Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

New (Butler) Library, Columbia University, New York City

[LIB3116]



Three views of Butler Library, Columbia University, New York City.

The Nicholas Murray Butler Library, commonly known simply as Butler Library, is the largest single library in the Columbia University Library System, which contains over 9.3 million books, and is one of the largest buildings on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in the City of New York. Proposed as "South Hall" by University President Nicholas Murray Butler as expansion plans for Low Memorial Library stalled, the new library was funded by Edward Harkness, benefactor of Yale's residential college system, and designed by his favorite architect, James Gamble Rogers. It was completed in 1934 and renamed for Butler in 1946. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butler_Library]

c1935 Free Public Library, Elizabeth, NJ

[LIB01161] Elizabeth Public Library Website



Bonne Terre Memorial Library, Bonne Terre, MO

[LIB3115]

The library as it looked 1940-1950.

A current view of the library.

The Bonne Terre Memorial Library is said to be one of the five oldest libraries in Missouri. In 1867 or shortly thereafter J. Wyman Jones, president of St. Joseph Lead Company, and Dr. Charles B. Parsons, mining superintendent, brought civilization to Bonne Terre by contributing their books for a library and having boxes of books shipped from other directors and stockholders in New York.


When J. Wyman Jones died in 1904 his son, Dwight A. Jones, succeeded him as president of the St. Joseph Lead Company. In his father's memory, Dwight Jones contributed funds to erect the now-historic library building. It was built of Bedford Limestone and placed in a park-like setting enclosed by a low stone wall. The fireplace mantel in the Reading Room is a massive piece of oak supported on oak columns with marble facing and a brick hearth. In 1907 Mrs. Dwight A. Jones presented a clock, handmade in England in the late 1700's, to the library. The clock still stands in the entrance, and keeps fairly accurate time. [http://www.bonneterre.net/library.htm]

Monday, April 14, 2008

1940s Public Library BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS MA



Designed after the style of the Italian Renaissance, the interior of the building is of great beauty and visitors come from all parts of the world to admire it. Famous murals by Pierre Cecile Puvis de Chavannes, Edwin Austin Abbey, and John Singer Sargent will hold you spellbound.

c1910 Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts


[LIB0543] Special Collection Anti-Slavery collection (approximately 40,000 pieces). In the late 1890's, the family of William Lloyd Garrison, along with others closely involved in the anti-slavery movement, presented the library with a major gathering of correspondence, documents, and other original material relating to the abolitionist cause from 1832 until after the Civil War. The major holdings consist of the papers of William Lloyd Garrison, Maria Weston Chapman and Deborah Weston, Lydia Maria Child, Amos Augustus Phelps, John Bishop Estlin, and Samuel May, Jr. A full run William Lloyd Garrison's, The Liberator as well as the account books for the newspaper; records of the American, Massachusetts, and New England Anti-Slavery Societies; the libraries of William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and Wendell Phillips, all of which contain relevant pamphlets and broadsides; and the files of Ziba B. Oakes, a slave broker of Charleston, South Carolina are among the other relevant material included in the collection. Along with the account books for The Liberator, included on the Internet Archive site is the approximately 12 hundred letters dating from 1835- 1868 of the five Weston sisters: Maria Weston Chapman, and Anne, Caroline, Deborah, Lucia and Mary Weston. Known for their tireless efforts to end slavery, the Weston sisters corresponded with the major figures of the movement both in the United States and Great Britain, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel May, Jr., Richard and Hannah Webb, Harriet Martineau and Edmund Quincy. William Lloyd Garrison's letters are the next group to be digitized in the library's continuing effort to digitize the entire anti-slavery collection. [Website]

1972 Joyner Library East Carolina University GREENVILLE NC