The McKim Building is the main branch of the Boston Public Library at Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts. The building, described upon its 1895 opening as a "palace for the people", contains the library's research collection, exhibition rooms, and administrative offices. The building includes 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. 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.
Bates Hall has a coffered ceiling in a wide catena-arched barrel vault.
History
Boston Public Library was founded in 1852. The first Boston Public Library location opened in 1854 in two rooms in the Adams School on Mason Street. Because the Mason Street space was small and poorly lit, a new building opened at 55 Boylston Street in 1858. It cost $365,000 to build and held 70,000 volumes. By 1880, the Boston Public Library again needed a larger building to accommodate its holdings, and architect Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead, and White was chosen to design a new building at the corner of Dartmouth Street and Boylston Street. It opened in 1895 and cost $2.268 million, with a capacity of 2 million books.[2]
Architecture
Charles Follen 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 16th-century Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome; in its center is a copy of the, once controversial, statue Bacchante and Infant Faun one of the most well-known works by Frederick William Macmonnies. 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 (or catalan vaults) exported from the Mediterranean architectural tradition by the ValencianRafael Guastavino. Seven different types of Guastavino vaulting can be seen in the library.[3] Significantly, the ceramic tile patterns are exposed to view on the interior, while all previous projects by Guastavino Sr. covered the vaults with plaster.[4]
The center entrance consists of three arches flanked by large sconces. Within each arch are sets of bronze doors by Daniel Chester French added in 1904, which depict left to right, low-relief allegories of Music and Poetry; Knowledge and Wisdom; and Truth and Romance. Beneath the figure of Music is a quote from Arcades by MiltonSuch sweet compulsion doth in music lie, to lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteady Nature to her law. Beneath Poetry is the inscription True Poetry is Like the Loadstone Which Both Attracts the Needle and Supplies it With Magnetic Power. The Knowledge door contains a quote from Proverbs 24:3: By knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all pleasant and precious riches; the Wisdom door states There is in Wisdom a spirit subtil, clear in utterance, loving what is good, pure, stedfast. On the Truth door is the inscription Truth is The Strength and The Kingdom and The Power and the Majesty of all Ages A Romance to Rede and Drive the Night and the Romance door states Away from me thought it Better Play than Either at Chesse or Tables.[5]
Flanking the entry are allegorical representations of Science, to the south and Art, on the north, completed by Bela Pratt in 1912. On the panels above the arches are seals of Massachusetts, the Library and the city of Boston.[6]
The McKim building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986 for its architectural and historical significance, given Boston Landmark status by the Boston Landmarks Commission in 2000. It was the first major Beaux Arts building in the United States, and it was also the first large-scale urban library building in the nation.[7]
Murals
Murals include a recently restored mural cycle by John Singer Sargent on the theme of The Triumph of Religion that is considered among the artist's masterworks;[8]Edwin Austin Abbey's most famous work, a series of murals which depict the Grail legend; and paintings of the Muses of Inspiration and allegories of academic subjects by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. The Puvis murals, which were painted on linen and applied to the library walls using the marouflage technique, are his only murals outside of France.
Monumental inscriptions
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". Below each second-story arched window on the three façades are inscribed lists of the names of great historical writers, artists, scientists, philosophers, and statesmen. A document created in 1939 by Frank N. Jones provides a comprehensive list: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1680001075
Across Dartmouth Street from the central entrance is a twentieth-century monument to the Lebanese-born poet and philosopher Gibran Khalil Gibran, or Kahlil Gibran (as he is usually referred to in English) 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", an excerpt from a letter enclosed with Gibran's generous bequest to the library.
Bates Hall
Interior of 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."[9] The form of Bates Hall, rectilinear but terminated with a semi-circular apse on each end, recalls a Romanbasilica. 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.
Research collection
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.
↑ John Singer Sargent's "Triumph of Religion" at the Boston Public Library: Creation and Restoration, Edited by Narayan Khandekar, Gianfranco Pocobene, and Kate Smith, Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge MA and Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009
↑ Allis, Sam (2005): "Holy Hub's hot spots: Fenway Park and other secular spots that are sacred." Boston Globe, December 4, 2005, p. A3
Shand-Tucci, Douglass, "Renaissance Rome and Emersonian Boston: Michelangelo and Sargent, between Triumph and Doubt", Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2002, 995-100.
The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1848. The Boston Public Library is also Massachusetts' Library for the Commonwealth, meaning all adult residents of the state are entitled to borrowing and research privileges, and the library receives state funding. The Boston Public Library contains approximately 24 million items, making it the third-largest public library in the United States behind the federal Library of Congress and New York Public Library, which is also privately endowed. In 2014, the library held more than 10,000 programs, all free to the public, and lent 3.7 million materials.
Charles Follen McKim was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead & White.
Copley Square, is a public square in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, bounded by Boylston Street, Clarendon Street, St. James Avenue, and Dartmouth Street. The square is named for painter John Singleton Copley. Prior to 1883 it was known as Art Square due to its many cultural institutions, some of which remain today.
Trinity Church in the City of Boston, located in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts is a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The congregation, currently standing at approximately 4,000 households, was founded in 1733. Three services are offered each Sunday, and weekday services are offered once a week from September through June. Within the spectrum of worship styles in the Anglican tradition, Trinity Church has historically been considered a Broad Church parish.
The Guastavino tile arch system is a version of Catalan vault introduced to the United States in 1885 by Spanish architect and builder Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908). It was patented in the United States by Guastavino in 1892.
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Rafael Guastavino Moreno was a Spanish building engineer and builder who immigrated to the United States in 1881; his career for the next three decades was based in New York City.
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The Low Memorial Library is a building at the center of Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus in Upper Manhattan, New York City, United States. The building, located near 116th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, was designed by Charles Follen McKim of the firm McKim, Mead & White. The building was constructed between 1895 and 1897 as the university's central library, although it has contained the university's central administrative offices since 1934. Columbia University president Seth Low funded the building with $1 million and named the edifice in memory of his father, Abiel Abbot Low. Low's facade and interior are New York City designated landmarks, and the building is also designated as a National Historic Landmark.
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The Santa Barbara County Courthouse (Courthouse) is a well-known example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and is located in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, California. Started in 1926 and completed in 1929, the Courthouse originally served as Santa Barbara County’s (County) superior courthouse, jail, and administrative office. The Courthouse was included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, was made a City of Santa Barbara Historic Landmark in 1982, a California Historical Landmark in 2004, and a National Historic Landmark in 2005. Over the years, most County administrative offices were relocated to other County buildings. The current Courthouse houses six County Superior Court rooms, the Mural Room, the County Hall of Records, the County Public Defender's Office, offices of the County General Services Department, and the McMahon Law Library. The Courthouse is open to the public and is a popular site for community gatherings and weddings. Architect Charles Willard Moore called it the "grandest Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever built," and the prime example of Santa Barbara's adoption of Spanish Colonial as its civic style.
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John Ochsendorf is an American educator, structural engineer, and historian of construction; he is a professor in the Department of Architecture and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is widely known for becoming a MacArthur Fellow in 2008 He served as the Director of the American Academy in Rome from 2017 to 2020. In 2022, he was appointed the founding director of the newly created MIT Morningside Academy for Design.
The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is an art museum located in Brunswick, Maine. Included on the National Register of Historic Places, the museum is located in a building on the campus of Bowdoin College designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White.
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Synagogue is an allegorical mural by John Singer Sargent in the Boston Public Library. It is part of Sargent's larger Triumph of Religion mural cycle in the library's central branch at Copley Square. Synagogue was unveiled in 1919, and it sparked immediate controversy. The cowering and feeble personification of the Synagogue stood in contrast with Sargent's glorified depiction of the Church in the mural cycle, and members of the Jewish community observed that the series delivered an implicit message of Jewish decline and Christian triumph. Sargent was reluctant to respond publicly to criticism of the work, but privately wrote in 1919, "I am in hot water with the Jews, who resent my ‘Synagogue,’ and want to have it removed– and tomorrow a ‘prominent’ member of the Jewish colony is coming to bully me about it and ask me to explain myself. I can only refer him to Rheims, Notre Dame, Strasbourg and other Cathedrals, and dwell at length about the good old times." Responding to charges that the work was antisemitic, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill ordering the removal of the mural in 1922, but the law was soon repealed, and the work has remained in place.
The Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library, formerly called the Dudley Library, is a 27,350-square-foot (2,541 m2) library building located at 149 Dudley St, Boston, Massachusetts, in historic Nubian Square. The Roxbury Branch is the largest in the Boston Public Library (BPL) system, excluding the central library location. The building was renovated in 2019 and reopened in 2020. In 2022, the library won an AIA COTE Top Ten Award.
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