page_title: Lindenshade (Wallingford, Pennsylvania)
section_title: Fireproof library
hierarchical_section_title: Lindenshade (Wallingford, Pennsylvania) / Fireproof library
caption_attribution_description: English: The Horace Howard Furness Library building in Lindenshade in Wallingford (Nether Providence Township, Delaware County), Pennsylvania
context_page_description: Lindenshade (Wallingford, Pennsylvania), was the Wallingford country house and farm of Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness and family. The house's design is attributed to his brother, architect Frank Furness. It was expanded numerous times, and demolished in 1940. Two other buildings from the property survive. The Helen Kate Furness Library, a memorial to HHF's wife, was built at the west end of the property in 1916.
context_section_description: HHF's masterwork – one that occupied him for more than 45 years, and remained unfinished at his death – was to create a complete variorum of Shakespeare's 38 plays. He compared variations in the texts over the known editions; annotated the playwright's many thousands of references; surveyed the commentary of three centuries of critics (in multiple languages); and examined the performance histories and the interpretations of Shakespearean actors. He published 17 volumes of analysis between 1871 and 1913—one per play, two for Hamlet. His middle son, Horace Howard Furness, Jr. (1865–1930), joined as co-editor of the later volumes. After HHF's death, Horace Jr. continued the work as editor of five additional volumes, until his own death.
  HHF voraciously collected rare books, manuscripts and ephemera related to Shakespeare. His grandson, Horace H. F. Jayne, described him at work in his library:
   
  It is pleasant to think of him in his hours of work living with these children of the master's brain. And, ah, what phantoms, real and fantastical, peopled that book-walled library, that workshop of a scholar at "Lindenshade." Here were enshrined the memories of great actors and actresses, of Garrick, Kean, Macready, Forrest, and the Kembles, of Mrs. Siddons, Lady Martin, Ellen Terry, and a host of others who Furness had known or whose memory he cherished because they had brought further honour to the name of Shakespeare. Here were the ghosts of all Shakespearean critics whose fine old volumes were gathered on the commodious shelves. Here were the spirits of all Shakespeare-lovers the world over, humble and mighty alike, and with all these, swelling the number to a legion, were all the characters from all the plays — "ancient Greeks and ancient Romans and ancient Britons, kings and dukes and lords and lords of France, and kings and dukes and lords of England; soldiers, sailors, doctors, and lawyers, sages of profound wisdom and clowns of profound stupidity, venerable priests and horrid cut-throats; hoary age and prattling infancy; learned magicians and drunken tinkers; women of every rank and every station — women who make the world fairer for their ideal lives, and women who should be palled in the dunnest smoke of hell"; and in the midst of all this ghostly throng sat the deaf, white-haired, kindly editor after all the house was hushed, save for the jarring of the clock, bending over his page, turning now and again to consult some volume at his side, but always working, working on silently into the night with that full-sensed enjoyment of his task that only the devoted labourer can know. Let this be the portrait of him at his midnight work, surrounded by his truest friends.
  Frank Furness designed the University of Pennsylvania Library (1888-91), making the building fireproof with brick-and-stone walls, cement floors, iron stairs, and iron-and-glass book stacks. HHF, a University trustee and chairman of the library building committee, was intimately involved in its creation. HHF decided to build his own fireproof library at "Lindenshade."
  HHF's library is attributed to Frank Furness, and was completed by 1896. HHF later described its construction: "What does insurance amount to when such treasures are in question? Of course my thoughts revert to this, my own library, all of brick, iron, with cement floor and asbestos ceiling, and an iron door which closes automatically in case of fire." — HHF to W. Aldis Wright, 4 March 1900. Located behind the main house at the end of the kitchen ell, the library was three stories high and oriented north-south. Most of its second floor was dedicated to a single two-story room, with wide one-and-a-half-story windows on the east, south and west walls. The north wall featured a fireplace flanked by narrower windows. An iron balcony, hanging from the ceiling by iron bars, wrapped around three sides of the room. Twin iron stairways provided access to the balcony's floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
  HHF's insurance agents pressed him to build an even more fireproof addition to the library, which was completed i
caption: Library exterior, in 2017.
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