During the last two decades, many cities have grappled with this question and provided a variety of answers. One of the first—and the largest—was the Harold T. Washington Library in Chicago, designed by Hammond, Beeby & Babka in 1991. The interior was planned with stacks open to the public and large loft spaces for maximum flexibility—a bit like a department store. The lower levels contained such nontraditional spaces as a video theater and lending library, a gift shop, and exhibition spaces. But it was the exterior that made the strongest impression. The building incorporates many elements of 19^th-century loop architecture: heavy stonework, arched windows, and decorative carving, as if Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, and John Root had come back to have another go. The result, massive and monumental, is a slightly forbidding Fortress of Knowledge.