Bates Hall inside the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library in 1896. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.
Bates Hall in 2016:
The historic McKim Building opened in 1895 as the main branch of the Boston Public Library, and it is an architecturally significant building on both the exterior and interior. Bates Hall, which is 218 feet long and 50 feet to the top of the arched ceiling, is the library’s main reading room. It is named in honor of Joshua Bates, who donated $50,000 to the library shortly after it was established in 1852. Equivalent to nearly $1.5 million today, this gift helped to purchase books for the new library, which was one of the first public libraries in the country. The first photo was taken only a year after the building opened, but today, after a major restoration that was started in 1996, the room looks just as grand as it did 120 years ago.