![]() ![]() Researchers from around the world use these materials to document and analyze the history of the game, but I-a Clevelander for more than 30 years-have never visited this room until now. Much more, including the death mask of American chess queen Gisela Khan Gresser and a grumpy, hand-scrawled note from American-born Bobby Fischer, the 11th World Chess Champion. It's possibly the world's largest collection-tied only with the Hague-with well over 30,000 books about chess and checkers, newspaper columns, letters from chess masters, treatises on the game-including twelfth-century Arabic manuscripts and more than 50 Indian treatises-tournament records, handbooks, a wide range of literary works that have substantial mention of chess, thousands of chess pieces, and more. I've come to look at his chess collection-donated upon his death and still growing through his endowment. White was a progressive thinker who insisted that these collections be available to the public. A lawyer and scholar who died in 1928, White was one of the library's greatest benefactors and his prodigious collections fill this room. Designed to look like a Renaissance Library, the John Griswold White Reading Room offers sweeping views of Lake Erie and downtown Cleveland, as well as a dazzling abundance of venerable books and objects. I walk through an arched marble doorway and into one of the loveliest rooms I've seen anywhere. ![]()
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