Libraries Archives - Page 9 of 11

Copley Square, Boston

September 22, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Copley Square as seen from the steps of Trinity Church in Boston, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Copley Square in 2015:

Today, Copley Square is one of the focal points of the Back Bay neighborhood in Boston. The park is often used for public events, such as the farmers market seen in the first photo. However, it wasn’t always that way. In a neighborhood where everything was meticulously planned by 19th century planners and landscape architects, Copley Square as we know it today did not come about until the 1960s.

Like the rest of the Back Bay, Copley Square was once just a polluted tidal mudflat, but throughout the second half of the 19th century it was steadily filled, providing the overcrowded city with a new, upscale neighborhood. As the wealthier citizens moved west, so did many of the city’s major institutions. Many were located in the vicinity of Copley Square, including Trinity Church, Old South Church, the Museum of Fine Arts, MIT, and later the Boston Public Library. However, Copley Square itself was originally just a triangular intersection, where Huntington Avenue and Boylston Street met just west of Clarendon Street.

The first photo shows Huntington Avenue crossing diagonally through the square, with a small triangular park on the right. Originally, even this was not intended to be a park; an atlas from 1874 shows a building on part of the triangle, and the rest of it was divided into housing lots. Because the Museum of Fine Arts was located here, it was called Art Square until 1883, when it became Copley Square. The new name was keeping with the art theme, though; it was named for John Singleton Copley, an early American painter from Boston.

The two most prominent buildings in both photos are the Boston Public Library in the center and the New Old South Church to the right. Completed in 1895 and 1873, respectively, they are two major Copley Square landmarks that have survived largely unchanged. The only major difference in the buildings is the church tower, which was replaced in the 1930s after the ground under it began to subside, causing a three foot lean at the top of the tower.

The most dramatic change in the two photos is the surrounding neighborhood. Huntington Avenue now ends at St. James Avenue, so now the square is literally a square. In the 2015 photo, much of it is in the shadow of the John Hancock Tower, which is located just behind and to the left of where I took the photo. The background shows some of the other high-rise construction that the Back Bay has seen over the years, including the Prudential Tower, 111 Huntington Avenue, and several other buildings in the Prudential Center complex.

Boston Public Library, Boston

February 27, 2023September 21, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The Boston Public Library’s McKim Building at Copley Square in 1899. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2015:

This style of Renaissance Revival architecture was common for public libraries in the United States in the early 20th century, but Charles Follen McKim’s design for the Boston Public Library was the first. It was constructed between 1888 and 1895, and is one of the most architecturally significant library buildings in the country. It set the stage for similar grand libraries in American cities, including the main branch of the New York Public Library, which opened just over a decade later. Like many of Boston’s other cultural institutions, the library was strategically located in the Back Bay neighborhood, which had gone from polluted tidal marsh to affluent residential neighborhood in less than 50 years. However, one of the challenges in constructing large buildings here was the high water table and the tendency of the filled-in ground to subside. As a result, the 19th century Back Bay buildings are supported by wooden piles; the library alone has about 4,000 piles that were driven 25 to 31 feet into the ground in the 1880s.

Today, the McKim Building is well-preserved on both the exterior and interior. The interior includes a grand staircase and the massive Bates Hall reading room, along with a central courtyard, all of which was, as the inscription reads, “dedicated to the advancement of learning.” The main branch of the Boston Public Library has since outgrown the original building, so in 1972 an addition was put on the back, expanding the building to include the entire city block between Dartmouth and Exeter Streets. Named after its architect, Philip Johnson, this building houses the library’s circulating collections, leaving the original building for the library’s extensive research collections. Many of these collections are also available online, including a large number of historic photographs on Digital Commonwealth, which has been a great resource for this blog.

The greatest change in this scene, however, is the city around the library. The section of the Back Bay to the north of Boylston Street has been largely preserved in its original Victorian appearance. However, to the south of Boylston Street, as seen here, the area has become home to some of the city’s tallest buildings, including the Prudential Tower to the right, the second-tallest in New England after the nearby John Hancock Tower. Probably the oldest building in the 2015 photo other than the library is the Lenox Hotel, barely visible on the far right beyond the library. It was built in 1900, so it may have even been under construction when the first photo was taken.

Old Library, Portsmouth, NH

August 10, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The old Portsmouth Public Library building at the corner of Islington and Middle Streets in Portsmouth, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2015:

This building was built in 1809 as the home of the Portsmouth Academy, a private college preparatory school. It was used by the academy until 1868, and then it was leased to the city to use as a public school. In 1896, it was extensively renovated into a permanent home for the Portsmouth Public Library, which previously had gone through a somewhat nomadic existence between several different locations in the city. The historic building was used by the library for the next 110 years, before moving to a new location on Parrott Avenue in 2006. Today, the building is used by the Portsmouth Historical Society for their Discover Portsmouth center. Although it was heavily altered in the 1896 library renovation, it still has considerable historical significance as an example of an early 19th century school, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Market Square, Portsmouth, NH

August 4, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Looking northeast in Market Square in Portsmouth, facing Market Street, around 1902. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Market Square in 2015:

These views show part of Portsmouth’s historic Market Square, which as the photos suggest hasn’t changed much in well over a century. In fact, it would require going back nearly 200 years, before the invention of photography, to notice much of a difference here. The area around Market Square has been the commercial center of Portsmouth since the 1700s, when the seaport town was rapidly growing as a major port and shipbuilding center. Its heyday came in the early 1800s, with many historic buildings surviving from this time period, including much of this scene here.

Portsmouth was hit with several disastrous fires in the early 1800s, including one in 1802 that destroyed most of Market Square. The area was soon rebuilt with brick commercial blocks, many of which survive today, including the Portsmouth Athenaeum building on the far left. The distinctive building was completed in 1805 as the home offices of the New Hampshire Fire & Marine Insurance Company, but the company went bankrupt just eight years later because of the effect that the War of 1812 had on the New England shipping industry. The Athenaeum, a private library and museum, purchased the building in 1823, and it has been there ever since as one of the few remaining private membership libraries in the country.

Today, Portsmouth is no longer a major shipping center, and hasn’t been for a long time. With the Industrial Revolution of the early 1800s, much of New Hampshire’s industry moved from shipping to manufacturing, and the inland mill towns became the state’s centers of economic activity. By 1900, the population of Concord and Nashua was five and ten times larger, respectively, than it had been in 1830. In Manchester, the increase was even more dramatic, growing from 877 people in 1830 to over 56,000 in 1900. Meanwhile in Portsmouth, the population had grown by just 32%, with virtually no population change at all between 1850 and 1890. However, little population change also meant little development projects, which is part of the reason why the Portsmouth of today has so many historic early 1800s buildings, including virtually the entire scene here. By my count there are 14 buildings in the first photo, and all 14 still exist today, which is exceedingly rare to find in a 113 year old street view of the commercial center of a city. The only building that doesn’t appear in the 2015 scene is the one on the far right, at the corner of Pleasant and Daniel Streets. It is still there, but I couldn’t fit it in the frame of my camera.

Library and Baptist Church, Meredith, NH

July 27, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The Benjamin M. Smith Memorial Library and the Baptist Church, at the corner of Main Street and High Street in Meredith, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The buildings in 2015:

Meredith’s public library is one of two buildings in the town that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It opened in 1901, and like many other public libraries of the era it was donated by a wealthy philanthropist, Benjamin M. Smith of Beverly, Massachusetts. He had once lived in Meredith, and had the library built in memory of his parents, John and Mary Smith. Over the past century, the Main Street facade has been virtually unchanged, although in 1988 a large addition was put on to the building to the right. This addition block the view of the Baptist Church from this angle, except for the top of the spire. The church is actually much older than the library; it was built in 1834, and today it continues to be used by the First Baptist Church of Meredith.

Old Grafton County Courthouse, Plymouth, NH

July 28, 2018July 23, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The Old Grafton County Courthouse on Court Street in Plymouth, around 1900-1910 during its use as a library. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2018:

Over the years, this building has served a variety of purposes in several different locations. It was built in 1774 as one of two courthouses in Grafton County, and was located at the corner of Russell and Pleasant Streets, less than a quarter mile from where it is today. During its time as a courthouse, 24 year old New Hampshire native Daniel Webster argued one of his first court cases here in 1806. He lost, and his client was hanged, but he would nonetheless go on to be a successful lawyer and one of the country’s most powerful politicians of the pre-Civil War era.

While Webster’s career was just beginning, the old courthouse was becoming obsolete, and in 1823 it was replaced by a more substantial brick building. The old building was moved south of the main village and used as a wheelwright shop, as seen in the photo below, which was taken in 1860 and published in History of Plymouth, New Hampshire (1906):

By the 1870s, the century-old building had been abandoned and was in disrepair, but its connection to Daniel Webster’s early career brought it to the attention of Henry W. Blair, a Congressman and future Senator who purchased it in 1876. After moving it to its present location and renovating it, Blair gave the building to the Young Ladies’ Library Association to use as a public library. The small building was home to Plymouth’s library until 1991, when the present-day Pease Public Library was built. Since then, the historic building has been home to the Plymouth Historical Museum.