“We are a city of nearly 350,000 people, and are absolutely without a public library worthy of the name,” dolefully observed an editorial writer in the Chicago Tribune of Sept. 10, 1871. A month later Chicago was fire-swept. Out of the ashes in unexpected form grew a new city and its Public Library.
Following the decision to build a new library in 1882, and after much ado involving several judiciary bodies and many lawyers, a grass plot framed by Randolph Street on the north, Washington Street on the south, Michigan Avenue on the east and Garland Court became the site of choice. It was known as Dearborn Park, after Old Fort Dearborn. Except for a claim by a soldier’s home, the site was clear. A compromise changed the proposed home into a Grand Army of the Republic memorial with a 50-year lease.
More than a dozen recognized firms submitted proposals in 1891, carefully following detailed guidelines. The winning design was submitted by Boston-based talent, Charles A. Coolidge of the firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. The firm had just been awarded the commission of the Art Institute of Chicago. Second place went to the Chicago firm of Jenny & Munby, and third to the Chicago architect Solon S. Beman.
On July 27, 1892, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch of Sinai Congregation, easily counted among the finest educated men in Chicago, represented the library board when he broke ground near the corner of Washington and Michigan. Within months, 50 to 70 men had slammed 2,357 pilings made from Norway pine (each about 53 feet long) through the lakefront’s sand and mud to create a foundation the envy of Venice. When the task was completed, construction began.
The new building was nothing less than the finest fireproof container of culture west of Washington, D.C., paid for by tax monies. Much like a city park, the new library was of the people as well as for the people.
The first to enter the new library were the people, nearly 10,000 per day in the opening week before the final move of about 300,000 books. Some 3,000 guests accepted engraved invitations to the star-studded dedication ceremonies on Oct. 8, 1897. This year, a weekend-long open-house series of rededication ceremonies, complete with music from the original ceremonies, will greet the public beginning Oct. 9.
The Library cost about 43 cents per cubic foot, enclosed some 4,150,150 cubic feet and occupied 47,000 square feet, almost all of Dearborn Park. It was open 13 hours each weekday and nine hours on Sundays and holidays. It had 91 employees and was the largest circulating library in the United States. Enormous state-of-the-art steam heating and electric-powered ventilation brought problems that almost undid the library the first winter of operation. Patrons complained of heat, cold and smelly air, and this in a city of some 10,000 horses.
Years later, looking at this pile of Bedford, Ind., limestone, Frank Lloyd Wright made a clever if not insightful observation: “The Public Library, two buildings, one on top of the other, is a disgraceful quarrel.”
Its exterior is a typical Beaux-Arts solution–tops and bottoms don’t need to match and what you see from the outside may have nothing to do with the inside.
These dynamic tensions squarely countered what was just then being defined as the Chicago school of architecture–what you see from the outside is pretty much what you live with on the inside.
What Wright saw as a “disgraceful quarrel” is a building with two faces, much like the Roman god of beginnings, Janus (one to see forward, the other backward). Unlike Janus, whose two faces were identical, the Randolph Street entrance is fitted with a portal styled in the Doric manor, a style developed by the Greeks in the sixth century B.C., about the same time something called democracy was tested. Once the entrance of the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) memorial, the portal opens into a multi-storied, visually sober space dominated by shades of pink and green marbles and military-inspired plaster ornament. Originally the lower rooms were for reading; today a nice lunch can be had there.
Being a distraction from the everyday world of grime, crime and commerce that was Chicago of the 1890s must have been a primary consideration for creating the unique south face as a celebration of the Italian Renaissance, the rebirth of civilization after the “bleak” Middle Ages.
Passing through a single triumphal arch, the visitor is wrapped inside a mosaic staircase that appears to float on a massive elliptical arch, whose function is as much structural as to push chins up and pull mouths open. In this context the whole of the building is a bridge from contemporary Chicago culture to a vision of a distant culture of no mean importance whose significance is the light by which Chicago culture works. Numerous famous names from the past in mosaic serve as reminders.
Created by J. A. Holzer, the great marble and mosaic staircase is a marvel to behold and was a specialty of the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Co. of New York. The mosaics were set by hand with great care. To sparkle from every ray of sunlight or incandescent light sent by the bare bulbs in wall sconces, many tesserae were gold leafed and tilted slightly. In Chicago, Holzer also installed the superb mosaics of the Marquette Building at Adams and Dearborn Streets.
The white marble was cut from the same veins at Carrara, Italy, that Michelangelo used for his sculptures. These veins are no longer being tapped.
Upstairs, Preston Bradley Hall is one of the grandest rooms in the United States. As if floating on vines and letters, the enormous Tiffany glass dome is corseted with highly articulated brass-plated iron frames and supporting ribs. The Chicago Ornamental Iron Company delivered this superb metalwork.
At its completion, Chicago boosters claimed that the mosaics were fully equal in beauty of design and harmonious effect to any similar art works belonging to the best periods and eras of art. Such is Chicago’s Cultural Center. Take a look and enjoy its first centennial.
