Free to All

The world of libraries and library architecture in the late 19^th and early 20^th century was heavily circumscribed and highly organized. During this time, devices for transporting books from one area to another and architectural devices for the separation of the social classes would be both invented and standardized. During this time, industries developed to mass produce the means of library production. Just as the devices and the designs became standardized, so too did the gender and class roles also become standardized within the life of the library

In many respects, the early library represented the last stand of the American gentry. While they would later populate the Society Pages of many newspapers, their power as social arbiters was rapidly being diminished. Thus they sought out charitable causes as a means of securing their power over the lower classes. One traditionally genteel cause has been the library. Not only did the Gentry affect the way in which libraries were run, they also affected the way in which libraries were designed.

The early Carnegie Libraries, and the Boston and New York public libraries reflected not so much the purpose of the building, but the prowess of the donors and board members. Envisioning themselves as heirs to European royalty, many on library boards insisted on great and grand fortress-style libraries based on Greek and Roman designs. While they sought to give something to the community, they also wished to signify, if only in design, that the use of the library by the middle-class and poor was a privilege.

However, unlike the other libraries that were built by benefactors, the Carnegie Library developed a reputation for austerity in design as his secretary, and supervisor of library development sought to refocus the spaces on reading materials. This was no doubt influenced by the efficiency of others such as Dewey who had formed a company known as The Library Bureau (formerly formally associated with the A.L.A), which sought to streamline the bookplaces and workspaces of the library.

The design of libraries then was a statement not only about the majesty of the literate educated, but about the circumscribed divisions between those who were devoted to serious scholarship, and those who were reading the paper; those who were working in library management and those who were managing the volume levels of patrons with the infamous “Shhh”. Some were so bold as to worry about “the Newspaper reading rooms attracting the tramp element “as was expressed by Arthur Bostwick of St. Louis (Van Slyck p. 121). This view, however rude or backward it may seem today, reflected a move toward enlightenment according to Van Slyck, by denoting that indeed not all library patrons were vagrants that need not be trusted. As poor as a reader may have been, as long as they looked respectable they would be respected.

Just as the worker-librarians were situated amongst the patrons to denote their occupational status (by lack of walls for their office), so too does Van Slyck argue that buildings were purposefully placed next to majestic art galleries and other cultural landmarks to increase the status of the library. Only later would library branches emerge. Branch libraries, however, like female librarians were thought of as less than in some (but not all) cases. The majestic design that announced the library is all but gone from libraries that are placed in storefronts.

One improvement that did come from the formation of branch libraries was the increased space for service to children. While some of the older libraries did provide for children’s spaces, young patrons were often discouraged to use the library by age restrictions or by the design of the library that placed children’s books in far-off spaces. Yet even in children’s spaces, the rules of adult decorum prevailed. Van Slyck details how the young who wandered amongst the many books were told to “go to the park” and those who raised a fuss, as children are wont to do from time to time were promptly asked to leave. The same perfect posture demanded of adults was proscribed to the children in miniature. Lacking any evidence of the higher-order thinking ability of very young children, they were none-the-less expected to rise to the level of behavior befitting a businessman. Just as the adult library was seen as a means for the education of the educated and the uplift of the poor, so too was the children’s library seen as a preparatory nursery school for the development of future owners and workers.

For all of the failure in design and the pompous classism (to say nothing of the racism) the early library established a modicum of best-practices that are still used today in terms of cataloguing. As has been said in many classes, it is hard to judge history without having lived in the time-period. We can only compare and contrast today and yesterday. We can only understand the past, we cannot change it. Yet we can do the best honor to its best attributes by working to improve that which was built from those early foundations.