Haverford Library Correction

Some one pointed out to me in the comments section of this mornings post that the library while looking like a church building was built in the gothic style but always used as a library.

Here’s the college’s description:

The Library. 1865 photograph.
The original Haverford School Library was in the southwestern corner of the first floor of Founders. Considered “the centre of the small college,” it required more space and resulted in the erection of Alumni Hall, later Library, in 1864. This photograph is the earliest-known photograph of the completed building.

Sorry I got it wrong but it looked like a church to me having grown up in St. Mary’s Church founded in 1706. Here is a pic of the “new St. Mary’s” built in 1846 to 1848 in the gothic style.

St. Mary’s was done by architect Richard Upjohn in the cruciform plan similar to his design for Trinity church in New York City and Grace Church in Newark, NJ. But it is really a copy of St. John’s Shottesbrooke a 14th century English parish church…Upjohn used measured drawlings of St. John’s to do St. Mary’s.

So you can see why I would think it was a church having never seen Haverford College.

BTW – I was baptized, confirmed and married at St. Mary’s and will be buried there along with my great grandparents, grandparents, parents and wife.

St.Mary’s steeple contains eight bells cast by the same company that made Big Ben and the Liberty Bell, Whitechapel Bell Foundry. They were rung the first time in 1866 and my father as a high school boy rang the funeral bells (yes they are stuck by hammers to allow one person to ring the chimes and are rarely rung by swinging due to the steeple swaying during the ringing). To hear them stop by Burlington any Sunday they are played at every mass and each day at 6:00 pm for evening prayer.