USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Somerville > Report of the city of Somerville 1913 > Part 20
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On December 26 the librarian suggested in regular meet- ing that a report on the situation by a skilled library architect would help in making clear the matter and recommended, as such a specialist, the architect of the beautiful and convenient City Library of Springfield, Mr. Edward L. Tilton. It was agreed that such a report be obtained and arrangements were shortly completed for an inspection of the old building by Mr. Tilton on January 3, 1912.
On January 1, 1912, a letter was received expressing Mr. Carnegie's regrets that the information at hand was not satis- factory and that he did not see his way to the making of a grant.
This refusal seemed conclusive; but the arrangements for the architect's inspection were not countermanded, in the hope that his technical report might be of some avail.
On January 22, the report was forwarded to New York, accompanied by a statistical statement signed by President Durell of the trustees and by Mayor Burns, and sworn to by the Librarian; supplemented on January 29 by a further state- ment.
On February 8, a reply was received that "Mr. Carnegie notes that the city is willing to take over the present library for general offices and turn the cost of the same, $45,000, for behoof of new building. Mr. Carnegie will be glad to add $80,000 to such $15,000 for a library building, complete and ready to occupy. The city must pledge maintenance at a min- imum of ten per cent. annually and must also provide a suit- able site and make the plans such as Mr. Carnegie will ·ap- prove."
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That evening the matter was laid before the Board of Al- dermen.
On March 14, the Board of Aldermen, having granted a hearing to the Board of Trustees, and having investigated library buildings, passed the building order.
On March 21, Mayor Burns appointed an advisory com- mittee of nine, city officials, trustees and citizens, which on the 27th met and agreed with his Honor the Mayor in the ap- pointment of Mr. Tilton as architect.
During the next three months plans were presented, and considered and matured. On July 12, 1912, the contract for the construction of the building was awarded to the Kennedy & Peterson Construction Company of Boston.
Ground was broken in September; progress has been steady during the intervening fifteen months and on today, De- cember 17, the building is thrown open to the public to be dedi- cated by their inspection and acceptance. The brief addresses at half past eight in the evening follow.
The building is Renaissance in style, is 123 x 75 feet in size, has two stories with a half-floor cellar in the rear and is con- structed of Persian gray brick with terra cotta trimmings and green tile roof. It is beautiful in simple dignity, economical in construction, and efficient in operation.
The storage stack of two levels containing 140,000 volumes has been placed in the centre entirely dependent upon artificial light, and readers have been placed between the stack and the daylight next the windows. This reverses the type of plan with the reading room in the centre and the books outside, of which the Library of Congress is an example.
The adults, the largest group of readers, are given the entire main floor extending over the storage stack. This room contains wooden cases upon the alcove plan for 45,000 volumes and seats for 140 readers and has light on all four sides and overhead. The children occupy one end of the ground floor with direct access to the storage stack. Their room shelves 7,000 volumes and seats seventy-five. The cataloguing room is at the other end of the storage stack; at the rear are rooms for staff convenience and at the right of the entrance a small lecture hall seating eighty. In the cellar are the boiler, fan, janitor, and work rooms.
Artificial light is by electricity from overhead; indirect on the ground floor, direct in the Book Room, whose height, some twenty-three to thirty feet, raises the lamps above the line of vision. Tables and book cases are all movable, allowing the re-arrangement of space as desired. There is an electric eleva- tor with five stops reaching all floors and a very complete equipment of telephone and other appliances for comfortable, rapid work.
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THE ADDRESSES BY Mayor Burns, Commissioner Littlefield, President Durell, Librarian Hall, Superintendent Clark, Dr. Noyes, Trustee.
Mayor Burns presided and made the opening address :-
"Fellow Citizens: It is seldom that any municipality has the privilege of dedicating such a beautiful public building as we are dedicating here tonight. This building is erected for the use of the people, not only of today, but of succeeding generations, and Somerville will not have to consider the matter of a central library building for many years to come. Such a far-sighted policy should govern the erection of any municipal building.
"It became evident some time ago that, on account of our very. large increase in population, our library building was too small for carrying on the work efficiently and economically. The question of enlarging the building was taken up, but, after going over this matter carefully, it did not seem advisable. Then it became known to the trustees of our public library that Andrew Carnegie, one of the world's greatest benefactors, would be willing to contribute a sum of money toward the erec- tion of a new public library building in our city. Mr. Carnegie had already given the city the fine West Somerville branch library building, and it had not been expected that he would further favor us with a still larger gift toward a central library building. That he was willing to do this shows his deep in- terest in the welfare of such a community of readers as ours- that commendable interest which he has demonstrated again and again by his many gifts of library buildings to cities and towns throughout our beloved country. Somerville is grateful indeed to her benefactor.
"The question was gone into with the Board of Aldermen of the year 1912 : only $45,000 was appropriated by the city, and Mr. Carnegie gave $80,000, making a total of $125,000. The building has been constructed and completed within that sum and as you see it here tonight.
"Edward L. Tilton, the architect, has performed his work well, and he should receive the congratulations of all the people. The contractors, the Kennedy & Peterson Construction Com- pany, have carried out the contract to the minutest detail, and their work has been a credit, not only to them, but to the city.
"The Mayor has had the assistance of the commissioner of public buildings, the board of trustees of the public library, and an advisory committee, and I desire to return my thanks to all who have in any way assisted in the erection of this beau- tiful building.
"It is erected on a beautiful and historic spot, and we-all who have been vitally interested in its construction-believe it is as finely appointed a building as may be found in the com-
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monwealth. We have a beautiful room set apart for the chil- dren where they can assemble in large numbers and enjoy the privileges which have been accorded to them. We have a small hall in the building where the Somerville Historical So- ciety and other similar organizations may assemble for lectures and similar purposes.
"'The public library is the people's university,' one of the best assets that any community can have-and I take this op- portunity as Mayor of our city to congratulate the people of Somerville on the erection and completion of this beautiful, commodious and well-appointed structure."
Building Commissioner Littlefield said :-
"On July 12, 1912, the contract was awarded for the construction of this building, which now completed speaks for itself. I believe this city possesses one of the best library buildings in the commonwealth. After months of patient toil the different building trades have completed the work which it has been my duty to supervise. I have had the assistance of the Mayor, members of the city gov- ernment, Mr. Tilton, the architect, and the board of library trustees in securing for the city full value for the money ex- pended, and I wish to thank them all. My duty now is to surrender the building to the board of library trustees through its honored president, Dr. Durell, and to him I present the keys to this building which is a veritable modern temple of litera- ture."
Dr. Durell accepted the keys and spoke as follows on "What the Trustees Hope to Give the Citizens" :-
"Mr. Commissioner and Mr. Mayor: In receiving these keys, we, the trustees of the public library, accept in behalf of all the citizens, control and management of this building, from you who have erected, completed and tonight dedicated it.
"The trustees wish to express to Andrew Carnegie our heartfelt thanks for his generous gift. To Mayor Burns the city owes a deep debt of gratitude for his unfailing interest from the very inception of the idea of a new library building. To the architect, Edward L. Tilton, it is indebted not only for the beauty of the structure but also for the warm, personal inter- est which he has taken in the project from the start. To Com- missioner Littlefield hearty thanks are rendered for his ex- pert suggestions and supervision.
"The building itself is not only a beautiful and ornamental structure, but also one of the most complete and economical working libraries in existence, most carefully planned by the librarian, so that we ask only the same appropriation for 1914 as was required this year in the old building.
"From tonight we, the trustees and the staff, accept the duty and the pleasure of making it the centre of books and
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"It is said that Americans are interested about two-thirds in business and one-third in love. It is certainly true, the aver- age business man, when he comes home, tired from the strain of the day, must relax and be amused. And just here comes the function of fiction-if literature is an art and libraries are to be reservoirs of literature, certainly libraries could not be com- plete without art's most human appeal-amusement.
"Great good has been done by writers of fiction-Dickens remodeled the work houses; Charles Reade changed the whole method of caring for the insane; Harriet Beecher Stowe did more toward freeing the slaves with 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' than all the great speeches in Congress; and. of late Upton Sinclair, with his horrible book, 'The Jungle,' has done more for clean, wholesome food than Dr. Wiley and all the medical experts.
"Great care is and should be taken in the selection of books, especially for the young, for good habits in reading if acquired early are apt to be persistent; and we are giving especial attention to the development of children's work, both in the schools and in the several library buildings, making it a strong, systematically managed department.
"At the building of King Solomon's temple we are told that the work came to a stop for the want of a keystone to a certain arch, which none had orders to furnish. Upon inquiry it was found that such a stone had been presented, but the overseers, not knowing its purpose, agreed to throw it over among the rubbish of the temple. Now the reason of this al- most fatal mistake was ignorance on the part of the overseers.
"This temple, so beautiful in all its proportions, has been erected to combat ignorance. It stands here as a monument of light and enlightenment.
"We trust that it will fulfill its promise and that it may prove, not a storehouse of books, but a centre for the diffusion of knowledge through this good city of ours."
Drew Bert Hall, Somerville's librarian, spoke as follows on "The Aims of the Library of Today" :-
"The progress of a city depends upon the development of the bodies, of the minds and of the spirits of its citizens. Your bodies of muscle and brain must have wise care and harmless recreation. Your minds must be educated in all the wisdom built up of the successes and failures of your forerunners. And your spirits, they are the sacred fires whose bright or dull' burning's put power or weakness into the machinery of your bodies and minds.
"Where have men found comfort for their bodies, and knowledge for their minds, and inspiration for their spirits, more than in the records of other men's successes and failures ;
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which are books? The greatest force in the world is the in- spiration men receive from a book, the Book of Books.
"Caesar and Napoleon gained knowledge for the activities of war and government from the books of law and history of their days. And Abraham Lincoln read Artemus Ward's hu- morous fiction just before submitting to his cabinet officers the Froclamation of Emancipation.
"So long has this power of books been recognized and so widely is it spread that today all things under the heavens, or in the sea, or on the earth are dealt with in printed pages. To succeed every man must read. Yet unaided he knows not which of the volumes before him is best for his purpose; neither is he able to own privately all those he sometime must read. To meet this need for thousands of books on hundreds of subjects, and for guidance in their choice and use, there have been created the co-operative libraries of the public.
"They have grown like green bay trees until their leaves offer shade to the people of all the cities.
"Yet this service, great as it is, is but a beginning of what shall be. For there is not a child or a young man, a housewife or a merchant, a laborer or a banker, a mechanic or a lady in this land tonight who does not need something to be found in good books; whether it be comfort for their sorrows of the day, or of knowledge for their struggles of the morrow, or of inspiration for their visions of the future.
"Great as is the service offered, still greater is the economy effected. For the cost of its maintenance, the public library system of this city yearly renders service which if purchased individually would cost its citizens half a million dollars. The co-operative principle of a public library takes the dollars of its appropriation and multiplies them, some ten fold, some twenty fold, and some thirty fold, as can no other institution. For it alone deals with what may be consumed and consumed again, what may be read and re-read, and be still able to give each new reader whatever part of itself he can understand and take unto himself, until the ink is faded and the page worn thin.
"And the common people use their library gladly, place 35,000 of their names on its register, and support it willingly, for it is all the inhabitants, not merely the payers of taxes, who support a city.
"That they might have the service of books nearer their homes the people to the west erected a branch and call upon it so largely that only thirteen cities in Massachusetts use their entire library systems more than is this one branch building whose central supply is from today in this structure. And then the people toward the east and toward Union Square found more and more good in books ; and that this good might come
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nearer their homes also, they too established other branches. And each is a refuge and tower of strength to its people.
"To give this good service of books, there are required three things-buildings, books and actuating force.
"Buildings suitable for economical and efficient work, and since libraries house the minds and the spirits of the great, and offer them continually to citizens both young and old, buildings beautiful to uplift the living and honor the dead!
"Books; of the making of them there is no end; books great and little, books useful and useless, books never dying and books never alive! Inaccurate books and out-of-date editions are worse than none; duplication of matter already owned in one volume is confusing and wasteful. So the choosing of the best books and their skilful use have become a profession, and their classification and cataloguing an exact science.
"If the building be the body, and the books be the mind, there must be the third part, the heart and the spirit. This is the library staff of sympathetic, forceful and well educated persons breathing warmth into the body of cold brick, and life into the mind of quiescent books ; ready at all times to serve the city, 'regarding, not chiefly its passing cravings, but those things which alone can finally satisfy it.'
"All these elements in good measure lie within your public library, and aim always to bear still more useful and intimate parts in the progress of the city and in the development of your individual lives.
"'Culture is of the individual, civilization is of the com- munity. No city is truly civilized until it maintains for the com- mon welfare from the common wealth of the city all that is essential to the common good, these things of the higher life, especially included. A public library rightly regarded is the civic centre of a community. In it more than anywhere else, all citizens meet and have a common social home'; where every child or youth, or old man may receive from the personalities of the staff some influence toward refinement and culture and garner from the pages of the books some comfort or knowl- edge, or inspiration for the day's work."
"The Public Library as a Public Educator" was the theme of Superintendent Charles S. Clark, who spoke as follows :-
"Two ideas are here expressed, the one as old as the hu- man race, the other the offspring of the most recent times.
"All through the ages man has secured education by means of processes easily reducible to two general terms, self-activity and instruction. Self-activity has developed his spiritual, intel- lectual, and physical powers ; instruction has supplemented his natural powers by furnishing them the tools or agencies of im- provement which others have invented. In the early days of the race when man was little more than an animal, instruction was
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limited, being confined to the experiences communicated di- rectly from one to another. As the race grew older, tradition was added to experience and later still information recorded through signs and symbols was drawn upon in the education of man. When writing was invented knowledge was put in per- manent form, available for all who could make use of written documents. During all these ages man had been rising in the scale of civilization through the exercise and improvement of his natural powers and through the influence of instruction which was constantly increasing in importance because of the increasing dissemination of knowledge.
"But it was not until the intervention of the printing press that instruction was freed from the shackles of mechanical diffi- culties. From that time until the present day the volume of recorded information has increased until now books, the treas- ure-houses of information, are as numberless as the sands of the seashore. What today is education? Is it not for any in- dividual that development of his physical, intellectual and spir- itual power which will best fit him for his physical and social en- vironment? Such a definition comprehends all of the upward struggles of the soul of any individual from his earliest infancy until he passes from this life into the great unknown.
"By what means shall education be secured today? Only by means of self-activity and instruction. The schools provide instruction, but the days of the school are limited as compared with the days of the life of the individual. Beyond the school where may instruction be found? Today the answer is not far to seek. Thanks to the multiplication of printing presses the experiences and knowledge of the race are now recorded in books and are available for instruction of all who will make use of them. What a wonderful change! The horizon of any in- dividual is no longer the horizon of his own limited vicinity but may become a world horizon. The possibilities of instruction are now as broad as the life and the accumulated knowledge of the race.
"How then shall instruction be made available to all who must seek it in books which it is beyond their power to own? Modern times has furnished the answer to this question. The public library is the last great gift of civilization to public edu- cation. Within the walls of the public library are gathered the intellectual riches of the world. The public library performs the mission of offering universal instruction; it supplements the work of teachers and schools. The learner, in whatever walk of life, is afforded access to those means of education which lie outside of his native powers. This boon, formerly denied to mankind, is now freely offered to all by the public library. It is impossible to overestimate the value of this offering. As an agent in public education, the public library is today entitled
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to take its place at the side of those other great agents in the elevation of mankind, the home, the church, and the school. Within a lifetime the whole problem of public education has thus been changed by the rise of the public library. Its influ- ence is as beneficent as it is universal."
Dr. Charles L. Noyes closed the programme with a bril- liant and scholarly address on "The Public Library and Life." He spoke as follows :-
"What does it mean that a city should build, equip, man and maintain a library like this? Understand that, and you explain the meaning of our civic life today. A modern library is a mir- ror held up to modern life in its latest phase. Approve it you cannot unless you believe in the movement of humanity in which we are a part. Condemn it and you indict civilization, you stand against the stream of our life as a people today. For what are the people doing, and meaning ever more to do? Day before yesterday they were asserting their right to rule, a democracy of power: yesterday they were, as they are still, claiming privilege,-every class, condition, sex for itself-a democracy of opportunity ; today the people are combining in nations and cities to give to all citizens, all the good that life has to bring-a democracy of service. 'The best is not too good for the common people,' is our creed and our inspiration. The richest and the fairest, in health and comfort and happiness and beauty and intelligence, is to be the common heritage of all, so far as we can make it, and they will merit it. The symbol of that civic zeal and ideal is before us in this noble library. Stand- ing in the present and pointing to the future-a vivid and elo- quent expression in the hard reality of brick and stone of the ideal to which we are moving.
"A modern city library is, I think, the finest and clearest interpretation of the spirit of the times. It shows the city min- istering to its whole citizenship, at the highest range of human life in the things of richest worth. It is, indeed, but one organ in the complex and complete municipal ministry. All kindred institutions-hospitals, schools, parks, play and pleasure grounds-are but the people acting collectively for the benefit and betterment of all. But I hope it will seem no partiality in me to say that the library serves in things which are the most indispensable, and of the highest rank. To heal and develop the body is a primary task, but surely for a human being a subordinate one. The library serves and perfects him in all that makes life worth living as a creature of reason, feeling, imagina- tion, conscience and freedom.
"A public library shows humanity educating itself for hu- man life-improving its efficiency, perfecting its nature, enrich- ing its capacities and resources. 'We have had a glimpse, in a previous address, of the library as fellow servant with the pub-
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lic schools, but beyond that it is itself the school for large num- bers, who failed of schooling, or ended it too soon. For all of 11s it takes up education where school or even college must leave it. All our learning in these institutions has its best value as a preparation for after study and training. The library is a post-graduate university for all men, and the universal vo- cation school, enabling even the mechanic to be a master in his craft.
"But the supreme task for the democracy of the future is to educate itself for its work as a democracy. Popular govern- ment must be intelligent. A democracy cannot survive, still less prosper without libraries or their equivalent. A monarchy might. It is enough there that one man or a few should be wise, and relatively small wisdom is needed for its simple and sta- tionary existence. But the problems of life and government under popular rule are many and multiplying, new every morn- ing and fresh every evening, complicated and complex to the last degree, and we the people must solve them. Mere zeal and good will have not enabled us to dispose of such compara- tively simple issues as temperance, charity, slavery. What shall we do when we deal with the more debated and difficult sub- jects, such as commission government, referendums, public ownership, trust control, eugenics, and all the reforms which are thrust upon us, to adopt offhand? One thing is sure, it will not do, no matter who summons us, to leap forward with our eyes shut. We must look ahead with the help of reason and argument, backward over the dearly bought experience of the race, and outward for all the light and leading of fellow experi- menters in other lands. In some measure all of us and above all our guides and leaders must sit at the feet of thinkers and ex- perts, and study the experience and wisdom of the generations behind, and the wide world about us; and all these complete, classified, clarified, with trained and willing assistants, are to be found, and found only in our libraries.
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