Читать книгу How to plan a library building for library work - Charles C. Soule - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Our own “library age” may be said to date from the middle of the nineteenth century. The parliamentary investigations which led to the first English library act in 1850, and the organization of the Boston Public Library with us in 1852, mark the beginning of the modern library movement. I will not try to trace the gradual evolution of library buildings abroad. I do not know enough about it to handle the subject well. I find, however, in Edwards’ Free Town Libraries,[10] London, 1869, a prototype of our own “Points of Agreement among Librarians on Library Architecture.” But as late as 1907 an English architect (Champneys[11]) says that “the examples of what a library building should not be are out of all proportion to those which are worthy to be followed.”

In America, building developed with the library movement, at first getting rather ahead of it. Indeed, there were few experienced librarians to direct it, and even these were mainly the old style conservators and bibliographers. The topic of building does not appear in the discussions of the library conference in 1853. The architects had to develop a precedent. The first distinctive type to appear was adopted in the Astor Library in New York (1853) and followed in the Boston Public Library dedicated in 1858. The exterior of the building had no peculiar features, but the interior was distinctly a type to be outgrown. The main room was a lofty hall, surrounded by galleried alcoves reaching to the ceiling, storing the books, while the readers occupied the floor, into the middle of which the main stairway arose among the tables. This impressive but wasteful interior was copied in large cities throughout the country, and was referred to in contemporaneous discussion as the “conventional style.” As it was tested in operation, and as its defects both for storage and administration became evident, the library profession, then getting together, unanimously condemned it. At the Cincinnati Conference of 1882, the A. L. A. resolved that “the time has come for a radical modification of the prevailing style of library building, and the adoption of a style better suited to economy and practical utility.”[12] At first there was no agreement on a successor. Richardson, the great architect, developed a library type which was severely criticized by librarians.[13] But in the rapid growth of libraries, the problem of close, economical and accessible storage of books became acute. How could these accumulating masses be stored and at the same time used? The solution came in the “stack,” at first fiercely fought by conservative librarians, but now so universally accepted as to form the distinctive feature of modern American library architecture.

In 1876 an impetus was given to library science, including building, by the government report of that year on libraries, and also by the formation of the American Library Association. The annual meetings of the Association, its discussions, the studies and reports of its committees, the formation and activity of state, city, and other local library associations, the establishment of library schools, have all tended to build up a consensus of opinion on important topics which has been recorded in the library journals, and has slowly but surely impressed itself on architects, on the public, and, not least of all, upon building committees.

A special impetus toward union among librarians was the controversy which arose over the building of the second Boston Public Library. The importation of its exterior design from Paris, and the attempt to build up an interior for it without any consultation with librarians either local or national, seemed such a marked snub to the profession just becoming conscious of power and unity, that it aroused renewed attention to the proper planning of library buildings. A trustee of the library having stated in public that “it was no use to consult librarians, for no two of them agreed on any point,” the American Library Association endorsed unanimously at its next conference the paper on “Points of Agreement on Library Architecture,” which has since been the accepted basis of all satisfactory plans. A series of nine letters to the Boston Herald, criticizing the building and the library management (republished in 17 L. J.), vindicated the library side of the controversy and brought about a change of management. And yet this façade of the library Ste. Geneviève in Paris has been repeated “with monotonous poverty of invention,” says an architect, in the mistaken belief that a building once labeled a library is a praiseworthy model to be copied.

Another spur to library building during these last years has been the Carnegie gifts. Their number and wide range, furnishing at the same time an incentive and a climax to both private beneficence and public liberality, finally convinced architects that in library buildings of all sizes and various purposes they had a theme worthy of their best work and highest genius. Mr. Carnegie’s first Public Free Library was founded in 1889, less than quarter of a century ago. Up to March, 1911, he had given funds for 2062 public and 115 college libraries.