Boston Central Library
The Central Library is the main location of the Boston Public Library, occupying a full city block on Copley Square in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It consists of the McKim Building, designed by Charles Follen McKim, and the Johnson Building, designed by Philip Johnson. The McKim Building, which includes the library's research collection, is designed in the Renaissance Revival and Beaux-Arts styles. The Johnson Building has the circulating and rare-books collections and is designed in the Brutalist style. The library has 4 million annual visitors as of 2024.
The BPL was established in 1852 and relocated several times in its first three decades. In response to overcrowding, the Massachusetts state legislature set aside land in Back Bay for a central library in 1880. Following several attempts to devise plans, including an unsuccessful architectural design competition, McKim was hired to design the McKim Building in 1887. Work began the next year, but construction was delayed partly due to cost overruns. Even after the McKim Building opened in February 1895, it took two decades to complete the building's artwork. To accommodate the collection's growth, the building was renovated in 1898 and expanded in 1918. Further growth prompted the BPL to consider an expansion in the mid-20th century, and the Johnson Building was developed from 1969 to 1972. The McKim Building was renovated in the 1990s, followed by the Johnson Building in the 2010s.
The McKim Building has a nearly square floor plan surrounding an outdoor courtyard. Its three-story granite facade has a horizontal arcade, inscriptions, and medallions, facing east toward Dartmouth Street. Inside are several elaborately-decorated spaces, with departments across all three floors. The main entrance leads to a marble vestibule, a lobby with vaulted ceilings, and a grand staircase with murals. Bates Hall, a barrel-vaulted reading room, spans the second floor's width, and ornate lobbies on that story lead to other spaces such as delivery and catalog rooms. Sargent Hall on the third floor, named after murals painted by John Singer Sargent, leads to the art room and several private libraries. West of the McKim Building is the Johnson Building, whose granite facade has slanting lunette windows and a windowless upper section. Its interior is divided into square modules surrounding a central atrium.
Over the years, the McKim Building's design has been praised, while the Johnson Building's design has received mixed commentary. Both sections of the Central Library are designated as Boston city landmarks, and the McKim Building is also a National Historic Landmark.
Site
The Boston Central Library is on Copley Square in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It occupies a full city block bounded by Boylston Street to the north, Dartmouth Street to the east, Blagden Street to the south, and Exeter Street to the west. The original library, designed by Charles Follen McKim, is on the eastern half of the block. The western half is occupied by an annex designed by Philip Johnson. The two sections of the building are about apart.The library building overlooks Boston Common to the northeast, as well as Old South Church to the northwest. At the time of the library's development in the late 19th century, there were various brownstone houses to the north as well. The library also faces Trinity Church, which is across Dartmouth Street to the east. Also across Dartmouth Street is a plaque to the Lebanese-born poet and philosopher Gibran Khalil Gibran, dedicated in 1977. In addition, there is an ornamental portal to the MBTA subway's Copley station in front of the library's Boylston Street entrance.
Development
The Boston Public Library was established in 1852, and its first location, the two-room Adams Schoolhouse on Mason Street, opened in 1854. Within three years, the collection occupied three buildings. The original structure was replaced in 1858 by a new central library at 55 Boylston Street, which cost $364,000 to build and originally had 70,000 volumes. The second building's collection was split between a circulating collection in a lower hall and a research collection in an upper hall, Bates Hall. The BPL's collection gradually increased with various donations, and it had outgrown the second building within ten years. As such, the library system was granted permission to open branches in 1869. The central library at Boylston Street had an annual circulation of 380,000 by 1872, and the overcrowded collection posed a fire hazard by the late 1870s. The central library had more than 250,000 volumes by the early 1880s, a figure that was growing by the year.Land acquisition and early plans
After the BPL was incorporated in 1878, it requested that the General Court, the state legislature of Massachusetts, set aside a site in Back Bay for a new library. The General Court gave the BPL a site on April 22, 1880, under the condition that construction begin within three years. The site, at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth streets, covered about. The land was near Trinity Church and the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Harvard Medical School owned a lot immediately to the west, extending to Exeter Street. Henry Van Brunt and the city government's architect George Albert Clough separately drew up plans for moving the library to the English High and Latin School, but the BPL's trustees determined these proposals to be impractical. Clough next drew up plans for a new building on Dartmouth Street, which were submitted to the Board of Aldermen, the upper chamber of the Boston City Council, in February 1883. The city had not yet obtained the site at Boylston and Dartmouth streets due to uncertainty over where to move the library.In March 1883, the Board of Aldermen authorized $180,000 for land acquisition and $450,000 for the new building; at the time, the BPL's trustees anticipated that only the research collection would go to Copley Square. Shortly afterward, the state government gave the BPL three more years to begin construction, and additional land was acquired south of the original plot. An architectural design competition commenced in January 1884, and the City Council set aside $10,000 in prize money, to be divided four ways. Although the winning plans were supposed to have been selected in June 1884, there was a delay in advertising the contest, and there were disagreements over who should select the winning designs. Ultimately, either 20 or 23 designs were submitted. Charles B. Atwood won the first-prize award, but none of the designs were selected. The city government's architect Arthur H. Vinal said only four plans had even met the basic criteria; all the other plans had been discarded without further review.
In the absence of a suitable plan, Vinal was appointed to draw up plans, but the design was delayed due to disagreements over the stacks and funding. After the stacks debate was resolved, the BPL's trustees accepted Vinal's preliminary plans in October 1885. Additionally, in order for the BPL to continue holding the land, construction had to begin by April 21, 1886. Since the plans had not yet been completed, workers began constructing foundations at 4:18 p.m. on that date, just before the deadline. The plans, completed later that year, called for a three-story Romanesque Revival building. Some of the foundations were completed and covered over in late 1886, after $73,600 had been spent. The BPL trustees no longer wanted to proceed with Vinal's plans by the next year; the plans no longer met the trustees' requirements, but no one had full control of the project. Additionally, no one was particularly impressed with Vinal's design.
McKim design
On March 10, 1887, the BPL's trustees were given full authority to select their own architect. The board of trustees' president Samuel A. B. Abbott went to New York to meet with Charles Follen McKim, a relative who headed the prominent architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White. Following a series of negotiations, McKim was hired to design the library on March 30, to the consternation of local architects. The trustees gave McKim free rein to draw up the plans, which were tentatively planned to include a reading room, special-collection rooms, and space for 700,000 volumes. McKim temporarily relocated to a Boston townhouse owned by his late wife Julia Appleton. McKim wanted to design a structure that did not clash with Copley Square's existing architecture, and he invited the architects Charles Howard Walker, Joseph Morrill Wells, and Sidney V. Stratton to help. He considered modeling the building on the Villa Farnese, the Louvre Palace, or the Beaux-Arts de Paris before deciding on a design inspired by Paris's Sainte-Geneviève Library.The basic plans for the library were completed by mid-1887. That October, the Board of Aldermen unsuccessfully attempted to divert $75,000 allocated for the library to sewage pipes; the plans were nearly complete by then. The BPL approved preliminary plans on November 3, 1887, and McKim continued to refine the design over the following months. McKim considered going to Paris to ask his friend Honoré Daumet for inspiration, but McKim's partner William Rutherford Mead advised against it, telling him that "nobody but yourself can take care of the Library for the next three months". Instead, McKim had a young draftsman, William T. Partridge, assist him in refining the design. After the plans were finished, McKim presented it to the trustees, who approved McKim's revised plans on March 30, 1888. One trustee opposed to the plans, William Henry Whitmore, later resigned in protest. The approved plans were displayed in the State House, and the BPL's trustees issued reproductions of McKim's drawings.
When McKim's plans were approved, the trustees had around $350–360 thousand available. The plans called for a Milford granite structure with a central court, a marble hall and staircase, space for various departments, and a reading room on the second floor. The building was intended to host a million volumes; at the time, BPL officials did not conceive that the collection would ever reach that size. That May, the trustees were authorized to begin awarding contracts, at which point the building was to cost around $1.166 million. excluding sculpture costs. The City Council approved another $800,000 to cover the cost overruns. The BPL requested bids for the foundation that July, awarding the contract to Woodbury & Leighton.