Boston Public Library, McKim Building
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Boston Public Library
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Boston Public Library, McKim Building in Copley Square
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| Location | Boston, Massachusetts |
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| Coordinates | 42°20′58″N 71°4′41″W / 42.34944°N 71.07806°WCoordinates: 42°20′58″N 71°4′41″W / 42.34944°N 71.07806°W |
| Built | 1895 |
| Architect |
Charles Follen McKim; McKim, Mead and White |
| Architectural style | Renaissance Revival, Beaux-Arts |
| Part of | Back Bay Historic District (#73001948) |
| NRHP Reference # | 73000317 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | May 6, 1973 |
| Designated NHL | February 24, 1986 |
| Designated CP | August 14, 1973 |
The Boston Public Library McKim Building (built 1895) in Copley Square contains the library's research collection, exhibition rooms and administrative offices. When it opened in 1895, the new Boston Public Library was proclaimed a "palace for the people." 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.
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 $2,268,000, with a capacity of 2 million books.
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 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 (or catalan vaults) exported from the Catalan architectural tradition by the Valencian Rafael Guastavino. Seven different types of Guastavino vaulting can be seen in the library.
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