Mercantile Library Executive Director John Faherty leafs through a catalogue of items currently or once held by the almost 200-year-old Cincinnati institution.
" 'Declaration of Independence,' " he reads out loud, "and then, parenthetically, 'in Chinese.' Bible, folio-size, printed in Nuremburg, 1479."
Faherty isn't after obscure 19th century copies of America's founding documents or rare bibles. Eventually, he comes to what he's looking for.
"Eighteen-eighty-four — 'The Three Arts, stained glass window, source George A. Bowen,' " he reads. "And then, 20 years later, 'Woman With a Book stained glass window, source Augustine Ogden.' "
The listings and some black and white photos are the only traces left of two large windows that once adorned the south-facing wall of the library on Walnut Street Downtown.
The one made in 1884 featured the visage of Shakespeare and arts-themed motifs. The other, from 1904, pictured a standing woman peering deep into a book.
The windows were removed during in the late 1960s, and eventually disappeared, Faherty says.
But he has visions that someday, they'll cast their colorful light on the library's hardwood floors again.
"They might be in someone's basement; they might be in Colorado," he says. "We have no idea where they are. I would love to find them, and I would love to bring them back. I don't know if that's possible, but I've been here for 10 years and I've wanted them back since the first time I've heard about them."
How the windows went missing is a mystery. The library doesn't own the building it's in, but holds a 10,000-year lease on the space.
The owner of the Mercantile's building decided to brick up the windows when another building went up immediately to its south, Faherty says. They took out the stained glass and stored it at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
This is where things start to get murky. Faherty reads through letters about the windows between the owner's family, the museum and others.
"It's all very confusing... there are letters going back over about a 15-year period," he says, scanning over one missive from the Cincinnati Art Museum to the owners in the 1970s.
" 'Because of our very limited storage space and our inability to exhibit these windows, we are anxious to return them and are now asking for instructions concerning their return,' " Faherty reads.
The building owners had the windows transferred to a Downtown auction house soon after that letter. Faherty says he has one last tantalizing clue after that point.
Records show they were shipped out of Cincinnati in April 1982.
"The windows went to Riverview Baptist Church, 405 West Main Street, Veevay, Indiana, 47043," Faherty says. "And they were signed for by a guy named Garrett Bledsoe."
From there, the trail goes cold. The windows aren't at the church. Bledsoe died in 2005, and his family has said they don't remember them.
An appraisal in the 1970s — right around the time they were leaving the art museum — revealed the windows weren't high-value items. At least not in monetary terms.
Historian Katherine Durack thinks they're important, though. She's especially interested in the later one picturing a woman reading a book. It was commissioned by prominent Cincinnati suffragist Augustine "Gussie" Ogden. Ogden worked to advocate for women's right to vote in the years before they gained suffrage in 1920. She also was an activist for other women's rights, including more equitable divorce laws.
The window Ogden commissioned was a near-copy of a tapestry displayed at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Ogden had it created in 1904 in part to pay tribute to her late husband, Frank Ogden. But it's also a nod to the Mercantile's history supporting women's rights. The library opened membership to women in 1859 — an uncommon move at the time. And the wife of one of its early directors published a pioneering feminist newspaper.
"Even though it was the Young Men's Mercantile Library Association, an early director — Otis Aldrich — his wife publishes 'The Genius of Liberty,' which is one of the very first feminist publications in the United States," Durack says.
Durack is also a textile artist. She's made her own reproduction of the window as a quilt — part of a series of quilts she's done commemorating Ohio's women's suffrage history. To her, the window's placement in the library sent a powerful and resonant message.
"The fact that here's a woman reading in the Young Men's Mercantile Library, that establishes a model," she says. "It opens a door. So I guess this is a case where a window opens a door."
Faherty isn't giving up the search. He's taken to social media, posting the history of the stained glass windows in the hopes someone may just know where they are.
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