Why spell public pvblic?

Answer 1

Over the years several different reasons have been suggested as the reason the engraving above the front doors uses a "V" rather than a "U". There is not a precise answer to this query, however we are able to make an educated guess based on several sources of information. According to the World Book encyclopedia, U was adopted from the Greek letter Y. The Romans dropped the bottom stroke and wrote the letter as V. This was used for both the consonant sound V and the vowel sound U. Some time around 900 A.D. people began to use V at the beginning of a word and U in the middle of a word. It was during the time between 1400 A.D. and 1600 A.D. that U became the letter commonly used for the vowel sound. There was a Renaissance of the Classical style of architecture in the United States from 1890-1940. William R. Ware, the founder of M.I.T.'s School of Architecture, taught a style that he called American Vignola. (Vignola was an Italian architect who codified the standards for Classical Architecture in his work Rules of the Five Orders of Architecture). We own a reprint of Ware's primer American Vignola (729.3 Ware). In the early 1900's, it was common for educated men to be taught both Greek and Latin. Therefore the people involved with the design of this building and many others during this American Renaissance more than likely would have known the Classic Roman alphabet used the symbol V for both U and V. We are not the only library to be a "pvblic" library. Pictures have been found of several other libraries where a V is substituted for a U. While their architectural style does not always match our Classical columns, domes and pediments, most of them were built during this time of American Vignola. So it is accurate to say that we were built during a time when architects and builders were embracing Classic themes. Therefore it is very likely that the engraving reads "Walker Pvblic Library" because it was in accordance to what was popular in the architectural world at the time our library was built. This is also a likely explanation for the architect's decision to design our library in the Classical style. Took Me a while to find this answer MPLS FTW