MIT’s Great Dome is reborn
Since 1916, MIT’s Great Dome has had pride of place in the Institute’s iconography: Sitting atop Building 10 and towering over Killian Court, it has witnessed the inaugurations of presidents and the graduations of generations of students; it has appeared, in photographs and stylized depictions, on letterhead, class rings, and hosts of souvenirs; and, of course, it’s been the site of some of MIT’s most famous hacks.Now, for the first time in more than 70 years, the space beneath the dome — the Barker Library reading room, a 75-foot rotunda with an intricate 27-foot skylight, or oculus — has been restored to its original splendor. “If the Great Dome is MIT’s signature building,” says Stephanie Hartman, a librarian at Barker who has been researching the history of the reading room, “then in some sense, the reading room is MIT’s signature space.”The restoration of the reading room was just part of...