Picture a book that can gracefully endure the trials of the centuries—the water, the fire, the sword. What will this book be about? In what language will it be? There is an old legend about an artist-scribe who was being burned along with a precious manuscript.

A colleague in the History Department recently came across an old book whose drab cover hides a fascinating adventure story.

As you learn on our daily docent-led tours, The Richard J Riordan Central Library has almost 90 years of fascinating history. But some of most intriguing chapters in the building’s story occurred before the library even opened its doors for the first time in 1926.

A funicular railway or incline railway is a short railway located over a steep incline and operates by a cable wire and pulley system in which two tram-like cars on parallel rail tracks almost counter balance each other. As one car goes up, another goes down.