Not described in the June post on this project is the wonderful aerial view of the Collis Center cutaway model created by Oudens Ello.

With its decapitated columns and especially its full trees, which encroach on the building and Romantically cast shadows on the floors of nearby rooms, it really does look like A View of the Ruins of the Collis Center. If the walls were crumbling instead of sliced cleanly, the image would be a complete homage to Giovanni Battista Piranesi or Joseph Gandy (Wikipedia; his unfortunately prescient painting of John Soane’s Bank of England as a ruin is in the Wikimedia Commons).

The project is bringing the serving area of the cafe right out to the front of the building, into the original reading room space. The existing mid-1990s dining room, originally built as the Club Room, will remain where it is.