist
  • Faraday, Michael (1791-1867) - English Chemist and Physicist
  • Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) - English Poet and Playwright
  • Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882) - American Poet and Essayist
  • Newton, Isaac (1642-1727) - English Philosopher and Mathematician
  • Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882) - English Naturalist and Biologist
  • Liebig, Justus Von (1803-1873) - German chemist

Bas Reliefs

Location: The bas reliefs are located outside in the upper corners of the east facade of the original Library building.

About the artist

Nellie Verne Walker (1874-1973) was born in Red Oak, Iowa. As a child she learned to work with stone at her father's monument shop. At age 17, Walker carved a bust of Abraham Lincoln which was part of the Iowa exhibit at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She studied at the Chicago Art Institute and taught sculpture there as well as in Paris. Walker maintained a studio in the Midway Art Studio near the University of Chicago.

Walker carved these reliefs after the stones had been put in place in 1924. Other notable Iowa works include a Chief Keokuk statue (1913) and the Suffrage Memorial bas-relief panel at the State Capitol in Des Moines (1934).

The bas-relief depicts four seated women. The first woman holds a paint palette in her right hand and a sculpture in her left hand while the second woman holds a fruit basket. The third woman holds a staff with yarn or thread wound around it and the fourth woman reads a scroll spread across her lap.
The north panel depicts educational programs for women (left to right): art, home economics, and literature.
The bas-relief depicts four men seated around a globe. The first man holds a gear while the second man looks intently at the globe. The third man holds a Caduceus while looking away from the globe and the fourth man leans against a cushion while holding a sheaf of grain.
The south panel depicts the curriculum for men circa 1900 (left to right): engineering, science, veterinary medicine, and agriculture.

Printers' Marks

Location: The Printers' Marks are located outside on the east facade of the original Library building.

Seven printers' marks are carved in stone, below the seven windows in the reading room. Each unique design is the insignia of a notable European press from the early days of printing. Printer’s marks offered proof that a book was the work of a particular craftsman, like a modern day trademark.

Pierre Chandelier

A candlestick with seven-holders is Chandelier’s printer's mark. It illustrates the practice of punning which was common in the 16th century. Chandelier began printing in 1560, eighty years after printing first came to France.

Manutius

The design featuring an anchor with an entwined dolphin around its shaft belonged to Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius. The Aldine Press, founded in 1495, first printed popular Greek and Latin texts and is known for offering well-edited, pocket-sized books in inexpensive editions.

Fust and Schoeffer

Fust and Schoeffer were the first people to use a printer's mark. It was printed in red and consists of two heraldic shields suspended from a branch. The mark first appeared in 1467 in the second book printed with moveable type, the Mainz Psalter. Previously Fust had helped fund the printing of Gutenberg’s bible, but the business partners had a falling out.

Elzevirs

The printer’s mark of a sphere represents the Elzevirs, a 17th century Dutch printing family. They mostly worked with scholarly material of the times including religion, philosophy, law, the classics, history, geography, medicine, and the natural sciences.

St. Albans Abbey

Formed of a double cross atop a globe with a shield in the center bearing St. Andrew’s cross, the first printer’s mark in England appeared in 1483. St. Alban’s Abbey was famous as a place of learning and for producing high-quality manuscripts. Only two books out of eight known books , "Chronicles of England" and "Book of hawking" contained this mark with the text “Sanctus Albanus”.

Van den Keere

Belgian Henri Van den Keere, a 16th century book-seller and printer from Ghent used four marks, all of which resemble the striking and distinct boat helm with a skull in its center.

Caxton

William Caxton ran the first English printing press and printed his first book, a translation of the history of Troy, in English in 1474. Later in his career Caxton used the letters W and C from his name and the number 74, perhaps referring to his first printed volume as his mark. Originally placed at the beginning of the volume, later the Caxton mark was always found at the end.

 

 

North exterior

Engraved text

"Hatch - Wilson - Knapp"

  • Hatch, William Henry (1833-1896) - American legislator
  • Wilson, James (1836-1920) - American lawyer, politician, and agriculturist
  • Knapp, Seaman Ashahel (1833-1911) - American agriculturist