Designed by Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, and inspired by the British Museum Reading Room, the building is formed as a chapter house, separated from the main body of the Centre Block by a corridor; this arrangement, as well as many other details of the design, was reached with the input of the then parliamentary librarian, Alpheus Todd. The walls, supported by a ring of 16 flying buttresses, are load bearing, double-wythe masonry, consisting of a hydraulic lime rubble fill core between an interior layer of finished stone and rustic Nepean sandstone on the exterior,with dressed stone trim around windows and other edges, and a multitude of stone carvings, including floral patterns and friezes, keeping with the Victorian High Gothic style of the rest of the parliamentary complex. The roof, set in three tiers topped by a cupola, was originally a timber frame structure covered with slate tiles, but is presently built of steel framing and deck covered with copper. The initial overall combination of colours – grey Gloucester limestone, and grey Nepean, red Potsdam, and buff Ohio sandstones, as well as purple and green slate banding – conformed to the picturesque style known as structural polychromy
Loading contexts...
