Victoria State Library
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The first reading room was the Queen's Reading Room (now Queen's Hall), which opened in 1859. Temporary buildings built in 1866 for the Intercolonial Exhibition remained in use by the library until 1909, when work began on a new annexe building to mark the library's Jubilee. This new building was the landmark Domed Reading Room, which opened in 1913 and was designed by Norman G. Peebles.
Located on the forecourt of the Victoria State Library, this chess board seems well located where young intellectuals can take a break from library research and relax playing a challenging game of chess.
It’s one of those architectural spaces that create a sense of awe in the same way nature does – you are dwarfed by your surrounds and aware of your own insignificance. It’s rare to have this experience in a city, let alone in a secular space. I feel like the dome’s vast interior space allows an internal mental space to open up. It’s the most peaceful room in the Library.
The spelling of the name was later modernised, "Shakespear" gaining popular usage in the 18th century, which was largely replaced by "Shakspeare" from the late 18th through the early 19th century. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. From the mid-19th to the early 20th century, a wide variety of spellings were used for various reasons; although, following the publication of the Cambridge and Globe editions of Shakespeare in the 1860s, "Shakespeare" began to gain ascendancy.
The layout of the Reading Room furniture reflects the dome above which soars in the centre of the State Library of Victoria as a confident statement of universal knowledge. When it opened in 1913 it was the largest building of its kind in the world, and its height and scale in a city without skyscrapers was dramatic. Inside, the rising arcades and balconies join in a glazed roof with a golden orb at its centre – like the sun, a source of light and enlightenment.
The landmark Domed Reading Room, which opened in 1913 and was designed by Norman G. Peebles. Its octagonal space was designed to hold over a million books and up to 600 readers. It is 34.75 m in both diameter and height, and its oculus is nearly 5 m wide. The dome was the largest of its type in the world on completion. In 1965, the La Trobe Building annex was opened to house the Library's Australiana collection, which has since moved to the La Trobe Reading Room.