Talk:Phillips Exeter Academy Library

Major expansion in the works

Just to let everyone know, I am planning a major expansion to this article in the next day or so. It will have several sections to discuss the library's history and architecture, and it will be fully referenced. Inevitably that involves rewording and relocating some of the existing text, so I hope no one feels like I stepped on their toes.Bilpen 02:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bilpen (talk • contribs)

Nice work! --Elekhh (talk) 20:29, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Phillips Exeter Academy Library/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Edge3 (talk) 23:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! I will review this article. Edge3 (talk) 23:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I have quite a lot of comments to make, but it doesn't look like the path to GA will be too hard at this point.

I placed my proposed edits in User:Bilpen/sandbox. In addition to the suggestions below, I added a in-line citation to the direct quote in the first paragraph of the History and services section. If these changes look OK to you I will post them in the article itself.

Bilpen (talk) 22:57, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate your patience and response; I have been quite busy in real life and therefore could not finish my review as quickly as I had hoped. I have added some additional comments below, and after a few minor fixes you should be able to post them in the article itself. Edge3 (talk) 02:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I posted the latest set of edits in User:Bilpen/sandbox. I rearranged the Architecture section to eliminate the duplication you noted and then divided that section into Exterior and Interior sub-sections. I also rewrote some of the paragraphs that had problems. Inevitably that led to cascading changes elsewhere, especially with the images. I decided to drop the photo at the top, which was fine in every respect except that it was too dark. I replaced it with another interior shot that had originally been placed farther below, with the net result of reducing the number of images by two, including the Vitruvian Man image. I also expanded the size of the image of the building's exterior to make it match the others in size. FYI, the Exeter web site was reorganized in the last day or two, which broke all five of their links from this article, but I fixed them in both the main article and in the sandbox copy. Fortunately it looks as if nothing about those articles changed except their web addresses. Bilpen (talk) 02:25, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I posted the latest edits in User:Bilpen/sandbox. Note that I also decided to add a sentence immediately beneath the Architecture heading to describe the building's overall shape and dimensions. Bilpen (talk) 15:15, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• An infobox would be nice, but is not required.

Maybe later

• I think the "History" section should be renamed "History and services", since the section also touches on the services that the library provides.

Done

• Per WP:WTW, please avoid the following words or phrases: renowned, widely-recognized, masterpiece, international significance (lead, para 1). State the facts! The "Recognition" section is filled with info on specific awards the library won, and the lead is supposed to provide a summary of the entire article.
  • The following phrases are also peacock terms: "nothing less than a truly outstanding contemporary design", "world's leading architects" (lead, para 2)
• "thought by most scholars" (lead, para 3) -- You can't prove that "most" scholars believe in this way. I suggest that you just say "thought by scholars".

I rewrote the lead to accommodate these suggestions. I dropped the sentence with "most scholars" in it because it was too difficult to word it in light of the last section of the article, and it wasn't a critical sentence anyway. I added the phrase "independent boarding school" to the first paragraph even though it isn't in the body of the article; I got it from the Phillips Exeter Academy article. My understanding is that this type of thing is permissible if is done with a light touch.

You are correct that you do not need to provide a citation for "independent boarding school", since it is not covered by WP:CHALLENGED. A further comment on your rewording: "an award that recognizes architecture of enduring significance and that is given to no more than one building per year" is awkwardly worded and can be easily fixed by removing the second occurrence of "that". Edge3 (talk) 02:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Done

• Per WP:MOS please use commas to separate the digits of large numbers. (2,000 not 2000)

Done

• Instead of using "richly furnished" to describe the Davis Library, give actual details of the library's furnishings, like marble floors.

I dropped that phrase instead of giving more details about the old library, because I didn't want to distract attention from the new library.

• Don't use "renowned" to describe Kahn, and add a comma after "1965".

Done

• "The building is widely recognized as an architectural masterpiece." -- I would remove that and use only Scully's book to reflect Exeter library's status as a widely recognized masterpiece.

Done

• Don't use the word "influential" to describe Scully.

Done

• What is the source for the paragraph beginning with "Henry Beford"?

It is in "An Open Book;" I added that citation.

Ok, but please fix the spelling of "Bedford". :) Edge3 (talk) 02:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yikes! Done

• "During Thomas' tenure the library's collection and programming grew to a size appropriate to a small liberal arts college." I don't see that mentioned in the "About the Library" source.

The citation for that sentence was misplaced. That citation was supposed to cover the first three sentences of that paragraph but I had it covering only the first two. I fixed the problem by moving the existing citation to the end of the third sentence.

Ok, thanks for the clarification!

• "making it the largest secondary school library in the world" -- I don't think two sources are necessary. And the Petersons citation needs to be formatted properly, if you decide to keep it.

I dropped the Peterson's citation.

• I'm assuming that the "1914–1946" range mentioned for Dr. Perry has to do with his tenure at the school? Please make that clearer.

Done

Reviewing the lead and "History" section is all that I have time to review at the moment. I should be able to finish the entire review within a day or two, but in the meantime I look forward to your response! Cheers, Edge3 (talk) 00:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Capacity

The library web site says "At present, the Library houses 160,000 volumes on nine levels and has a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes." That says something about the size of the library, something that readers are likely to want to know. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this is important, and I'd like to point out that this information is already provided in the "History" section, if you haven't noticed that yet. Bilpen, perhaps it would be a good idea to mention this in the lead? Edge3 (talk) 02:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Done

Further review

• "The project to build a new and larger library began in 1950 and progressed slowly for several years. By the mid-1960s, O'Connor & Kilham, the architectural firm that had designed libraries for Barnard, Amherst and West Point" --- I can't find this information in the given citation.

Done (added additional citation)

• The last two paragraphs of the "Choosing Louis Kahn" section could be combined, since they are relatively short and discuss similar topics.

Done (I intended for them to be one paragraph anyway and didn't notice when they got separated.)

• "chamfered" does not need to be linked multiple times

Done

• "which from the ground looks something like a deserted floor with empty window frames" -- I don't see this mentioned in the source.

Done (rewrote, adding a quote from Scully)

• Per MOS:IMAGES, you should "avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other." The image of the Vitruvian Man is not crucial to the article, so I think it should be removed.

Done

• Per WP:ELPOINTS, you should not link to "The Tectonic Integration of Louis I. Kahn′s Exeter Library" in the body unless you have a compelling reason to do so.

Done (put in External links)

More coming... Edge3 (talk) 02:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

• I am quite concerned about the current layout of the Architecture section. First you start off with a discussion of the exterior design, then discuss the entrance, then the atrium, and from there you move outwards as you explore the outer "doughnuts". This leads to some repetition, since you discuss the outer portions of the library both in the beginning and at the end. For example, you discuss the load-bearing brick and the chamfered corners in paragraphs 1 and 2 in the beginning then paragraph 11 near the end. I think this calls for a reorganization of the entire section. Edge3 (talk) 21:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Done. I will look at again after a night's sleep to see if I am still satisfied with my changes. Let me know what you think.

Good job on reorganizing the Architecture section! I like it so far, but you're always more than welcome to tweak it a bit more. Edge3 (talk) 23:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

• In the "Architectural interpretations" section, you use bolded text to implicitly divide the section into two subsections. Do you have any justification of this coming from the MOS? If not, then you should use actual section headers to divide the section, or just leave the section as having two major paragraphs with a transition in between.

I rewrote this section as two paragraphs with a transition

• "There is general agreement..." -- Does the source actually say that there is general agreement?

Rewrote

• "Several scholars have noted..." -- Change to "some scholars"? This paragraph doesn't present the views of several scholars. Edge3 (talk) 23:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Rewrote

I appreciate all of the hard work you've put in to this article!!! More specifically, I like the way in which you rewrote the architecture sections and had a thorough knowledge of the sources. While there certainly is always room for improvement, this article now meets the WP:GACR. I shall pass it for GA shortly. Edge3 (talk) 02:42, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

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Not a "Brutalist" building

I intend to revert the recent assignment of Louis Kahn's Phillips Exeter Academy Library to the category of "Brutalist architecture in the United States." I have consulted the major books on Kahn, and I find no support for categorizing this or any other of Kahn's buildings as "Brutalist".

Specifically, Robert McCarter's Louis I. Kahn does not have the word "brutalist" in its index, and, according to Google Books, does not contain that word anywhere else. Nor can I find anything in Brownlee and DeLong's Louis I. Kahn. The books on Kahn by Charles E. Dagit, John Lobell and Urs Buttiker do not have an entry for "brutalism" in their indexes. Carter Wiseman's book mentions brutalism but only in the context of saying that Rayner Banham, who popularized the term, was dismissive of Kahn's Richards Medical Research Center (pp 101–102). Sarah Williams Goldhagan's book mentions brutalism while discussion the Yale University Art Gallery but concludes that discussion by saying, "The best term to describes Kahn's aspirations in the New Haven gallery is 'authenticity'". (pp 59- 60).

The most recent book on Kahn is You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn by Wendy Lesser. She says, on page 341, "You could not put his work under any style, like Internationalist or Brutalist or Postmodern. His work was Kahn."

As the article on Brutalist architecture points out, we know from architectural historian William Jordy that Kahn himself did not want to be associated with the term "brutalist".

I think we need to be careful when using the term "brutalism" in articles on architecture. In the first place, it is a highly misleading term: you could not responsibly write an essay on it without pointing out that the term has nothing to do with the word "brutal". It is also a fairly obscure topic that is either not mentioned at all in books on architectural history or is quickly passed over. To verify that, try searching Google Books for books on "architectural history" and then see how hard it is to find any of them that even mention the term, let alone treat it as a major architectural category.

Placing this or any other Kahn building in the category "Brutalist architecture in the United States" would mislead readers into believing that this represents the opinion of experts in architectural history, and that just isn't so. Bilpen (talk) 17:28, 17 February 2022 (UTC)