What names are chiseled on the facade of Butler Library?
North side, left to right: Homer – Herodotus – Sophocles – Plato – Aristotle – Demosthenes – Cicero – Vergil West side, left to right: Horace – Tacitus – St. Augustine – St. Thomas Aquinas – Dante East side, left to right: Cervantes – Shakespeare – Milton – Voltaire – Goethe The panels under the large front windows are inscribed with the names of 24 American statesmen and authors: George Washington – Benjamin Franklin – John Adams – Thomas Jefferson – Alexander Hamilton – John Jay – James Madison – John Marshall – John Quincy Adams – Henry Clay – Daniel Webster – Abraham Lincoln Jonathan Edwards – Washington Irving – James Fenimore Cooper – William Cullen Bryant – Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nathaniel Hawthorne – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Edgar Allen Poe – Henry David Thoreau – Herman Melville – Walt Whitman – Mark Twain The names were selected by President Nicholas Murray Butler. Source: Robson, John William. A Guide to Columbia University with Some Account of Its History and Traditions.
