Mental Floss names Armstrong Browning Library one of the nation’s 10 most beautiful libraries

No less an authority than Mental Floss — a popular magazine dedicated to facts and trivia — recently named Baylor’s Armstrong Browning Library one of “The 10 Most Beautiful Libraries in the United States.”

If you’ve ever been inside, you know why. (And if you haven’t visited, you should.) Mental Floss describes it as “a 3-story, Italian Renaissance-styled masterpiece adorned with 62 stained glass windows, massive marble columns, intricate ceiling designs and other wonderful details.” (This photo gallery might give you some idea of the library’s look and feel.)

Rumor has it that the ballroom so beautifully depicted in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was modeled after Armstrong Browning. (The connection? Jim Hillin, a 1979 Baylor grad who oversaw CGI artistic direction for Walt Disney Animation in the late ’80s and early ’90s and was responsible for the movie’s groundbreaking CGI.)

Sic ’em, ABL!

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* Baylor’s Texas Collection named among world’s top 20 university special collections (Sept. 2012)
* Armstrong Browning Library named one of the 50 most beautiful college libraries in the world (Jan. 2012)