Reading girl was a gift from the Rotterdam Booksellers to the municipality, in honor of the twenty-fifth Book Week in 1960. After the Second World War, Rotterdam had quite a number of bookshops, who wanted to give the Boekenweek a local look by offering the statue to the municipality. Until 1969, the sandstone statue by artist Huib Noorlander stood at the entrance of the Korte Lijnbaan. After that, the Schouwburgplein was redesigned and the statue was moved. Years later, when the Schouwburgplein was redesigned by West 8, it could be returned to its original location. The statue belongs to 'the spirit' of the Lijnbaan, as the first car-free shopping street in the Netherlands. The sandstone original of it Reading girl was replaced by a bronze one in the 1970s, after the statue was beheaded.