Courtyard, Boston Public Library (2)

The courtyard at the Boston Public Library’s McKim Building, in 1896. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The scene in 2021:

These two photos show the view of the Boston Public Library’s courtyard looking diagonally across from the southeast corner. As explained in more detail in the previous post, this courtyard was very briefly the home of Bacchante and Infant Faun, a bronze statue by sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies. Installed here in November 1896, the statue generated significant controversy, both for its nudity and for its apparent celebration of drunkenness. It was placed in storage after just two weeks, and it was subsequently transferred to the Metropolitan Museum of New York, where it remains to this day.

The first photo was taken sometime in 1896, probably prior to the installation of the statue. The library had been completed a year earlier, and this courtyard was one of its most distinctive architectural features. Charles Follen McKim, the building’s architect, had drawn inspiration for the courtyard from the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, and his design features arcaded walkways around three sides, with a balcony on the fourth side. He had also intended to place the statue in the pool in the center of the courtyard, and had presented it as a gift to the library, but he subsequently withdrew his gift in the wake of the controversy.

Today, more than 125 years after the first photo was taken, this scene remains much the same as it did when the library first opened. However, one noticeable difference is the center of the courtyard, which, in addition to the landscaping, now features a replica of the statue that had once caused so much controversy. In the 1990s, the library commissioned a replica of the original, and it was installed here in 1999.

Courtyard, Boston Public Library

The courtyard at the Boston Public Library’s McKim Building, around 1909. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The scene in 2021:

The main branch of the Boston Public Library is one of the city’s great architectural landmarks, and one of its most distinctive features is this courtyard in the middle of the building. Architect Charles Follen McKim modeled it after the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, and has arcaded walkways on three sides, with a balcony on the fourth side and a pool and fountain in the center.

The library was completed in 1895, and the following year this fountain was very briefly the home of Bacchante and Infant Faun, a bronze sculpture by Frederick William MacMonnies. Cast in 1894, this statue features a nude reveler holding grapes above her head in her right hand, with a young child under her left arm. MacMonnies gave the statue to McKim as a gift, and he in turn presented it to the Boston Public Library for display here in the courtyard.

However, this decision sparked considerable controversy here in Boston, with critics objecting to both its gratuitous nudity and its apparent celebration of drunkenness. It was the subject of debate for several months leading up to its installation under the cover of darkness on the night of November 14, 1896. It was made available for public viewing two days later, with many praising its artistic merit while others denounced it as immoral.

Among the latter was the Reverend James Boyd Brady, pastor of the People’s Temple. Preaching his Sunday sermon the day before the statue was presented to the public, Brady decried it as “an infernal representation of strumpetry” and “a statue of smut and obscenity,” and declared that he would rather see a memorial to Benedict Arnold or John Wilkes Booth than “a memorial to the worst type of harlotry with which the earth was ever afflicted.” He was particularly concerned about the statue corrupting the morals of the youth, because “the innocent and the chaste will get their first intimations of vice” from this statue.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the months of controversy, the statue drew quite a crowd when it was finally put on public display on November 16. Reporting the next day, the Boston Globe noted that, at any given time, there was a crowd of around 200 people gathered here to view the statue. The newspaper went on to describe:

There were all sorts among the visitors, the connoisseur, or the man or woman whom everybody else thought must be a connoisseur because he or she presumed to compare the bronze woman’s curves with other nude celebrities, the clergyman looking possibly for a text, the stout woman with the lorgnette, the girl with her drawing materials who spends her days in front of De Chavanne’s and Abbey’s mural decorations, students of both sexes galore, down to the man who simply “knew a good shape” when he saw one.

Based on the Globe’s coverage, the opinion among the visitors seems to have been generally favorable. The article included several amusing anecdotes of reactions from various people, including one “very little man, not a connoisseur, but a practical thinker,” who did not understand what all the fuss was about. Knowing that one of the main objections was the portrayal of drunkenness, the man carefully studied the statue and concluded that the woman was not, in fact, intoxicated. He explained his reasoning:

Well, I don’t know nothing about her, but I tell you that she didn’t [get drunk]. Look at the way she’s standing. A woman couldn’t drink much wine and balance herself and the kid the way she’s doing, with her best foot up in the air. She’s all right, I tell you. I’ve seen ‘em.

The statue continued to draw crowds over the next two weeks, including one particularly busy Sunday afternoon on November 22, when an estimated ten thousand people came to see the statue between 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. As was the case on the first day, many visitors saw the statue as harmless, with the Globe quoting one woman who observed that it was no worse than the artwork on display next door at the Museum of Fine Arts. The Globe even mentioned how there were mothers who brought young children to see the statue, despite the corrupting influence that some feared it would have.

These generally favorable reactions among visitors did little to mollify the statue’s critics, though. Reverend Brady continued to be particularly vocal in his opposition. Speaking a week after the statue went on display, he feared that “Many an innocent girl, in a giddy mood, will look upon it and decide that the way to enjoyment and admiration is to throw away morality.” He went on to direct his anger at the library’s trustees, declaring:

Listen, if there is any one here that represents these trustees and art commissioners! I charge them with treason, treason, treason! And no petty treason, but high treason—treason to purity and sobriety and virtue and Almighty God.

The statue ultimately remained here in the courtyard for just two weeks, before being removed for the winter. This was not done in response to the criticism, but instead to protect it from the weather. The intent was to reinstall it in the spring, but over the winter the opposition only intensified, and McKim eventually decided to withdraw his gift in April 1897. The statue remained in storage at the library for several more months, but McKim subsequently offered it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum accepted the gift, and the statue was moved out of Boston in June. For a time, it was located in the Great Hall, as shown in this earlier post, but it is now on display in the Engelhard Court, as shown in this 2023 photo:

In the meantime, the first photo here in this post was taken about 13 years after all of this controversy had been resolved, and it shows the courtyard looking diagonally across from the northwest corner. The pool is visible on the left side of the scene, but it has just a simple fountain in the space where the statue had very briefly stood in November 1896.

Today, more than a century after the first photo was taken, the courtyard of the Boston Public Library remains largely unchanged. It continues to be a quiet place to read and reflect in the midst of a busy city, while also serving as a venue for everything from musical performances to weddings. However, the one major difference between these two photos is the statue in the fountain, which is a replica of the Bacchante and Infant Faun statue that had generated so much controversy. By the early 1990s, the library had begun expressing interest in returning the statue to its original location here. The Metropolitan Museum of Art balked at this idea, so the library instead commissioned this replica, which was installed in 1999.

Mount Washington Hotel, Carroll, New Hampshire (2)

The Mount Washington Hotel, with Mount Washington behind it in the distance, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2020:

As discussed in more detail in the previous post, the Mount Washington Hotel was the finest of the many grand hotels that were built in the White Mountains during the Gilded Age of late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was completed in 1902, and could accommodate 600 guests who paid the princely sum of $20 per night to stay here. From here, guests enjoyed expansive views of the White Mountains, including the Presidential Range, which forms a dramatic backdrop here in this scene. The hotel’s namesake mountain, looms in the distance on the right side of the photos, and some of the summit buildings are barely visible, some seven miles away and 4,600 feet higher in elevation.

Today, nearly 120 years after it opened, the Mount Washington Hotel still stands as one of the few surviving grand hotels of its era in New England. It has entertained many prominent guests over the years, and in 1944 it was the site of the Bretton Woods Conference, which was a meeting of delegates of 44 Allied nations to establish postwar international monetary policies. The hotel is now known as the Omni Mount Washington Resort, and in 1986 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark, making it one of only 23 properties in the state to earn this recognition.

Mount Washington Hotel, Carroll, New Hampshire

The Mount Washington Hotel, with its namesake mountain behind it in the distance, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2020:

The White Mountains became a popular tourist destination during the second half of the 19th century, and the region featured a number of grand hotels. However, few could match the Mount Washington Hotel, which was built here in the Bretton Woods area of Carroll, New Hampshire between 1900 and 1902. It was owned by Joseph Stickney, a coal tycoon who had been involved in White Mountain hotels since 1881, when he purchased the Mount Pleasant House. Located approximately where these two photos were taken, the Mount Pleasant House started small, but it was subsequently expanded under Stickney’s ownership and became a prosperous hotel.

Around the turn of the century, Stickney decided to build an even larger hotel across the street from the Mount Pleasant House. He hired noted New York architect Charles Alling Gifford, who designed this Spanish Renaissance-style building, as shown in these two photos. It has a Y-shaped footprint, and its most distinctive exterior features are the two large octagonal towers. The hotel was completed in 1902 at a cost of about $2 million, and it formally opened on July 31, with a ball that was attended by dignitaries such as Chester B. Jordan, the governor of New Hampshire.

Upon completion, the hotel had 352 rooms and could accommodate around 600 guests. A night’s stay cost $20, which was a substantial amount of money at the time, and it included the room and three meals. Writing about a month before it opened, the Boston Herald declared it to be “one of the largest and most perfectly appointed resort hotels not only in New England, but in the summer resort world.” The article continued with the following description of the hotel:

It will contain, besides the ordinary accommodations for the comfort of guests, many novel and attractive features. The music room is 115 by 73 feet in size, with a spacious stage at one end to be used for amateur theatricals, and the rotunda, which is 135 by 103 feet, is the largest in any hotel in New England. The octagonal dining room in the northwest wing is 84 by 84 feet, and will seat 500 people. On two sides are spacious galleries, which can be utilized for the orchestra. Every suite has a private bath, and the chambers are all very large.

On the ground floor are the indoor amusements, including billiard rooms, ping-pong tables, golf club quarters, gun room, clubroom, bicycle room, shuffle boards, a large play room for children, and a mammoth swimming pool filled with water from the Ammonoosuc River, and tempered by steam jets to the right warmth. The floor of the pool is tiled, and adjoining are dressing and toilet rooms, with facilities for Turkish baths.

The first photo was taken only a few years after the Mount Washington Hotel opened. It shows the building and grounds from the main road, about a half mile away. In the foreground is the bridge over the Ammonoosuc River and the long driveway to the hotel. In the distance is the hotel’s namesake mountain, Mount Washington, which stands beyond and to the right of the hotel. The summit is about seven miles east of the hotel, and about 4,600 feet higher in elevation. Rising 6,288 feet above sea level, it is the highest mountain in the northeastern United States, and it is flanked by other peaks in the Presidential Range, including Mount Jefferson on the far left and Mount Monroe on the far right.

The Mount Washington Hotel was a popular resort destination throughout the early 20th century, drawing prominent guests such as Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Mary Pickford, and Babe Ruth. However, the most famous gathering here occurred in July 1944, in the midst of World War II, when 730 delegates from 44 Allied nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel. Known as the Bretton Woods Conference, this meeting was held in anticipation of the end of the war, in order to establish international monetary policies for the postwar world.

The Bretton Woods Conference delegates included many of the world’s leading economists, including Harry Dexter White, John Maynard Keynes, and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., who presided over the conference. Among the agreements reached here were the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, along with policies for currency exchange rates. The conference led to what became known as the Bretton Woods system, which remained the predominant international economic system until the early 1970s.

In the meantime, the mid-20th century was a difficult time for the grand 19th century hotels in the White Mountains. Many succumbed to fire, while others faced a slow, steady decline as the buildings aged and tourist preferences shifted. However, the Mount Washington Hotel managed to avoid the fate of nearly all its contemporaries, and it still stands here nearly 120 years after it opened.

Today, there have been few significant exterior changes to the hotel, and the scene still looks much the same as it did at the turn of the 20th century, although the trees are now much taller and partially hide the building from this spot. Now known as the Omni Mount Washington Resort, it remains one of the premier hotels in the region, and it stands as a rare surviving Gilded Age resort hotel here in New England. Because of its historic significance, particularly with regards to the Bretton Woods Convention, the hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

New Hampshire State Library, Concord, New Hampshire

The New Hampshire State Library on Park Street in Concord, around 1905. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2019:

The New Hampshire State Library dates back to 1717, making it the oldest state library in the country. It has been in Concord since 1808, and for most of the 19th century it was located in the State House. However, in 1895 the library moved into this building across Park Street from the State House. It was designed by New Hampshire-born architect Amos P. Cutting, and it features a Renaissance Revival exterior built of red Conway granite with contrasting light-colored Concord granite trim. In addition to the library, it also housed the New Hampshire Supreme Court upon its completion.

The building was dedicated on January 8, 1895, in a ceremony that was attended by a number of state dignitaries. Supreme Court justice Isaac W. Smith gave a speech, as George C. Gilmore, the chairman of the library’s board of trustees, and the keynote speaker was William Jewett Tucker, president of Dartmouth College. The closing speaker was Ainsworth Rand Spofford, a New Hampshire native who served as Librarian of Congress from 1864 to 1897.

For the next 75 years, this building continued to be used by both the Supreme Court and the State Library, but in 1970 the Supreme Court moved into its current building, located about a mile away on the other side of the Merrimack River. However, the library has remained here ever since, and the building has seen few exterior changes from this angle since the first photo was taken, aside from the removal of the tower around the 1960s.

Old Post Office, Albany, New York

Looking north on Broadway from the corner of State Street in Albany, with the post office building in the foreground on the right, around 1900-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2019:

Albany’s old post office building, which is shown here in the foreground of both photos, stands at the northeast corner of Broadway and State Street, only a few hundred yards west of the Hudson River. The building opened in 1883, and it housed the post office along with several other federal offices. It has changed use since then, but it survives as an important architectural landmark here in downtown Albany.

Prior to the construction of this building, there was no federal building in Albany, so the post office and other federal agencies operated out of rented spaces. Congress finally authorized the construction of a federal building in 1872, but work on the building did not actually begin for another seven years because of funding delays. The design also changed during this time. The original plans called for a High Victorian Gothic design, but James G. Hill, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, subsequently redesigned it to feature Renaissance Revival architecture.

The building’s cornerstone was laid in 1879, and it was ready for occupancy by December 1883, when the internal revenue office moved in. The post office opened here on the ground floor of the building in January 1884, and the other federal agencies moved in later in the year. These included the United States Customs Service, the Steamboat Inspection Service, and the United States Signal Service. The latter agency, whose duties involved weather observations and forecasts, occupied the third floor and the large tower at the corner of the building. In addition, the building featured a courtroom that was used by both the United States Circuit Court and the District Court.

The first photo was taken just after the turn of the century, about 20 years after the building was completed. There are no automobiles in this photo, although within just a few years they would become ubiquitous here on the streets. In the meantime, though, all of the vehicles in this scene are horse-drawn wagons, with the exception of the electric trolley in the lower left corner. There are a number of pedestrians on the wide sidewalk in front of the post office, including a man using crutches, and above them the street is crisscrossed by a web of electrical, telephone, and trolley wires.

This building continued to serve its original purpose until 1934, when a new federal courthouse, post office, and custom house opened immediately to the north of here on Broadway. Visible on the left side of the present-day photo, this newer building features an Art Deco exterior that was designed by the local firm of Gander, Gander & Gander. The post office moved out of that building in 1995, but it continues to be used as a federal district courthouse for the Northern District of New York, in addition to housing offices for federal law enforcement agencies.

As for the older post office here in the foreground, it remained in use as a federal office building until 1972. Then, in 1977 it was sold to the State University of New York, which had recently acquired the adjacent Delaware & Hudson Railroad Company Building. The two buildings are now connected, and they now form the SUNY Plaza, which serves as the headquarters of the SUNY system. Both buildings were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and then in 2020 the newer federal courthouse—now named the James T. Foley Courthouse—was also added to the National Register. In addition, all three buildings are contributing properties in the extensive Downtown Albany Historic District, which was established in 1980.