Valentino Rarities is a videotape collection of the silent film star’s early shorts. The Sulzer Regional Library is Chicago’s only public library that carries it.
After days spent trying to find out from the library’s top brass what’s going on, late last week we finally received a response. Chicago Public Library spokesperson Ruth Lednicer said via e-mail, “The staff at Sulzer is in the process of consolidating the movies in preparation to move them to the second floor. The area in which they are currently kept is going to become a teen section and the teen books will be moved to those shelves.”
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And then there’s the matter of Sulzer’s furniture—the hand-carved, hand-painted, whimsical pieces of site-specific furniture created for the library when it opened in 1985. On this wooden furniture you could find Adam and Eve, various constellations, the four seasons, and much more—a chair featuring the Snow Queen was chosen for the Museum of Science and Industry’s 1985 exhibit, 150 Years of Chicago Architecture.
Woodworking Corporation, a millwork company based in New Paris, Indiana, made the furniture. Langdon trained recent art school graduate Lori Coy, the sister of the company’s owner, to paint and stencil the designs.
Lednicer claims “many of the pieces simply wore out” and were moved out by the CPL’s Department of General Services. She doesn’t know what happened to them after that. The department hasn’t returned our phone calls. As for the remaining pieces, she says they’re being rearranged. “There is no plan to throw out any pieces that are still in good condition.” But what constitutes “good condition?” And why can’t someone at least say what those tags mean?
