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The Library Building

The Exterior

The position of the building is a central and beautiful one. It stands on the slightly elevated portion of an acre of land, triangular in shape, at the junction of Main and Sudbury streets. The front view is quite picturesque, suggesting a group of buildings rising successively one above another.

The easterly portion of the edifice, containing the entrance corridor, offices and reading-room, has a frontage forty-five feet wide and thirty-seven feet deep, with walls fourteen feet high to the eaves, and a roof rising eight feet more to the ridge. In the rear of this is the wall of the main hall or Book Room, twenty-seven feet high, with a projecting central gable and the roof rising by two angles nineteen feet above the eaves. Still behind this rises a tower forty-five feet high surmounted by a spire, with a vane showing the date, “1873”, of the completion of the building. The whole height of this spire from the ground is about eighty-five feet. The tower forms a central projection on the western exterior façade, and a recess in the interior of the main room. The northerly and southerly ends of this main part of the building face severally on the two streets, and are each divided into three angles, which rise above the eaves and terminate in gables at the height of thirty-eight feet. The spire and roofs are covered with blue, red, and green slate, disposed ornamentally. The extreme exterior dimensions on the ground are eighty-eight by fifty-eight feet.

The foundations and walls are of the most substantial character. All party walls are of brick and rise to the roof. Those of the exterior are built with air spaces, to secure uniformity of temperature, and to guard against moisture. Lathing is not used on the walls, but the plaster, with stone finish, lies directly upon the brick. The materials used in the walls are faced-brick, laid in black mortar, with a tasteful introduction of black brick about the windows and elsewhere ornamentally arranged. Buttresses between the windows and on the corners of numerous angles are capped with drab sandstone, which has also been used for window sills, and in bands encircling the building in lines parallel with its base, which is of granite.

In the treatment of the design the architects have successfully adapted the picturesque features of mediaeval architecture to the requirements and mode of construction of the present day.

Interior Arrangement And Capacity

The principal entrance faces the east. The porch, twelve feet wide, is surmounted with an ornamented gable bearing upon a sandstone slab the simple inscription “Library”, cut in relief. This entrance opens into a vestibule ten feet square, paved with red and blue tile and lighted from above. On the right hand is a door which leads to the Work Room and to the Librarian’s and Trustees’ Rooms. Facing the entrance are glass folding doors opening into a corridor eight and a half feet wide, paved with ornamental tiles, and also lighted from above. This corridor is twenty-seven feet long, and opens in front into the principal Book Room. The tout ensemble of this department of the building is very fine. Here thirty thousand volumes can be shelved and seen at a glance. On the left, a smaller hall leads to the Reading Room, and to a private entrance to the building and to the basement. All these rooms are on one level.

The dimensions of the main Book Room are fifty by thirty feet, but the effect is that of a larger room, for, facing the entrance, is a recess eight and a half feet wide, eleven feet deep, and twenty-five feet high, formed within the tower; and opposite to it, over the entrance, a similar recess. Within these recesses iron stair cases lead to two galleries above; that over the entrance commencing in one of the side rooms. Each end of the main Book Room is shaped like three sides of an octagon. In all these sides and in the rear of the tower recess are windows under the first gallery three feet wide and four feet high. The principal openings through which the interior is lighted commence at eighteen feet from the floor on the second gallery, where, in each of the six octagonal spaces, as well as in each of the three sides of the tower, are windows three feet wide and eleven feet high, cutting through and rising above the entablature that surrounds the room at twenty-five feet from the floor.

Above the cornice of the entablature the ceiling rises by two inclinations to a central level portion thirty-seven feet from the floor. This portion is divided into three square panels by beams which rise from the piers forming the pilasters, four from each side and two from each end of the room. Upon those piers the roof is supported. The continuity of wall space for bookcases is broken at intervals of ten feet by the pilasters, which project one foot from the walls. On the main floor ornamental bookcases project from these pilasters into the room.

Of the two galleries, the first, nine feet above the floor, affords access to shelving upon it that occupies the walls around the entire room and the recesses, and also to two rooms for duplicate books, the herbarium and pamphlets. The second, seventeen and a half feet above the floor, does not cross the central window at either end of the room, and the wall space upon it is broken by the principal windows which rise from it; there is room, therefore, on this gallery for comparatively but few volumes.

The total book capacity of the building may be thus stated:

The interior wood finish, including the floors, is of brown ash. The bookcases and furniture are of ash and black walnut. The shelves are of pine, faced with black walnut. The cases and shelves are not placed in contact with the walls but have air spaces on all sides for the protection of the books from dampness. The ceilings are painted a gray tone of blue, the walls pale myrtle, and the pilasters, mouldings and cornices soft tones of brown. The effect of these colors, combined with those of the furniture and fixtures, is subdued and agreeable.

The centre of the main floor is separated from the rest by a black walnut railing, providing a Waiting Room for book borrowers. On the northerly end is the librarian’s desk and the book delivery. This end of the room is shelved and specially appropriated to the lending department of the library. That on the southerly end is arranged for books of reference, and other books not belonging to the lending department, and is provided with tables and conveniences for students and others wishing to consult rare and costly works.

The Reading Room for the general public is a handsome, well lighted, airy room, measuring twenty-four by sixteen feet. It is situated on the south side of the corridor, and its approach, as already stated, is from the corridor and is in view of the librarian’s desk in the main Book Room.

The entire building is heated by furnaces and lighted with gas, and care has been taken to combine the best modern ideas for securing safety for the contents and convenience for the administration of a public library.

The architects were Messrs. Snell and Gregerson, of Boston.

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