Gift restores periodical reading room

Sketch: Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott of Boston

A gift of $500,000 from Martin Messinger, a University trustee who received his undergraduate degree in 1949, will allow for the complete renovation of the main periodical reading room in Rush Rhees Library.

Work on the restoration began July 6 and will be completed by September. The Boston firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott serves as architectural consultant for the project.

Plans call for refinishing the walls and tables, installing new electrical wiring with data lines, replacing 1960s fluorescent ceiling lights with pendant lighting to resemble the original 1930s fixtures, and adding a new floor surface and furniture.

The Periodical Reading Room, along with the Great Hall and the Welles-Brown Room, are the three historic "grand old rooms" of Rush Rhees Library. Prominent in the room are six panels containing bronze medallions with the figures of Newton and Helmholtz, Pasteur and Darwin, Edison and da Vinci, Plato and Kant, Adam Smith and Herodotus, and Shakespeare and Goethe. Above the bookcases that surrround the room are inscribed the names of more than 50 other great figures from world history.

Messinger, a Rochester native, is a resident of Harrison, N.Y. He is a general partner in the New York City investment firm of Neuberger & Berman. Until 1968, he resided in Rochester and was employed by Merrill Lynch.

In a letter to Dean of River Campus Libraries Ronald Dow about his decision to make the gift, Messinger wrote: "When I went to the University, my father had recently died. I skipped my fourth year of high school and came to the University. I spent a lot of time studying and writing in this room. It makes a formidable impression on visitors, applicants, and students. I find the plans for the project very exciting."

Messinger made an earlier gift toward the renovation, but his most recent commitment will cover the full cost of the project. In recognition, the room will be named the Martin E. Messinger Periodical Reading Room.

A formal dedication of the room will be held this fall.