How Do I Love Thee?

Late-morning sunlight warms the sculpted surfaces of the Armstrong Browning Library and Museum’s bronze front doors, which bear bas-relief depictions of scenes from Robert Browning’s poems. My hand closes around the torch-shaped handle, worn shiny by the grips of thousands before me. I pull, but the three-quarter-ton door barely moves. With my entire weight, I slowly pry it open and slip inside, where Jennifer Borderud waits in the foyer, amused. She’s watched this scene play out before, as library visitors arrive unprepared for the heavy doors—or what they’ll find on the other side.

“People have no idea what they’re about to get into when they walk into the library,” says Borderud, the library’s director. “They don’t expect a building like this to be in Texas, or in Waco.”