Any number of the
elements of this room, this sanctuary,
could catch and hold your attention. A
ring of ornate columns crowned by a
towering dome; ponderous wooden tables
14 feet long that stretch away through the
wings like church pews; 19 magnificent
arched windows; the sweet musk of old
books.
But the thing about the Reading
Room is the quiet. Its aura seems to repel
the din and rush at the epicenter of campus. The quiet, and the civility. The place
cuts you right down to size. If you would
bring a bag of chips or a live phone in
here, you are short on respect.
Harry McKown ’ 73 (MA) was at the
desk in the rotunda the night of the ultimate breach of silence and civility. A
chunk of plaster crashed to the floor and,
way up there on that regal dome, the
lower half of a blue-jeaned leg poked
through the hole. Somebody whose mama
thought her child was diligently reading
had skulked through the darkened hallways in the rabbit’s warren that is Wilson
Library and found the little half-door that
led to the trapdoor that accessed the
dome door, whose graffiti suggests this
wasn’t the first intruder.
McKown, then a grad student and a
fixture in Wilson to this day, was dispatched to the main exit to warn of a student on the lam, one likely dusted in plaster, one who never was caught.
