Boston Public Library

Boston Public Library, McKim Building in Copley Square

The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials and take them home to read and use. The Boston Public Library is also the library of last recourse^[2] of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; all adult residents of the state are entitled to borrowing and research privileges, and the library receives state funding. According to its website, the Boston Public Library contains 6.1 million books (approx. 15 Million items encompassing all formats), making it one of the larger public libraries in the nation.^[3]

History, architecture, and collections

Several people were instrumental in the establishment of the Boston Public Library. George Ticknor, a Harvard professor and trustee of the Boston Athenaeum, raised the possibility of establishing a public library in Boston beginning as early as 1826. At the time, Ticknor couldn’t generate enough interest.

In 1841, Alexandre Vattemare, a Frenchman, suggested that all of Boston’s libraries combine themselves into one institution for the benefit of the public.^[4] The idea was presented to many Boston libraries, however, most were uninterested in the idea. At Vattemare’s urging, Paris sent gifts of books in 1843 and 1847 to assist in establishing a unified public library. Vattemare made yet another gift of books in 1849.

Josiah Quincy, Jr. anonymously donated $5,000 to begin the funding of a new library. Quincy made the donation while he was mayor of Boston. Indirectly, John Jacob Astor also influenced the establishment of a public library in Boston. At the time of his death, Astor bequeathed $400,000 to New York to establish a public library there. Because of the cultural and economic rivalry between Boston and New York, this bequest prompted more discussion of establishing a public library in Boston.^[5] In 1848, a statute of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts enabled the creation of the library. The library was officially established in Boston by a city ordinance in 1852.

Eager to support the library, Edward Everett collected documents from both houses of Congress, bound them at his own expense, and offered this collection to help establish the new library. At the time of Everett’s donation, George Ticknor became involved in the active planning for the new library.^[6] In 1852, financier Joshua Bates gave a gift of $50,000 to establish a library in Boston. After Bates' gift was received, Ticknor made lists of what books to purchase. He traveled extensively to purchase books for the library, visit other libraries, and set up book agencies.^[6]

To house the collection, a former schoolhouse located on Mason Street was selected as the library's first home. On March 20, 1854, the Reading Room of the Boston Public Library officially opened to the public. The circulation department opened on May 2, 1854.

Reading Room in 1871 at the first Boylston Street building, the library's location between 1858-1895.

Public Library, Boylston Street, 1858-1895 (demolished 1899).

The opening day collection of 16,000 volumes fit in the Mason Street building, but it quickly became obvious that its quarters were inadequate. So in December 1854, the library's commissioners authorized the library to move to a new building on Boylston Street. Designed by Charles Kirk Kirby to hold 240,000 volumes, the imposing Italianate edifice opened in 1858. But eventually the library outgrew that building as well; in 1878, an examining committee recommended replacing it with a new one at another location.

By 1880, the Massachusetts legislature authorized construction of an even grander library building. A site selected was in Back Bay on Copley Square -- the prominent corner of Boylston Street and Dartmouth Street, opposite Richardson's Trinity Church and near the first Boston Museum of Fine Arts^{[according to whom?]}. After several years of debate over the selection of the architects and architectural style for the new library, in 1887 the prestigious New York firm of McKim, Mead, and White was chosen to design the new library. In 1888, Charles Follen McKim proposed a design based on Renaissance style which met approval from the trustees of the library, and construction commenced.

The McKim building

Courtyard of the McKim building looking north. The campanile of Old South Church can be seen.

When it opened in 1895, the new Boston Public Library was proclaimed a "palace for the people." The building included lavish decorations, a children's room (the first in the nation ), and a central courtyard surrounded by an arcaded gallery in the manner of a Renaissance cloister.

McKim's design shows influence from a number of architectural precedents. McKim drew explicitly on the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris (designed by Henri Labrouste, built 1845 to 1851) for the general arrangement of the facade that fronts on Copley Square, but his detailing of that facade's arcaded windows owes a clear debt to the side elevations of Leon Battista Alberti's Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. The open-air courtyard at the center of the building is based closely on that of the sixteenth-century Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. McKim also exploited up-to-date building technology, as the library represents one of the first major applications in the United States of the system of thin tile vaults invented by Rafael Guastavino of Valencia; seven different types of Guastavino vaulting can be seen in the library.

Monumental inscriptions

Bates Hall has a coffered ceiling in a wide catena-arched barrel vault. Internet and power connections are discreetly beneath the large wooden research tables.

Architect Charles Follen McKim chose to have monumental inscriptions, similar to those found on basilicas and monuments in ancient Rome, in the entablature on each of the main building's three façades. On the south is inscribed: "MDCCCLII • FOUNDED THROUGH THE MUNIFICENCE AND PUBLIC SPIRIT OF CITIZENS"; on the east: "THE PUBLIC LIBRARY OF THE CITY OF BOSTON • BUILT BY THE PEOPLE AND DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING • A.D. MDCCCLXXXVIII"; and on the north: "THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY".

The last quotation has been attributed to the library's Board of Trustees. Another inscription, above the keystone of the central entrance, proclaims: "FREE TO ALL". Across the street from the central entrance to the library is a twentieth-century monument to the Lebanese-born poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran who as a young immigrant educated himself in the Boston Public Library. The monument's inscription responds to the McKim building reading "IT WAS IN MY HEART TO HELP A LITTLE, BECAUSE I WAS HELPED MUCH". The text is excerpted from a letter enclosed with Gibran's generous bequest to the library.

Bates Hall

Bates Hall is named for the library's first great benefactor, Joshua Bates. Boston Globe writer Sam Allis described "Bates Hall, the great reading room of the BPL, vast and hushed and illuminated with a profusion of green lampshades like fireflies" as one of Boston's "secular spots that are sacred." ^[7] The form of Bates Hall, rectilinear but terminated with a semi-circular apse on each end, recalls a Roman basilica. A series of robust double coffers in the ceiling provide a sculptural canopy to the room. The east side has a rhythmic series of arched windows with light buffered by wide overhanging hood on the exterior. Heavy deep green silk velvet drapery installed in 1888, and again in the 1920s and 1950s, was not recreated in the 1993 restoration of the room. The drapery helped to muffle sound and lower light levels.

The Johnson building

Designed by Philip Johnson, a late modernist addition (which somewhat anticipated postmodernist architecture) was built in 1967-1971 and opened in 1972. The Johnson building reflects similar proportions, and is built of the same pink granite as the McKim building. Critics have likened it to a mausoleum, citing the small percentage of windows relieving the massive walls in its exterior façade.

Upon opening, the Johnson building became the home for the BPL's main circulating collection, which includes works in many languages. It also serves as headquarters for the Boston Public Library's 26 branch libraries. The McKim building houses the BPL's research collection.

The library today

According to its website, the collection of the Boston Public Library has grown to 6.1 million books, which makes it one of the largest municipal public library systems in the United States. According to the American Library Association, the circulation of the BPL is 15,458,022 which also makes it one of the busiest public library systems in the nation. Because of the strength and importance of its research collection, the Boston Public Library is a member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), a not-for-profit organization comprising the research libraries of North America. The New York Public Library is the only other public library that is a member of the ARL. The library has special strengths in art and art history (available on the third floor of the McKim building) and American history (including significant research material), and maintains a depository of government documents.

Included in the BPL's research collection are more than 1.7 million rare books and manuscripts. It possesses wide-ranging and important holdings, including medieval manuscripts and incunabula, early editions of William Shakespeare (among which are a number of Shakespeare quartos and the First Folio), the George Ticknor collection of Spanish literature, a major collection of Daniel Defoe, records of colonial Boston, the 3,800 volume personal library of John Adams, the mathematical and astronomical library of Nathaniel Bowditch, important manuscript archives on abolitionism, including the papers of William Lloyd Garrison, and a major collection of materials on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. There are large collections of prints, photographs, postcards, and maps. The library, for example, holds one of the major collections of watercolors and drawings by Thomas Rowlandson. The library has a special strength in music, and holds the archives of the Handel and Haydn Society, scores from the estate of Serge Koussevitzky, and the papers of the important American composer Walter Piston.

Dancing Bacchante and Infant Faun, by Frederick William Macmonnies, in the library's courtyard. It is one of his most famous sculptures.

Murals include recently restored paintings by John Singer Sargent on the theme of The Triumph of Religion; Edwin Austin Abbey's most famous work, a series of murals which depict the Grail legend; and paintings of the Muses by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

The library regularly displays its rare works, often in exhibits that will combine works on paper, rare books, and works of art. Several galleries in the third floor of the McKim building are maintained for exhibits. Rooms are also available for lectures and meetings.

For all these reasons, the historian David McCullough has described the Boston Public Library as one of the five most important libraries in America, the others being the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the university libraries of Harvard and Yale.

Unfortunately, in recent years the Library has not been funded adequately befitting its status. For example, staffing and funding levels for conservation, as of 2006, are below its peers: the BPL's staff of two full-time conservators compares poorly with the New York Public Library's thirty-five. Many colonial records and John Adams manuscripts are brittle, decaying, and in need of attention prompting the library's acting Keeper of Rare Books and Manuscripts to say that "they are falling apart."^[8]

Branch library system

In the latter half of the 19th century, the library worked vigorously to develop and expand its branch library system. Viewed as a means to extend its presence throughout the city, the branch system evolved from an idea in 1867 to a reality in 1870, when the first branch library in the United States was opened in East Boston. The library currently has 27 branches serving diverse populations in the city's neighborhoods.

Technology

One of the features that the Boston Public Library offered first is free Wi-Fi wireless internet. It is offered throughout the entire library and at all 27 branches, giving access to anyone who has a wireless enabled laptop and a library card to access the Internet. Plug-in Ethernet access is also available in Bates Hall. The Boston Public Library also maintains several Internet databases providing either catalogue or full text access to different parts of its collections, as well as to a number of proprietary databases. Public Internet access is also available to those without laptops, though this is in high demand and will be limited in duration if there are other patrons waiting.

Gallery

1850s

Old building, Mason Street, 1850s

1858-1895

Old building, Boylston St., 19th c.	Old building, Boylston St., 19th c.	Old building, Boylston St., 19th c.	Old building, Boylston St., 19th c.
Old building, Boylston St., 19th c.	Old building, Boylston St., 19th c.	Old building, Boylston St., 1850s	Boston Public Library as it was on Boylston Street Circa 1886

1895-present

Main staircase	First floor plan	Early postcard	Bates Hall
Bates Hall in the late 19th century	Personification of "Science" at main entrance	The Johnson Building

Notes

References

Shand-Tucci, Douglass, "Renaissance Rome and Emersonian Boston: Michelangelo and Sargent, between Triumph and Doubt", Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2002, 995-100

Further reading

• Boston City Council. Proceedings at the dedication of the building for the Public library of the city of Boston: January 1, 1858.

External links

Boston portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Boston Public Library

• The Boston Public Library
• A Tribute to the Boston Public Library
• Boston Public Library: architectural images
• Great Buildings on-line
• Photos of the Boston Public Library

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Additional info - part 2

Boston City Council

The Boston City Council is the legislative branch of government for the city of Boston. It is made up of 13 members: 9 district representatives and 4 at-large members. Councilors are elected to two-year terms and there is no limit on the number of terms an individual can serve. Boston uses a strong-mayor form of government in which the city council acts as a check against the power of the executive branch, the mayor. The Council is responsible for approving the city budget; monitoring, creating, and abolishing city agencies; making land use decisions; and approving, amending, or rejecting other legislative proposals.

Boston Emergency Medical Services

Boston Emergency Medical Services (Boston EMS) provides advanced life support (ALS) and ambulance transport for the city of Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Boston EMS is a bureau within the Boston Public Health Commission, and employs over 300 emergency medical technicians (EMT) and paramedics^[1]. Boston EMS is a separate agency from the Boston Fire Department. Boston EMS only hires EMTs, and then promotes paramedics from within the department.

Boston English

Boston English is a dialect of American English spoken in the city of Boston, Massachusetts and much of eastern Massachusetts. The Boston accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. These regions are frequently grouped together with Rhode Island by sociolinguists under the cover term Eastern New England accent. The best-known features of the Boston accent are non-rhoticity and broad A. It is most prominent in blue collar—and often traditionally Irish or Italian—Boston neighborhoods, such as Charlestown, South Boston, West Roxbury, Hyde Park, Dorchester, East Boston and Brighton, as well as in nearby cities such as Somerville, Revere, Saugus, Woburn, and Medford. The accent is also quite prevalent in the South Shore suburbs, the North Shore (The north region of Boston) , as well as working-class cities throughout the Greater Boston area, such as Quincy, Lowell, Dracut, Lynn, Brockton, Worcester, Haverhill, Beverly, Salem, Gloucester, and Peabody.

Boston Finance Commission

The Boston Finance Commission (FinComm) is an agency that monitors finances for the city of Boston. It is concerned with appropriations, loans, expenditures, accounts, and methods of administration affecting the city of Boston and Suffolk County (of which Boston is the major part). It conducts investigations, and makes reports to the mayor, city council, and state governor, in addition to its annual January report to the state legislature.^{[citation needed]}

Boston Fire Department

The Boston Fire Department (BFD) provides fire protection services for Boston, Massachusetts, USA. In addition to fire protection, the Boston Fire department also provides basic emergency medical services and respond to a variety of emergencies such as, but not limited to, motor vehicle accidents, hazardous material spills, electrical hazards, floods, and construction accidents. The department serves approximately 620,000 people in a 47-square-mile (120 km²) area of the city proper and additional mutual aid to 32 surrounding communities of the Greater Boston Metro Area including Logan International Airport.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. The museum was founded in 1870 and its current location dates to 1909. In addition to its curatorial undertakings, the museum is affiliated with an art academy, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a sister museum, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in Nagoya, Japan. The current director of the museum is Malcolm Rogers.

Boston Police Department

The Boston Police Department (BPD) has the primary responsibility for law enforcement and investigation within the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th largest department in the United States and states that it is the oldest, its formal creation having been initiated in 1838^[1]. The Boston Police Department is also the third largest law enforcement agency in Massachusetts behind the Massachusetts State Police and the Massachusetts Department of Correction (the largest).

Boylston Street

Boylston Street is the name of a major east-west thoroughfare in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Another Boylston Street runs through Boston's western suburbs.

Campanile

Campanile (Italian pronunciation: [kampaˈniːle], English pronunciation: /ˌkæmpəˈniːliː/) is an Italian word meaning "bell tower" (from the word campana, meaning "bell"). The term applies to bell towers which are either part of a larger building (usually a church or a civil administration building) or free-standing, although in American English, the latter meaning has become prevalent.

Charles Follen McKim

Charles Follen McKim FAIA (August 24, 1847–September 14, 1909) was one of the most prominent American Beaux-Arts architects of the late nineteenth century. Along with Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead, and White.

Cloister

A cloister (from Latin claustrum) is a covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church usually indicates that it is (or was once) part of a monastic foundation.

Coffer

A coffer (or coffering) in architecture, is a sunken panel in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.^[1] A series of these sunken panels were used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called caissons ('boxes"), or lacunaria ("spaces, openings"),^[2] so that a coffered ceiling can be called a lacunar ceiling. The stone coffers of the ancient Greeks^[3] and Romans^[4] are the earliest surviving examples, but a seventh-century BCE Etruscan chamber tomb in the necropolis of San Giuliano, which is cut in soft tufa-like stone reproduces a ceiling with beams and cross-beams lying on them, with flat panels fillings the lacunae.^[5] Wooden coffers were first made by crossing the wooden beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaus of the early Renaissance.^[6]

Coffered ceiling

A coffer (or coffering) in architecture, is a sunken panel in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.^[1] A series of these sunken panels were used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called caissons ('boxes"), or lacunaria ("spaces, openings"),^[2] so that a coffered ceiling can be called a lacunar ceiling. The stone coffers of the ancient Greeks^[3] and Romans^[4] are the earliest surviving examples, but a seventh-century BCE Etruscan chamber tomb in the necropolis of San Giuliano, which is cut in soft tufa-like stone reproduces a ceiling with beams and cross-beams lying on them, with flat panels fillings the lacunae.^[5] Wooden coffers were first made by crossing the wooden beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaus of the early Renaissance.^[6]

Commonwealth of Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts ( /ˌmæsəˈtʃuːsɨts/ (help·info)) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of 6.6 million lives in the Boston metropolitan area. The eastern half of the state is made up of urban, suburban, and rural areas, while Western Massachusetts is mostly rural. Massachusetts is the most populous of the six New England states (which include Maine and Massachusetts' border states except New York). It ranks third among U.S. states in GDP per capita.

Contributing property

In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property is any property, structure or object which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic district, listed locally or federally, significant. Government agencies, at the state, national, and local level in the United States, have differing definitions of what constitutes a contributing property but there are common characteristics. Local laws often regulate the changes that can be made to contributing properties within designated historic districts. The first local ordinances dealing with the alteration of properties within historic districts was in Charleston, South Carolina in 1931^[1]

Copley Square

Copley Square, named for the American portraitist John Singleton Copley (1738 – 1815), is a public square located in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. A bronze statue of Copley, by sculptor Lewis Cohen, is located on the northern side of the square. The name Copley Square is frequently applied to the larger area extending approximately two blocks east and west along Boylston Street, Huntington Avenue, and St. James Avenue. The square is adjacent to the finish line of the Boston Marathon, which is commemorated by a monument in the park.

Culture in Boston

The culture of Boston, Massachusetts, shares many many roots with greater New England, including a dialect of the Eastern New England accent popularly known as Boston English. The city has its own unique slang, which has existed for many years. Boston was, and is still, a major destination of Irish immigrants. Irish Americans are a major influence on Boston's politics and religious institutions and consequently on the rest of Massachusetts.

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (c.1659 – 24 April 1731^[1]), born Daniel Foe, was an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain, and is even referred to by some as one of the founders of the English novel.^[2] A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.

David McCullough

David Gaub McCullough (mə·kŭl′·ə) (born July 7, 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)^[2] is an American author, narrator, and lecturer.^[3] He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.^[3][4]

East Boston, Massachusetts

East Boston is a neighborhood of nearly 40,000 people that is part of the City of Boston. The community was created by connecting several islands using landfill and was annexed by Boston in 1836. East Boston is separated from the rest of the city by Boston Harbor and bordered by Winthrop, Revere, and the Chelsea Creek. Directly west of East Boston across Boston Harbor is the North End and Boston's Financial District. The neighborhood has long provided a foothold for the latest wave of immigrants, with Irish, Russian Jews and then Italians alternating as the predominant group. Today immigrants from El Salvador, Brazil and elsewhere in Central and South America have made East Boston one of the centers of Latino culture in New England.

Edward Everett

Edward Everett (April 11, 1794 – January 15, 1865) was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State. He also taught at Harvard University and served as president of Harvard.

Entablature

An entablature (pronounced /ɛnˈtæblətʃər/; Italian intavolatura, from in 'in' and tavola 'table') refers to the superstructure of moldings and bands which lie horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and are commonly divided into the architrave (the supporting member carried from column to column, pier or wall immediately above) the frieze (an unmolded strip that may or may not be ornamented) and the cornice (the projecting member below the pediment).

Ethernet

Ethernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks (LANs). The name comes from the physical concept of the ether. It defines a number of wiring and signaling standards for the Physical Layer of the OSI networking model, through means of network access at the Media Access Control protocol (a sub-layer of Data Link Layer), and a common addressing format.