Description

^{Early American Libraries: The 18th and 19th Centuries}

In 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the United States was home to a population of an estimated 2.5 million, there were 15 publicly accessible libraries in the colonies, located primarily in Pennsylvania, New York and New England. Only 24 years later, in 1800, there were already 64 public libraries in the United States with a total of 50,000 books. In most cases the libraries were housed in buildings designed for other purposes, churches, local societies, residences. By 1876 there were 3,674 public libraries in the United States, holding a total of over 12 million volumes. By the middle of the 19th century the rapid spread of free public education in the United States created large new reading populations who understood the opportunity to better themselves through access to books and magazines. Innovations in printing – most notably the invention of the rotary printing press by Richard Hoe in 1847 and the mass paper production – made books affordable to a rapidly growing middle class. These two factors also advanced the development of freely available library service for all citizens, an idea that captured the imagination of the public during the second half of the 19^th century.

New England Libraries

In New England, the legislation enabling communities to tax all their citizens for the benefit of creating public libraries, led to a flowering of library construction. With the assurance of public funding for operations and a rapid increase of wealth from factories and railroads many wealthy New Englanders chose the building of a public library as their way of giving back to the community. In most small New England towns today one can quickly spot these outstanding buildings for their classic and iconic design.

This rapid success story had reverberations for the design of the buildings as well. In 1876, Justin Winsor (1831–1897), librarian and head of the Boston Public Library, gave the following advice to architects: “We come to change the character of the library to that of a great collection to which multitudes have access and but few are personally known to the librarians. Such a state of affairs … involves the shutting out of the public from the shelves … The main idea of the modern public library building is … compact stowage to save space and short distances to save time.”[1] Winsor gave detailed instructions on how the shelves should be made and arranged. He also already envisioned a library of one million volumes[2] with compact storage to save space.[3] By 1896 the Boston Public Library was circulating 1.5 million books a year to 716,000 annual visitors.[4] These new public libraries were often envisioned by their governing bodies as a means to assimilation and the Americanization of the mass of immigrants coming into the country. Political leaders thought of libraries as places where people could be acclimated to a civic culture and uplifted.

By 1899 there were 10,000 libraries with 40 million books. 5,000 of these had at least 1,000 books. This building boom did not necessarily yield functional buildings. In 1879, the outspoken librarian William Frederick Poole (1821–1894), for instance, told an audience of his colleagues at the Fourth Annual American Library Association convention to “avoid everything that pertains to the plan and arrangement of the conventional American library building.”[5] Poole was referring to the alcoved book hall libraries with several stories such as Henry Hobson Richardson’s Romanesque design for the Winn Library in Woburn, Massachusetts (1879). The book stack was closed to the public, so staff had to climb a precarious spiral stair and clamber up high bookcases to retrieve books for users waiting at the delivery desk. It was next to impossible to heat the galleried book hall to a comfortable temperature without overheating its upper levels and damaging the books. The book stack capacity was minimal and much of the space was unusable for library purposes. Nonetheless, the Winn Library is a glorious cathedral-like space considered a monumental achievement by architects and much beloved by many library users.

In a similar way, H. H. Richardson went on to design a number of public libraries, among them the Ames Free Library in North Easton, Massachusetts (1877) and the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy, Massachusetts (1880 ). All followed the traditional style by encasing the reading room in book-lined alcoves. In 1874 the Cincinnati Public Library opened with five levels of alcove stacks and a ceiling skylight. In the words of Justin Winsor, these traditional libraries were “planned to produce the largest rather than the smallest distance of books from the point of delivery” and exhibited the “inability of architects to recognize the paramount demands of administrative uses over the meretricious attractions of vista of books and displayed alcoves.” Librarians called for a plan based more on function than form.[6]

Carnegie Libraries

Starting in 1886, Andrew Carnegie made funds available for constructing libraries throughout the United States and Canada. Under the influence of the Carnegie grants, which poured money into library building, the paternalistic social attitude of the 19th century gave way to a more open and egalitarian spirit.[7] From 1901–1910, 450 public library buildings were constructed while from 1911–1920 180 more were added. Andrew Carnegie’s private secretary, James Bertram (1872–1934) had been put in charge of distributing the Carnegie library building grants. From 1904 onward Bertram reviewed plans. By 1911, when most of the Carnegie grants had already been allocated, Bertram thought the designs were often so grandiose and dysfunctional that he wrote a guideline titled “Notes On the Erection of Library Buildings” that offered to potential designers some advice on library design.

Bertram insisted on the functionality of the design and required “to obtain for the money the utmost amount of effective accommodation, consistent with good taste in building.” His emphasis was on economy of space. He especially disliked wasted space at the entrance. “Too valuable space allotted to cloak rooms, toilets and stairs.”[8] The site should admit natural light and be large enough to allow for expansion.[9] Bertram’s notes focused on layout configuration and the organization of the building program but did not establish a specific style for the exterior design. The result was that the 1,689 Carnegie Libraries that were built in the United States exhibit a wide variety of architectural fashions, such as Classical Revival, Italian Renaissance, Beaux Arts, Spanish Revival and others.[10]

^{The Monumental Urban Library}

In 1897, the influential librarian and library innovator John Cotton Dana (1856–1929) pointed out that the decreases in book costs made the concept of a library as a storehouse of treasures obsolete. The new open library allowed readers to enjoy “the touch of the books themselves, the joy of their immediate presence.”[11] Libraries increased their book capacities and opened their stacks so that anyone could browse the entire collection.[12] Earlier designs that placed the book shelves around the walls of the reading rooms (wall stacks), were replaced with free-standing stacks (stall stacks) requiring reinforced floors to support heavy 2.1 m high stacks to meet the new requirements for thousands of volumes. These libraries were perceived as the “People’s University”, intended for the uplifting of all citizens. Whether they were funded by private money, as was the New York Public Library, or by city funds as in Boston, the concept reflected the great civic pride of the time.

The Library of Congress 1897

Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1825–1908) was responsible for the copyright law of 1870, which required all copyright applicants to send to the library two copies of their work. This resulted in a flood of books, pamphlets, maps and prints. Facing a shortage of shelf space at the Capitol, Spofford convinced Congress of the need for a new building. It was designed by John L. Smithmeyer and Paul J. Pelz, and the construction was devised by General Thomas Lincoln Casey, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, assisted by engineer Bernard Green. The library, soon known as the Thomas Jefferson Building, opened in 1897. Reference book stacks radiated out from a centrally located immense card catalogue with thousands of drawers. The majority of the multi-million volume collection was housed in self-supporting stacks and located outside of the reading room. The stacks included open shelving and floor openings for the circulation of air.

The Boston Public Library 1895

The Boston Public Library, established in 1848, was the first library to allow people to borrow books and take them home. The collections developed rapidly in response to demand and the book stacks outgrew two buildings before the end of the century. It was considered necessary to separate the reading rooms from the book stacks, and a new and much larger building was planned. Designed by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead and White, the new library opened in 1895, a milestone in public library architecture. The influential librarian William Warner Bishop wrote: “It is a beautiful and inspiring structure and houses a very wonderful collection. But its following of palatial architecture results in a very small main door, narrow windows on the ground level, a great amount of space devoted to the magnificently conceived and decorated staircase well … and a courtyard which forces books to travel around three sides of a square to be delivered at one side.”[13]

The New York Public Library 1911

In 1902 the design for the New York Public Library by Carrère and Hastings, one of the most outstanding Beaux Arts architecture firms in the United States, sought to remedy some of the criticism of the Boston library by building seven floors of bookstacks that sat directly underneath the grand reading room with book lifts and pneumatic tubes to facilitate sending messages to the stacks for the quick delivery of books. By the 1970s, the collection began to outgrow the available space and new library facilities were created underground by excavating the space underneath adjacent Bryant Park.

^{The Move Toward More Functional Design}

Already in 1897, the great library innovator John Cotton Dana addressed the conflict between monumental design and functional requirements: “The free public library building … so constructed as to serve thoroughly well the purposes for which it was intended exists in theory only.” Dana went on to plead for greater ease of access and speed in intercommunication. He emphasized accessibility to the delivery and information desks near the entrance to the building. “The delivery counter should be so constructed as to serve as an aid in the transaction of business – as a means of communication, not as a barrier – between the assistants and the public.”[14] Dana believed in the new open-access designs that were just beginning to replace the closed stack designs that had been common up to this time. He advocated special rooms for children “so arranged that the children may make their own choice”[15] – a revolutionary idea at that time.

He offered the following advice to the architect: “Make your building adaptable to new conditions. … Avoid permanent partitions. … Stairs are bad in any library. The smaller the library the worse they are. … This working library of the future … is in a building which is well lighted and can be easily readjusted, rearranged and extended to meet new conditions.”[16]

The Enoch Pratt Free Library

In 1926, Joseph L. Wheeler became director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. His emphasis was on immediate accessibility of materials. He moved the books out from closed stacks. He saw the library as a kind of department store for distributing books. Wheeler felt that the structure should be a thing of beauty and that there was no conflict between a nice appearance and convenience and economy in plan and operation. When the new library building, which was to replace the original Romanesque Revival structure from 1886 designed by Charles L. Carson, was being planned he held a special meeting in which 25 librarians of other large cities gave their criticisms of the plans of the new building.[17] The replacement building was designed by Alfred M. Githens (1876–1973) and opened in 1931.

Wheeler and the architect Githens created a revolutionary library design. The large open book collection of 150,000 volumes was organized in subject matter departments that surrounded a central hall. The main floor was accessible directly from the sidewalk with the entrance at ground level instead of via a monumental pedestal at the top of a long flight of stairs. Street level show windows attracted users, comparable to a downtown department store. An information desk was located right at the center with selective popular and new materials nearby. All in all, the library was characterized by openness and hospitality instead of presenting a prison house of books.[18] Although the Baltimore library was a great improvement over the monumental staircases and massive reading rooms of earlier big city libraries, the disadvantages of this arrangement were inflexible staff distribution, difficult access to the books on floors below and expansion limitations.

Wheeler and Githens later collaborated on the book The American Public Library Building that became a standard for public library design for many decades. In Wheeler’s opinion, a library should be “neither a storehouse for books nor a refuge for the idle; neither is it a civic monument. … friendly in its expression of welcome to all, not aloof nor cold, nor trite and commonplace in its architecture.”[19]

The Modular Library

Angus Snead Macdonald trained as an architect at Columbia University in 1915 just as it was making a major transition from the traditional Beaux Arts curriculum to a modern and technical curriculum.[20] He became president of Snead and Co., a distinguished manufacturer of steel book stacks. Snead and Co. installed the book stacks for the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library and they held many patents for book stack innovations. In 1933, Angus Snead Macdonald wrote in The Library Journal a two-part article entitled “A Library of the Future”, suggesting some new ideas in public library design, chiefly the modular flexible design. He described a flexible library layout based on column modules spaced 2.74 m (9 ft) apart to hold up the heavy 732 kg per m² (150 lb per ft²) live loads required for books. Within the column grid Macdonald envisioned furnishings that could be changed easily. He emphasized flexibility, economy, informational comfort, and a reliance on artificial illumination and ventilation. Snead and Co. were integral in the move of the American library system from one of closed, structural stacks, to open stacks that allow for adjustability. Macdonald focused on the construction of modular libraries even to the extent of constructing a sample furnished module at his factory so that he could demonstrate its virtues to major library clients.

Here is how he described this new library: “We have provided over fifty special departments in which books on particular subjects are collected in close proximity to those on related subjects … In both exterior and interior architecture we wanted a feeling of homelike intimacy rather than monumental impressiveness. To every department where our readers may go they will find a specialist ready to advise them authoritatively on whatever phase of a subject may be of interest. … The … departments … are all in a constant state of growth and adjustment made possible by the fact that there are no permanent vertical divisions …”[21] Macdonald envisioned public libraries as the center for public learning for the entire community. The library would not only provide the materials but also the expertise for learning a wide array of useful professions – truly becoming the People’s University. During the Great Depression of the 1930s American public libraries became citizen learning centers despite limited resources. People desperately flocked to libraries to learn new trades and acquire competitive skills for the job market. National per capita library circulation reached its all time peak in the Great Depression.

The Flexibility Fallacy

In the 1950s and 1960s modular flexible design advocated by Angus Snead Macdonald was introduced with minimal bearing walls and a column grid gradually increasing from Macdonald’s original 2.74 m (9 ft) to 7.62 m (25 ft) or more. Library planners presumed that expansions would occur at 20 year intervals. These modular libraries were an effort to design flexible open spaces for a variety of functions. Architects searched for the perfect column spacing module. Michael Cohen of The Architects Collaborative, the firm founded by Walter Gropius in 1945, suggested a 9.14 m (30 ft) column spacing that could be altered for book stacks spaced 1.83 m (6 ft) apart to stacks paced 1.52 m (5 ft) apart for increased book capacity. However, the problem with flexible design was that specific library uses have different functional requirements. Converting a book stack into a reading room requires more than just moving furniture. It is often unpleasant for readers to be in spaces originally designed for books. Sitting in a converted book stack space with its oppressive low ceilings and artificial light may be an unattractive experience.

The use has structural implications as well: While a book stack requires a floor loading capacity of 732 kg per m² (150 lb per ft²) reading rooms require only half of that capacity. Further, the 2.13 m (7 ft) tall stacks require column spacing that matches the aisle spacing so that columns do not end up in the middle of the aisles. The lighting must be designed to reach the books on the bottom shelves while lighting for readers needs to be focused at tabletop height. Heating and cooling in a reading room for long-term comfort is crucial for seated readers, but less important for books. Natural light is healthy for the user but may be destructive for books.

National Plan for Public Library Service

In the post-war period the American Library Association began to develop library standards. In 1948 the ALA published “A National Plan for Public Library Service”, which included “Essential principles in planning library buildings”. It postulated that library buildings should be easily accessible to its potential clientele and established that location is all important if the library is to achieve its maximum usefulness. Further, standard types of library buildings should be developed to be used in typical situations such as the large city branch, the county library branch or the small-town library. Many public library buildings should be adaptable for expanded service in county or regional library systems. The public library building of the future should be planned and equipped as a modern educational center, providing rooms for meetings and conferences of organizations. It will need audio-visual facilities, projection rooms for films and soundproof listening rooms.[22]

A standard that became controversial had to do with how many people a public library should serve. 50,000 people was thought to be the minimum adequate tax base for a library facility. By 1950 this had been raised to 100,000. Many library systems were created grouping smaller independent libraries into larger systems. In the 1950–1970 period American Library Association planning guidelines evolved and established empirical standards for the size of public libraries based on population. It was assumed that 0.09 m² (1 ft²) of space and three to five books per capita and five seats for every 1,000 people served would be adequate. As collections grew they occupied almost 50 % of the usable space in the building. These newer libraries had book lifts and even high-density storage for materials. Technical spaces were designed for efficient flow of materials.

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Originally published in: Nolan Lushington, Wolfgang Rudorf, Liliane Wong, Libraries: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2016.